With the explosion of the Livestream trend on social media platforms, especially Tiktok, the term KOC has emerged in the last 2 years, and more and more KOL/Influencers are shifting towards KOC marketing. Although KOC is relatively new, it is gradually replacing the KOL trend and strongly influencing purchasing decisions. So, what is KOC? What is the difference between KOC and KOL? Let’s find out in detail in the following article.
What is KOC?
KOC stands for “Key Opinion Consumer,” which refers to everyday consumers who have a significant influence on the purchasing decisions of their peers or followers. KOCs are often individuals who are passionate about a particular product or service and actively share their opinions and experiences with others through social media or other communication channels. Unlike KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) who are usually professional influencers or celebrities, KOCs are typically ordinary people who have gained a significant following due to their authentic and relatable content. KOC marketing involves leveraging these individuals’ influence to promote a brand’s products or services and create a buzz around them.
What is the difference between KOC and KOL?
Popularity level
What is KOL? KOLs are individuals with significant influence and a large number of followers on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. They help consumers learn about products and brands. Brands will directly contact KOLs, negotiate a collaboration contract based on each individual’s price.
Unlike KOLs, KOCs receive products or purchase them and directly experience them. Then, they start to evaluate and consider the product and share its pros and cons with their followers.
KOCs can receive commissions based on affiliate links or booking commissions from the brand. KOLs can access customers more strongly and have higher credibility than KOCs at the moment.
Audience Scale
KOLs are classified based on their influence and the number of followers they have on content creation platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, or Tiktok. The number of followers can range from 50,000 to millions of people.
The more influential a person is, the higher their booking price, so depending on each campaign, brands can choose KOLs with reasonable booking prices to achieve optimal results for marketing activities.
KOCs mostly have a lower number of followers than KOLs. However, they are the ones who receive more trust from consumers than KOLs. They are the ones who stand in the position of consumers and give objective evaluations of products. Therefore, even though they have a lower number of followers, the effectiveness they bring can surprise you.
Furthermore, KOCs in Vietnam will be based on the credibility and trust of customers to evaluate the influence of KOCs. Especially on the Tiktok social media platform, the number of followers does not determine the number of people who access the video.
Specialization
KOLs are groups of people with significant influence or extensive expertise in a particular field. Based on their knowledge and credibility, KOLs will receive advertising contracts from brands and persuade customers to use their products.
On the other hand, KOCs do not need to be knowledgeable about the product, they will be in the position of actual buyers, actual consumers experiencing the product, and then give personal reviews.
How to evaluate the quality of KOC?
To make marketing campaigns effective, brands need to assess the quality of KOCs accurately to make the most reasonable and accurate choices. There are currently three criteria for evaluating KOC quality: Relevant, Performance, and Growth. These are:
- Relevant: This is a metric that assesses the virality of KOL content shared on social media platforms. It also evaluates the compatibility of KOLs with the brand and industry. KOLs with a high level of expertise in the industry tend to have relatively high Relevant rates, ranging from 60-70%. From there, the effectiveness of the campaign can be assessed.
- Performance: This is a metric that evaluates the effectiveness of revenue that KOLs generate for the brand through advertising and product promotion activities. KOLs who are capable of creating attractive content that hits the target audience’s psychology will be considered as having significant influence.
- Growth: To achieve optimal results with Influencer Marketing campaigns, brands need to constantly innovate and create different content based on information about the product. Based on the continuous updating of consumer trends, brands will choose KOLs with a large fan base as the target audience for the most successful promotion campaign.
How do KOC make money?
KOCs have become a popular profession nowadays, and their income sources are quite diverse and not inferior to those of Influencers. KOCs can earn money in many ways such as:
- Doing Affiliate Marketing: KOCs will review the products they have used and attach product links through bios on Tiktok, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc. KOCs will receive a commission when users purchase products through the links that KOCs introduce.
- Livestreaming on Tiktok, Tiktok Shop: KOCs will be booked by shop owners to chat and sell products, especially users can buy products directly on the Tiktok Shop link that KOCs have attached while livestreaming.
- Accepting PR bookings and participating in events: Famous KOCs make money through bookings from famous brands to experience services and participate in product launch events.
