Selling 100 cars in five minutes, does it sound like an impossible mission even for the most experienced salesmen? The Chinese fashion blogger Becky Li did it in last July. It was named as one of the most legendary cases in the Chinese influencer marketing history.
Influencer marketing as the new trend in marketing strategy for brands, showing a great success for gaining four times more readership and eight times more engagement rate from their articles compared to marketing posts directly published by brands accounts.
Brands see those influencers as the asset because they are able to turn their followers into consumers of the brands. Since influencer marketing is a driving force for brands to grow audiences and boost sales, it has become a key component of brand marketing.
This blog post analyzes the Becky Li case and provides an insight into Chinese influencer marketing from its rising to its future.
Why was the Becky Li X Mini Cooper case so successful?
- A giant and loyal fan base
Although the collaboration between a fashion blogger and a car brand sounds crazy, the sales statistics could tell its success. Becky’s giant and loyal fan base might be one factor that contributes to it.
She has over 1.6 million followers on her WeChat official account named “Becky’s fantasy”, which is the most used platform for her to promote products and engage with followers.
Every of her collaboration with brand achieves great success. Selling 1000 pieces of Rebecca Minkoff handbags in 2 days, she seems to have the most faithful group of followers who buy whatever she recommends.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bf9_C-WnGU2/?taken-by=beckys_fantasy
(Her recent collaboration with Bata, 1200 pairs of shoes were sold out in 40 minutes.)
According to her interview with Jing Daily, Becky said she cared about her followers’ feedback on the products she promoted. The kind attention and concerns she paid to her followers make them build a high level of trust on her. Additionally, she interacts with her fans on a frequent basis, their fan-influencer relationship is shifting to a close friendship.
Therefore, they trust the brands she collaborates with.
- Outstanding pre-staged marketing strategies
You might say the attributes of her fan base could lead to the success of every collaboration, then why this one became a legend? The brilliant marketing strategies used before the actual launch of this campaign might be the key reason.
Before the launch of the campaign, Becky (and maybe her team) had already built up the excitement of followers by sending out informative messages on her WeChat official account two weeks advance.
The first one was a sneak peek, giving followers some detailed information such as the brand, the specialty of the promoted products (limited edition with a special colour), and the actual launching date.
But she didn’t mention what was the collaboration about, so the followers’ curiosity was aroused and they had discussed various possibilities including a car give away activity. The excitement from fans was the first step to her success.
On the day when she revealed the content of collaboration, she posted the second article which was a UGC one, letting users’ comments sell the cars. Then she selected about 10 users’ stories with Mini Cooper such as a road trip with Mini Cooper, the first ever owned Mini Cooper, etc.
In the same post, she opened a pre-order page which gained more than 1,000 pre-orders after 24 hours she posted the article. Pre-order as a marketing tactic encouraged consumers to reserve the car as well as helped Becky and Mini Cooper have an idea about its demand.
These two post highly engaged followers’ emotion and actual action, resulting in the final success.
The rising of influencer marketing in China
Besides Becky, China has a huge number of influencers in different fields, and brands are increasingly leveraging influencer to sell their products and services.
Since those influencers are active in social media and have the ability to lead a certain community with common interests or belongs to a fixed age group, they are the proper choices for brands to reach targeted audiences.
Reasons for the rise as follows:
- Vibrant E-commerce market
Influencers tend to promote products or services sold online, while China has a vibrant E-commerce market environment with all the technical support from platforms and high online purchase willingness from consumers.
Chinese people have gone online shopping since the late 1990s. Especially after the emergence of the all-around app WeChat, which provides services such as online payment, mini program (a function that external appliances can be used within WeChat interface), delivery food ordering, etc., encourages users to purchase via social media.
- Advocacy, not an ad
Nowadays, consumers are reluctant to buy in the traditional ways of advertisement. But speaking as a friend, as another user, telling you that you should try this product, especially from a person you trust, consumers might be less resistant.
Combining the products with influencers’ own, real and cohesive stories and let fans contribute theirs are the techniques always be used, enabling followers to start conversions around the promoted items.
Consumers are highly engaged in influencer marketing, and their awareness of the brand will increase so that they might become potential buyers for the brands.
- Influencers can be anyone, everywhere
As long as a person is influential in a certain group of people, no matter how large the group is, he or she is an influencer. Compared to celebrity, influencers are more reachable for brands as well as for followers, because they are just normal people.
For brands, communicating directly with a celebrity is difficult. Brands have to communicate with celebrities’ group and let them deliver the messages. However, influencers tend to be more affable, and have more common touch with their influencers.
What’s next?
It is estimated that micro-influencer marketing will be “the game” in 2018, because Influencers who have a smaller number of followers from 500 to 10,000 are proven to have better engagement rate than giant influencers with massive fans.
What do you say? Please leave comments below to let me know your idea about future marketing trends.
(Feature image: colorful houses in Cape Town, Photography: Yun Xie, used with permission.)
Lulan Yao 