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“Grassroot” influencersare more trusted byconsumers than socialmedia influencers.
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“Grassroot” influencersare more trusted byconsumers than socialmedia influencers.
By TobaccoChina Online
Since Covid-19 hit China, (social) influencer marketing has spread all over the country seemingly overnight. People’s shopping desire suppressed by the pandemic turned to online channels as retailers started “cloud selling”. Retail owners, or even CCTV hosts, led the trend to using influencer marketing. Some local mayors, county heads and district heads also promoted the trend.
The so-called influencer marketing is actually a way of online sales through mobile Internet, using video platforms like TikTok, aardio, Taobao, JD.com, and other e-commerce platforms, with “no middleman to earn the difference”. Different from the previously popular social media influencers, influencer marketing by merchants has its own characteristics. It is not necessary for the livestreamers to highlight his/her own “personality”. What is more important is whether they are clearer about all aspects of their products and whether they can clearly pass on the characteristics of their products to consumers, and introduce high cost-effective products and discounts to consumers. As for influencer marketing, “goods” play the leading role, and the livestreamers primarily express accurate product characteristics while their own personality is secondary.
Influencer role in marketing tobacco
As tobacco falls into monopoly products, China strictly restricts its online sales. Therefore, although many cigarette retailers also attempted online sales, they are all limited to “non-tobacco” products. In order to push forward economic development and help retailers to tide over the pandemic, many tobacco commercial companies provided assistance and support to the retailers’ spontaneous livestream move. In addition, China Tobacco also has sales business of some “non-tobacco” products, and the tobacco commercial companies themselves also bear the social responsibility of poverty alleviation and poverty relief. Therefore, the influencer marketing of tobacco commercial companies divides mainly into the following three types.
First is influencer marketing done to help poor households from counterpart impoverished villages to sell agricultural products through online livestreaming. This kind of streaming is the most common form in China’s tobacco industry. For example, Songnan village, Yangmiao township, Guzhen county, Anhui province, is a poor village that accepts the help of the Tobacco Monopoly Branch of Guzhen county. The agency helped the villagers promote straw hats through its WeChat group and streaming platform, a move that solved the employment of 45 villagers from 7 households. In addition, the staff of the tobacco branch of Wuning county, Jiangxi province visited the poor households in counterpart poor villages on weekends to help them livestream local bamboo shoots and bamboo handicrafts.
Second is influencer marketing done to extend the service content, helping retailers sell non-tobacco goods and broaden sales channels to bring about offline business. Affected by the pandemic, some cigarette retailers encountered issues such as increased inventory, slow capital turnover, and low frequency of customers walking into stores. In order to help retailers find a “breakthrough”, tobacco marketing personnel guided qualified retailers to carry out online non-tobacco commodity promotion through a livestream platform, aiming to explore the livestreaming mode and open up terminal sales.
For instance, the Tobacco Monopoly Branch of Lantian county, Shaanxi province, organized customer managers to guide retailers to use the webcast platform to sell non-tobacco goods in stores.
Third is livestream selling of liquor, tea, and other non-tobacco commodities implemented by tobacco commercial enterprises, which achieved good results. For example, the branch of Zhongshan city, Guangdong province on April 20 2020 selected nine young, expressive employees to livestream and market non-tobacco products through the network platform. More than 1,500 people watched the livestream in less than 1 1/2 hours 142 items were sold. In early July, a local tobacco commercial company in Fujian province worked with a chain enterprise through TikTok to sell a new kind of tea for online users, which made excellent effect.
Advantages of influencer marketing in the tobacco industry
Different from popular and paid-to-promote influencer marketing, most of the current livestreaming done by tobacco enterprises built their own livestreaming space, putting less focus on the streamer’s personality but highlighting the brand quality; attracting fans because of the products rather than a streamer with a distinct personality. This is an innovative measure to help poor people and retailers increase their income, but also a vivid portrayal of the win-win situation initiated by state-owned enterprises in pandemic prevention and control as well as production and operations. At present, compared with other livestreaming behaviors, tobacco enterprises are very competitive.
Immersive experience. The influencer marketing participated in and supported by the tobacco industry has effectively enhanced the consumption experience. The goods-based livestreaming mode is close to the consumer psychology of common people. Since tobacco employees have a very thorough understanding of the stores and products in their daily service, they can more truly and accurately recommend the characteristics of stores and products to the customers during the livestreaming process, and the consumers in turn can immerse themselves in the whole atmosphere and fully and comprehensively understand the quality of the goods.
A small village named Jinsha in Fujian province is rich in coix seed of excellent quality and affordable price, for which the tobacco marketing personnel actively planned a livestream on May 13. One customer was invited to join in the event which was carried out in a retailer’s store. The three introduced in detail the advantages of producing areas, health benefits, eating methods, ordering methods, and price concessions. They had a warm and interesting exchange with each other, pushing the atmosphere of the livestreaming room to a peak. On that day, more than 600 people watched the livestream, and 1,274 packets of coix seed were sold, with an order amount of RMB11,530.
More people-friendly. The grassroots livestreamers bring a more user-friendly experience which better reflects people’s rational choice of online consumption, rather than those social media influencers and stars who charge high endorsement fees but seldom use the goods they market.
In early March 2020, Tobacco Municipal Branch of Huzhou city, Zhejiang province held a series of activities of Xiangyifang Cloud Livestreaming. The livestreamer shared interesting topics with customers in plain language. There was also livestream quizzes and lucky draws. For instance, more than 300 retailers during one livestreaming event participated in the interactive session, and more than 700 applications were received from customers. In this way, the original 40-minute livestream was extended to nearly one hour with the warm support of customers.
More convenient. With its own logistics distribution center, the Chinese tobacco industry’s tobacco logistics is more secure and faster in every corner of the country, which can make people fully experience the convenience of online shopping, compared with the ordinary express companies.
The traditional sales model fails to meet the modern marketing concept. “Meeting on the cloud” will give access to more people and create more consumer demand than offline channels. For the tobacco industry, livestreaming expands its marketing channels and is particularly helpful in exploring the integrated operational mode of cigarettes and non-cigarettes. In addition, livestreaming enables more people to gain further understanding of China Tobacco, building a good industry and brand image.