The objective of using KOL and KOC
Both KOC and KOL are important factors that cannot be overlooked in a company’s communication and advertising campaigns. However, the way KOC and KOL are used can differ.
Brands use KOL to increase brand awareness and product coverage in the market. When consumers become more familiar with the product, KOL can become the representative of that brand.
For example, when a brand launches any product, based on the targeted customer group that they are aiming for, they will invite those KOLs whose fan base matches with the target group to attend the product launch event or promote content about the product.
In contrast, KOCs are responsible for experiencing and providing truthful reviews of the product. This increases the customer’s trust in the product, which can lead to a purchase decision.
Authenticity between KOL and KOC
Currently, for every advertising campaign of a brand product, they will contact many KOLs to promote their product. However, many cases of product advertising that are not truthful, exaggerating the product too much, make customers gradually lose faith in the information that KOLs share.
They are intelligent and sensitive consumers, so they will become wary of content that heavily promotes the product.
Instead, KOC has an advantage in the hearts of consumers because they are the ones who stand in the position of the consumer and experience the product. They will provide both the advantages and disadvantages of the product based on their subjective evaluation.
Therefore, consumers trust and use the product more, and have a better impression of the brand if the product is truly good.
Why are KOC gradually replacing KOL?
Nowadays, 4.0-era customers are highly intelligent consumers who meticulously research products before making purchasing decisions.
Therefore, if the main purpose of KOLs is to increase product visibility in the market, it is insufficient to strongly influence consumer purchasing decisions compared to KOC.
KOC provides objective evaluations of a product’s advantages and disadvantages. As a result, more and more brands are choosing to prioritize KOC in their advertising campaigns. Below are three main reasons why the trend of KOC replacing KOLs is happening.
- The cost of booking KOC is lower than KOL/Influencers: Booking KOC is usually cheaper than KOLs. Meanwhile, KOCs will proactively spend money to buy and experience the product and then receive commission based on the number of generated orders. Or the brand can actively send the product to KOC and ask them to experience and provide reviews. Therefore, the business can see the actual revenue that each KOC brings after each campaign.
- Increase effective revenue: By cutting the huge cost of booking KOLs, brands can send their products to KOCs. KOCs will use and create videos or write articles to share their real experiences using the products. Therefore, subjective reviews will provide real experiences to consumers, increase purchasing decisions, and increase effective revenue for the business.
- KOC’s reviews have a strong impact on purchasing decisions: In fact, two-thirds of consumers believe that online reviews are a part of their purchasing decision. KOC, as a consumer who has experienced the product and honestly provided its pros and cons, will easily attract customers.
Why should you do marketing with KOC?
KOC is currently a highly effective marketing form, although it is a relatively new target group in the market.
However, standing in the position of a product experience consumer, KOC gains the trust of customers and creates a connection with the brand. Moreover, KOC plays an important role in the customer lifecycle.
- Before launching, KOC, with its knowledge of the product, will collect feedback from customers. Based on that feedback, businesses can conduct low-cost product trials with high efficiency.
- After launching, KOC can propose directions to build customer trust with the brand. This will increase customer awareness of the brand and conversion rates.
- During the mature stage of the product, KOC functions to introduce the product to consumers and continuously update trends.
How to use KOC for the most authentic reviews
The use of KOC to review products without caution and excessive product hype often leads to KOC and the product being blacklisted by customers. Inaccurate reviews and exaggerated product features that differ from reality have had negative impacts.
This often happens in the F&B industry. To address this issue, the 80/20 principle is used, which means that 20% negative feedback will receive 80% trust. The principle was invented by the Italian economist Pareto: “20% of the causes create 80% of the results.”
If a review receives 80% positive feedback and 20% negative feedback, it will be more trusted by consumers. KOC is a rapidly growing profession and has the potential to surpass KOLs in the future based on consumer trust. Brands and businesses need to keep up with these trends to enhance the effectiveness of their product promotion campaigns.
In this article, I hope that I have provided useful information on topics related to what KOC is and the differences between KOL and KOC to help you make accurate assessments and develop appropriate marketing strategies for your business. Good luck!
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