The Basics Of KOL Mapping
You’ve probably heard of the word ‘influencer’ before, particularly if you are a marketer looking to target a key audience through social media. But have you heard of KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) and the term KOL mapping?
KOL mapping is something that is often employed within the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry, and is a methodology that many other sectors could benefit from. If you are looking to create a business or marketing strategy that focuses on a specific industry or demographic, then you may want to consider KOL mapping.
Our Rare: Consulting team will be giving you an insight into what KOL mapping is, how to implement it for your business and what benefits you can expect from this approach. But first, let’s get to the basics of KOL mapping.
What does KOL mean?
Key Opinion Leaders or KOLs can be defined as people (or organisations) that have a strong influence, where their opinions are listened to and valued in a specific industry or area of expertise.
As such, their knowledge is respected and used to inform important business decisions related to lobbying, clinical research, academic advancement and other developments relevant to their specialities.
An overview of KOL mapping
In order to identify KOL’s in your chosen field, you must begin with a KOL mapping strategy. But what exactly is KOL mapping?
Used by market researchers, KOL mapping allows you to navigate a ‘noisy’ market to identify the most relevant people that have a strong influence in your industry. It is a quantitative approach to finding KOLs on a local, national and international scale.
With this technique, you’re able to dissect every aspect of a KOL from their category, influence in their speciality and location. Plus, it also allows you to perform trend analysis, focusing on KOLs viewpoints (good or bad) on a certain topic in your industry. No two KOL’s are the same, so evaluating their influence and alignment to your cause, based on a system relative to your business requirements allows you to create a tiering model based on these scores, which gives you the opportunity to target the most relevant stakeholders.
The Importance of KOL Mapping
You may not realise it but KOL mapping plays a key role in your business strategy, mainly through your marketing efforts which of course, have long term benefits for your company. By continuing to assess and evaluate your top KOLs viewpoints / influence, this allows you to always be aware of the ever changing landscape of your industry and ensure your business needs are aligned with this.
But before you start your KOL mapping journey, it’s important you understand how to perform KOL mapping successfully so that you’re engaging with the right KOLs for your company and your business objectives. Our blog, how to perform KOL mapping gives you the top 5 steps to follow to identify and engage with the right person or company.
The rise of DOLs
With the development of technology and the continued use of social media, there are new thought leaders known as Digital Opinion Leaders (DOLs) that are beginning to rise through the ranks in influence within their chosen speciality. DOLs are different to KOLs, as they both access and share information differently, and therefore should be communicated in very different ways to one another. If you want to know more about how to engage with Digital Opinion Leaders, we’ve put together a little guide to help you understand how to do this successfully.
Industries that use KOL Mapping
Typically KOL mapping is used in industries that have more than one specific target market or purpose.
When researching KOL mapping, you may see that Healthcare and Pharmaceutical businesses predominantly use this research method, as it allows them to gain direct feedback on research and thought leadership to their peers and the general public.
However, KOLs aren’t just limited to the healthcare industry with higher education, political lobbying, trade unions, automotive trade and even the luxury goods sector using this tool to shape business strategies.
In short, KOL mapping is for everyone, all you need is a key objective and strategy for your business to get started.
Want to know more? Why not get in touch here or email hello@rare.consulting and we can discuss your KOL needs some more.
