Boosting your brand’s visibility is critical in today’s ever-expanding market. Consumers have more options to pick from than ever before, and it’s essential that you find ways to stand out. Influencers to the rescue!
NetBase Quid’s® Intelligence Connector combines your internal data and business intelligence with powerful analytics-ready consumer and market intelligence, so your brand can make data-driven decisions quickly and efficiently. And part of this involves identifying key opinion leaders (KOLs) and top influencers in your space—people who reach and resonate with your various audiences!
Influencer marketing has been growing by leaps and bounds, after all. Consider these facts:
- According to Statista, “The global influencer marketing market value stood at 14.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2022.” And this is more than double from 2019.
- A key opinion leader can add credibility to your brand. They are respected for their expertise in niche fields. Aligning with a well-respected one can add value to your brand its and messaging.
- According to McKinsey, finding products, notably clothing, that fit specific needs is a major concern for 23% of consumers. The right influencer could draw these concerned consumers to your brand.
With brand loyalty declining, it’s essential to connect to your audience in a way that resonates with them, creating a deeper bond. And influencers certainly do the trick.
Bringing Data Together with the Intelligence Connector
If you’re operating a business today, you already know that some days, there aren’t enough hours to complete all your tasks. A lot of that time is dedicated to market intelligence and consumer research—the abundance of data out there can overwhelm even the best analysis system, and most rely on a siloed approach. The Intelligence Connector, however, is a game changer.
It’s an end-to-end solution for data connectivity, storage, and distribution. Consumer research data, market data, share of voice, international news and media outlets, forums, blogs, and social media channels are all combined with any CRM or proprietary data you want to add. It includes surveys, review websites, earnings call uploads, and patent and company information.
Once the data is uploaded, this consumer and market intelligence is accessible to all areas of your business, providing context and structure to the wealth of data you have at your disposal, facilitating quick decision-making. Using the Intelligence Connector, you can do the following:
- Create custom metrics from a large amount of structured and unstructured data.
- Integrate the Intelligence Connector into any specific data science models, such as Tableau, Domo, or Microsoft PowerBI, to automatically refresh data.
- Easily and quickly enable data-driven, impactful decisions.
- Spot emerging trends before your rivals and gain the first-mover advantage.
- Keep abreast of consumer sentiments that could harm your brand.
- Track consumer sentiment and perception across market trends and brands (as well as trend identification).
It prioritizes insights by helping organizations weigh and rank metrics based on a custom methodology—including identifying KOLs and influencers.
Identifying KOLs and Influencers in Your Space and Why It Matters
Before we talk about identifying influencers and KOLs in your space, let’s look at the differences between the two.
A KOL is an expert in a specific field, and consumers look to them for their opinions on important matters, such as sustainability, equality, equity, or even cryptocurrency. Their endorsement cannot be bought—but a brand can align with them to help boost their presence and favorability.
An influencer, on the other hand, is a social media personality who has a devoted following of people. Consumers look to influencers for advice on everything from mental wellness to what makeup or clothing to buy. Companies can partner with these popular people to help increase their share of voice reach and revenue.
And then, sometimes, you’ll have a person who falls into both categories, such as Dwayne Johnson. He’s a fitness guru with lots of experience and a massive movie star–so he easily slips into KOL and influencer categories.
And since consumers prefer word-of-mouth suggestions from friends, family, and even online reviews, having an influencer/KOL as a part of marketing strategy is a must-have for 2023 and onwards. An influencer/KOL can help your brand:
- Generate brand awareness.
- Come across as more authentic. Influencers/KOLs are notoriously transparent with their audience and therefore become a trusted voice.
- Communicate to niche audiences that you may otherwise miss.
- Increase engagement—consumers who follow their favorite influencers discover your brand, assuming you’ve partnered with them.
Fossil is one of the best recent examples of influencer marketing. They used TikTok and partnered with content creators (influencers) there to drive awareness for their limited-edition ‘Fossil x Harry Potter’ product line. With a 6-second view-through rate of 22.96% on TikTok, Fossil’s campaign more than doubled the highest regional benchmarks for this goal. All because they had marketing savvy, a popular social platform, and a few influencers.
@fossil 50 points for Hufflepuff™💛 ##HarryPotterxFossil 🎥 by @melissabecraft##harrypotter##hufflepuff##fossilwatch##fossiljewelry##limitededition##watchtok##holidaystyle##holidaygifts##wizardingworldofharrypotter##fyp#foryoupage ♬ original sound – fossil
So how do intelligent companies like Fossil locate influencers and KOLs to elevate themselves?
