What is KOC?
Key Opinion Consumers (KOC) Marketing are the latest form of influencers, who are experts in testing and reviewing products. Given that their content is highly reliable, they play an important role in the decision-making process of their readers, regardless of the relatively small audience size. They own their own blog site and Youtube channel to spread the information, for this reason as well, their contents are not provided by brands.
There are places like KOC Live, where we talk about KOC marketing and how it benefits customers and society, what impact they bring to the world and why we should look into this marketing method.
Reasons for Adopting KOC Marketing 1:
KOC Holds Both Benefit From KOL & CRM
Company Relationship Management (CRM) is a technology for managing all your company’s relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers. It helps make improvements to the bottom line, which is the remaining company income after reducing the expenses from revenue, it also helps identify and categorize leads. In addition, it offers better customer support for the company and improves products and services.
While Key Opinion Leaders (KOL) is a trusted, well-respected influencer with proven experience and expertise in a particular field. Key Opinion Leaders are spokespersons, brand ambassadors, or thought leaders. They are seen as having more importance and relevance than mass media because they are able to connect and relate to their audience.
As for Key Opinion Consumer (KOC), they are the same as KOL but hold both benefits from CRM and KOL, as they work similarly to KOL, they have the credibility to connect with the audience. Therefore they have better customer support, in addition, KOC marketing differs from KOL marketing as they do not do paid collaboration with the brands. Click here for more details
Reason for Adopting KOC Marketing 2:
Consumer Reviews
Currently, in the generation and the future generation, people will be using the internet more and will trust the internet for their purchasing. People will look for consumer reviews before purchasing the product which means that reviews have an impact on customers’ decision-making in purchasing. Technically, in the current market, already 70+% of the consumers agree that online reviews have a large amount of influence on their purchasing.
With the era being all to be completed by utilizing the internet, we cannot deny that even the smallest comment holds a certain amount of influence on other people. We cannot even deny that the internet has been a great help in our daily routine, as it gives a lot of positive impacts on society. It provides effective communication using emailing and instant messaging services. It improves business interactions and transactions, which saves vital time. Banking and shopping online have made life less complicated.
With all those benefits in mind, it is no wonder we rely on the internet, as so we will believe that the reviews on the internet are much better than those by listening to others, as it is fast and reliable. This means that KOC marketing holds more influence than normal influencers, also with the fact that they possess loyal followers, means that they have more authenticity than KOLs, even though their audience amount is less than KOL.
Current China KOC Market
Key opinion customers (KOC) marketing generally originated from China, and it is presently growing beyond imagination. Key opinion customers (KOC) marketing strategy is gradually replacing the key opinion leaders (KOL) marketing strategy. Which may as well influence social media marketing strategy.
Interestingly, they started as a bunch of people with a small number of followers but with excellent review skills. Even though they have a little number of followers, they report and review their personal experiences during the use of the product which makes a lot of people believe in them. And with given time, they started to become a force not to be underestimated.
In China, brands are increasingly turning to KOC instead of KOL to build their businesses. While both strategies have their pros and cons, KOC marketing is quickly becoming the preferred option for several reasons. One of the reasons is the high costs of hiring famous KOL or influencers. Other than that, there has been some scandal among celebrity KOLs, as most of them have rumors of them evading taxes, which made brands supporting these KOLs suffer from public backlashes.
However, the biggest reason why China’s marketing strategy has switched from KOL to KOC is that the authenticity that KOL bring is not as reliable as KOC. As KOC is hardly paid by brands, nor are they brand agnostic, currently Chinese consumers have become more sophisticated and they know brands are paying to do reviews. Adding to the point stated above, Chinese consumers crave more content that is not commercially influenced. They wished for more honest content like those that are brought by KOCs, as KOCs’ reviews are brought out by their experience with the specific product or service.
With all the facts laid out, we can say that there are many benefits to getting ourselves involved in KOC marketing, instead of KOL marketing. However, we are not here to force you to do so, as no one has the right to forcibly choose another’s future, we only hope you would consider the possibility of it. Of course, if you were to choose not to be a KOC, we would not force anyone, if you do wish to become a KOC after looking into this blog, please give a shout-out to our other KOCs and let us help you in your journey by clicking here to learn about us.
The KOC Live has been founded in Malaysia in 2021, we have been aiming to help our clients to reach out to their targeted audience within their social media platform and attempted to assist in influencing purchasing decisions of consumers.
We have always tried to ensure our clients in achieving their business goals and are passionate about connecting brands to the right audience and consumers. We understand that currently, businesses are struggling with their business by not being able to reach their target audience, especially now that everything is turning remote. We hope that we can help our clients in bringing the best to the world.
To know our KOC live, Click here.
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