K-Pop and Korean cosmetics on VK. How we promoted Korean eBay in Russia

eBay Korea is the part of eBay Global company, which sells products from Korean manufacturers, mostly from categories such as: electronics, cosmetics and products from the performers of K-pop.

VK is the largest social media platform in Russia with 97M active monthly users.

Our tasks:

The client set a goal for us — to attract the interested audience to the fanpage and increase traffic from VK to the website.

So the final tasks were:

• creation of sales funnel;
• visual design of the fanpage, contributing to the desire to follow it;
• publication of content that stimulates to visit the website and removes possible objections before registration and purchase;
• attraction of the target audience with the help of VK ads — at least 500 new followers per month;
• community management and use of sales scripts.

What’s been done:

1. Competition analysis

We identified the direct and indirect competitors and analyzed how purchases are made on fanpages and online stores.

Direct competitors:

• fanpages of Russian stores with Korean cosmetics;
• fanpages and stores of Korean cosmetics brands;
• online stores offering products from K-Pop stars.

Indirect competitors:

Aliexpress and multi-brand cosmetics stores.

Purchase process on competitors’ websites and fanpages:

• in most stores a customer needs to contact the fanpage manager or communicate though Viber or WhatsApp;
• larger stores add the “Products” section on VK fanpage. In this case, customers need to go to this section, add a product to the cart, enter the data necessary for placing the order and wait for the consultant’s response;
• some competitors have a website where customers need to add the product to the cart, enter the details for ordering and wait for the consultant’s response.

2. Target audience determination

At the very beginning we’ve decided to focus on promoting two categories: Korean cosmetics and products related to K-POP. This solution allowed us to concentrate all our efforts on attracting females to the fanpage, and to advertise only those products that will surely be interesting to the target audience.

Target audience of K-Pop products

Age: 15-25 years old.

Interests:

idols and K-pop fanpages;
Korea, moving to Korea;
Korean fashion and culture;
Korean series (K-Drama).

Target audience of K-Beauty products

Age: 18-35 years old.

Interests:

• Korean fashion and culture;
• makeup and self-care, wellness;
• care cosmetics;
• beauty-bloggers.

The target audience buys cosmetics on the Internet in two ways:

• users search for information for a long time, compare, read reviews, fully study the product, and then make a purchase decision;
• users make impulse purchases that are affected by: the exact hit of the product description in the problem, price, packaging and visual design, the availability of discounts.

Cosmetic issues of the target audience:

• 18–27 years old — problem skin, rashes, black dots, oily skin, combination skin, dry skin, facial dryness, skin tightness, dull or gray color of skin;
• 27–35 years old — the appearance of noticeable wrinkles, reduced skin tone, change of face oval, dark circles under the eyes, pigmentation.

This information helped us to select the most interesting products for the target audience and create relevant content on the fanpage.

3. Content and advertising strategy

After determining the target audience, a strategy development stage followed.

Based on the analysis of competitors and target audience, we defined the user’s path from the first interaction with an ad to a fanpage subscription and purchases.

We’ve considered the visual concept of content, identified the tone of voice (a common style of communication with users through publications and comments), eliminated the main design errors and added all the necessary information to the fanpage.

The interconnectedness of all elements and a single style is what forms the first impression and affects the results of the entire campaign.

4. Fanpage visual design and settings

At this stage we’ve:

• disabled unnecessary sections;
• added links with currency converters. Since all prices on eBay are in US dollars by default, converters make it easier for users to understand prices in Russian rubles or Ukrainian hryvni;
• added a discussion section in which the basic principles of buying goods on eBay were described;
• added a page, created by using VK wiki markup that provide a quick search of products from posts using hashtags, in the right-hand menu;
• plugged a mailing widget that allowed to send promotional offers to users in private messages;
• plugged a welcome widget with a name of the user and a call to subscribe to the newsletter.

Link: https://vk.com/ebayshopkorea/

The example of a promotional offer sent to users in private messages:

The page for searching fanpage posts by hashtags, created using wiki markup:

5. Content creation

The content on eBay Korea fanpage was divided into two categories: K-pop and K-beauty. In addition, we also published posts answering users’ questions and removing their objections.

Content for K-Pop section:

• news about the release of new albums of K-Pop groups with a link for purchase on eBay;
• cosmetics that are used and advertised by idols;
• publication of the best-selling products from idols and K-Pop groups.

Content for K-Beauty section:

• the best offers of Korean cosmetics;
• cosmetics that are used and produced by popular bloggers;
• sales;
• description of one of the popular ingredients of cosmetics and a selection of Korean products with it;
• Korean beauty dictionary with a selection of cosmetics that are relevant to the topic.

6. Ad campaign

Since the settings of targeted ads on VK differ from the settings on Facebook, at the beginning of the campaign with the help of TargetHunter service we gathered audiences to display ads. In accordance to the strategy and the target audience, which was determined by us before, we divided the segments for targeted ads according to parameters such as country, age and interests.

Geography: Russia and Ukraine.

Segments for targeting:

• followers of stores with Korean cosmetics;
• followers of Korean TV series (K-Drama) fanpages;
• followers of Korean pop music fanpages (K-Pop);
• followers of fanpages with Aliexpress goods;
• followers of cosmetics stores.

Age: 16-25, 26-35 years old.

For retargeting campaign we created carousel ads with the most popular products and showed it to those users who viewed the first ad but did not join the fanpage.

The example of ad calling to join to the fanpage that is showed to a target audience of products from the K-Beauty section:

The example of ad calling to join to the fanpage that is showed to a target audience of products from the K-Pop section:

The example of ad for retargeting:

Results

During three months of cooperation we’ve managed to attract more than 4.5 thousand of new followers and exceed the originally established KPI by 2 times.

Today, the average coverage of all posts on fanpage reaches 1 000 of views, and the maximum number of daily amount of enteractions has increased from 6 to 80.

We regularly receive questions from users in the comments and add the information to the discussion sections that would help to prevent similar questions in the future.

Since September to November 2018:

• spent – 81 137.57 RUB (~1167.04 USD);
• number of obtained followers – 4 514 users;
• average follower price – 17,97 RUB (~0.24 USD).

With the help of targeted ads, we also managed to achieve stable indicators of followers growth:

• number of obtained followers in September – 1 789 users;
• number of obtained followers in October – 1 336 users;
• number of obtained followers in November – 1 389 users.

Subscribers of private message newsletter:

• K-Pop section – 287 users;
• K-Beauty section – 334 users.

Followers growth since the beginning of our cooperation in September 2018:

Team:

• Polina Marinich, Project management
• Maya Kakhnovich, Graphics & copy
• Artem Mavrin, Ad campaign
• Anastasiia Vladikova, Accounting