To begin, you need to understand the trending conversations happening in your industry.
How to Locate Influencers and KOLs
Fashion and beauty are never without consumer conversation—especially with the rise in Reels and TikTok videos which have consumers (and influencers) flaunting their makeup skills and DIY fashion projects.
Below is a map of the conversation centered around beauty and fashion—the skincare and makeup segments specifically. Brands can pull discussions from news, social media platforms, reviews, blogs, forums, and more to give us a comprehensive view of what’s trending in conversation.
Additionally, they can pull the topics that have the most posts and further separate them by topics getting the most engagements. Market Intelligence reveals those topics are Boundary Breaking Makeup and Comic Fan Makeup:
Now that we know what’s trending, we can pull who is trending. This ability to organize and format information to meet incredibly specific needs is crucial for agencies and brands. And brands can set their criteria and dashboarding for influencer and KOL analysis—whether locating an influencer within your industry or analyzing a known KOL. You can also find an influencer by interest area:
We’ve entered criteria and applied our theme of Skincare and Makeup from the above conversation. And voila! We can surface top influencers for the skincare and makeup segments of the greater fashion and beauty conversation. And the influencers are found in obvious areas like entertainment and fashion, but they’re also found in executives, politics, academic arenas, and more:
And, as you can tell, it’s not always the most obvious people (like Selena, the Kardashians, and Haley Bieber) that are influencers in the Fashion and Beauty space, regardless of the endless posts about them!
Dr. Chinonso Egemba, for example, is a bit of a surprise, but not when you realize that his focus is on healthy living and its bodily impact. And that’s why it’s essential to have a tool that can pull KOLs and influencers from across various areas. This way, you’re sure that you will have a wide variety of people to reach your even wider variety of audiences. There is no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to influencers—so having market intelligence and social media tools tha gather a broad assortment, is mission-critical.
And once you’ve located your influencers, you can track them (before and after the partnership) and their conversations to ensure that they align with your brand image and are getting the desired results.
Top Beauty and Fashion KOLs/Influencers to Help You Stand Out
We’ve looked at how to identify influencers and KOLs in your space; now, let’s look at a few examples of top influencers and KOLs in the beauty and fashion realm.
Sean Garrette
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Sean Garrett is an excellent example of an influencer and KOL! He’s a skin care specialist and esthetician. Sean not only tests out new products and reviews them for his audience, but he educates them on the importance of a good skincare routine. His Instagram account boasts 94k followers—clearly, consumers care about what he has to say.
Jeffree Star
Jeffree Star has seen a lot of success with their cosmetics line. But Jeffree not only wows in their own makeup, but they also use their platform to promote favorite lip glosses, blush, liners, and more from other brands. And people listen to their recommendations. With 13.9 followers on Instagram, Jeffree Star is a self-made CEO, which only adds to their allure–consumers can relate to the can-do attitude Jeffree exhibits—they see a little bit of themselves in this social media star.
Renee Chow
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Another person who straddles the line of KOL and influencer, Renee Chow, is a beauty blogger and educational beauty influencer. She began her career in product development, which has allowed her to work closely with chemists, giving her a unique view on skincare. And it’s this expertise that consumers seek—she’s authentic and genuine in her product reviews, explaining in simple terms why one product might be better. She has 195K Instagram followers and counting.
Monet McMichael
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Influencers are entrepreneurs, and Monet McMichaels is no different. Social media star Monet McMichael has 740K followers on Instagram but boasts over 3.1 million followers on TikTok. She has dominated the beauty industry this last year. McMichael is renowned for her vibrant personality in her #GRWM and makeup tutorial videos. This year, McMonet McMichael, new to the fashion industry, debuted her Amazon collection, including items in various sizes and seasons.
Abby Roberts
@abbyrobertsthis hair makes me feel very this song♬ original sound – k
Abby Roberts, one of the most prominent British beauty influencers, oversees a TikTok community with 16.8 million subscribers. Roberts, a makeup artist, dabbles in cosmetics for beauty and makeup for special effects. She is a trendsetter for Generation Z and ahead of the curve in viral beauty moments. She has collaborated with Morphe and Colourpop, thanks to her enormous fan base and popularity.
Partnering with an influencer or aligning with a KOL may be the boost your brand needs to skyrocket to stardom, and consumer and market intelligence are your fuel Reach out for a demo!
