New trends in Xiaohongshu’s ecological marketing in 2022!

Yesterday, the Xiaohongshu Business Ecosystem Conference came to a close. As a review of the Xiaohongshu ecosystem for the entire year and a look ahead to the marketing trends for the new year, what content from the conference is worthy of brands' attention?

Next, I will think with the brands about what the grass-planting ecology of the Xiaohongshu platform means to consumers and brands, what role Xiaohongshu plays in the entire brand marketing process, and how Xiaohongshu promotes the birth of new consumer products.

Looking back at the new consumer products that have been born and become popular in the past five years, we will find one interesting thing, that is, in the early stages of their development, almost without exception, they bypassed the marketing and promotion system advocated by the original traditional 4A advertising companies.

In the past, products were defined by brands and advertising, which told you what I was and what you should do through a series of product selling points, and ultimately led to consumption through the advocacy of consumption scenarios.

For example, Melatonin, Want Want, Wong Lo Kat, etc., all follow this path.

The birth of new consumer products is just the opposite. Consumers gradually move from the final receiving end to the front end, becoming creators and leaders of consumption methods.

It is the consumers who decide what they want and reconstruct the consumption scenarios, thereby driving the explosion of products and brands.

Brands have become participants in consumption scenarios rather than innovators and leaders, and consumers’ wishes and preferences have gradually had a profound impact on the direction of brand marketing.

Because the essence of achieving incremental growth in new consumer products no longer comes from technological innovation, but from the iteration of usage scenarios.

Whoever can create new consumption scenarios that suit consumers can achieve brand growth.

How can brands discover new consumption scenarios?

The answer to this question can be found in Xiaohongshu, a content community that has a natural grass-planting gene and focuses on consumer recommendations.

Xiaohongshu receives countless original demand feedback and advocates trendy ways every day, which means it is destined to be at the forefront of future trends. What brands need to do is to gain insight into real needs and ultimately build product and brand scenarios that are consistent with consumer needs.

The phenomenal trends that have emerged on Xiaohongshu, such as gender-neutral outfits, morning C and evening A, girl group water, good night sweet wine, the first cup of milk tea in autumn, etc., are all caused by users' demands for new consumption scenarios. The brands then have insight into this trend, participate in it based on the brand and product characteristics, and amplify the topics and scenarios, thereby achieving brand growth.

In the era of traditional e-commerce, our first reaction when we saw negative public opinion and bad reviews was to delete them and control their spread. But today, when consumers are leading the direction of brand marketing, perhaps public opinion can still give us new inspiration.

At the Business Ecosystem Conference, Xiaohongshu proposed that their business vision is to help every good product grow.

This is not only fully reflected in the creation and promotion of new consumption scenarios, but also plays an important role in product research and development and iteration.

If we say that brands used to be the definers of products and trends, we developed a product and integrated it into a certain lifestyle to define people’s lives, but now the role has changed dramatically.

The way of communication is changing. When consumers come to the forefront and have a more influential voice, they become the makers of the rules of the game, while brands become more like a demand satisfier and promoter.

We need to guide consumers to express themselves and get answers to brand marketing direction and product iterations through their consumption experience.

Let’s look at a case study of a successful brand renewal achieved through insights into consumer demands.

In the past, Wuling Motors gave people the impression of being old and bulky vans. While thinking about breaking the circle and innovating , they found that users on Xiaohongshu had been sharing their experiences in modifying their cars. They took this as an opportunity to launch macaron colors and sandwich models that are more suitable for the needs of Xiaohongshu users.

The "Trendy Wear Event" was launched for the first time on Xiaohongshu, creating the topic of "Dress with Style". By inviting users to show their results of Wuling Hongguang car exterior modifications, it set off a modification trend, maximized the stimulation of girls' hearts, and successfully transformed the brand perception of Wuling Hongguang MINIEV from "a vehicle for shopping" to "a walking graffiti wall".

Through insight into and leadership of trends within the platform, Wuling Hongguang co-created products with consumers , enabling Wuling Hongguang's new MINIEV to surpass Tesla in monthly local sales, increasing brand popularity by 669 times, with brand advertising + note exposure exceeding 240 million times, refreshing the brand's impression in all aspects and rejuvenating the brand .

It even launched the Wuling Little Red Car, a joint model of Wuling Hongguang and Xiaohongshu, which once again made its presence felt.

In the process of shaping new consumer products and new scenarios, Xiaohongshu, as a content platform that gathers a large number of real user voices, needs more positive guidance and promotion than "manipulating" user word of mouth. In the constant interaction with consumers, we continue to obtain real feedback , thereby obtaining guidance on market demand, and thereby correcting and iterating products, maintaining advantages while improving defects, and creating consumer trends with them.

In traditional times, consumption trends were defined by advertisers. We developed a product and incorporated it into a certain trendy lifestyle to lead the lives of the general public. But now consumption trends are emerging in Internet content communities and in the usage experiences of various people. What marketers can do is to guide and promote them.

Xiaohongshu has developed into more than just a platform for promoting products, but has become the intersection of content and commercial traffic . It is not only a lifestyle sharing platform, but also a content community that can influence consumer decisions.

This dual attribute makes the process from product recommendation to ordering more proactive and significantly shortened for consumers.

On Xiaohongshu, every click is a valuable and proactive behavior. According to statistics, 70% of users start by browsing the app. After reading dozens of notes in depth, they will turn to searching and actively gain an in-depth understanding of the product.

Another 30% of users search directly.

The discovery page and search page, which make recommendations based on consumers' reading interests and preferences, are the largest traffic gathering places of Xiaohongshu . Judging from the composition of note views, nearly half of them are long-tail traffic from high-quality notes, which have a long-term and far-reaching impact on consumer decision-making.

Through Xiaohongshu’s vigorous crackdown on “false propaganda” some time ago, we can also see Xiaohongshu’s determination to control and govern the platform ecology.

They also emphasized this point at the Business Ecosystem Conference.

Only the promotion based on "sincere sharing" can trigger more real feedback from users and produce far-reaching impact.

This means that the platform has higher requirements on the bloggers' creative ability and the brand's ability to control content.

Once again, we remind you that when a new product enters Xiaohongshu for the first time, do not buy a large number of cheap praise notes . The platform will inevitably continue to crack down on false recommendations in order to protect real sharing. At the same time, brands will lose the opportunity to listen to real feedback from consumers and create new consumption scenarios with content creators.

In 2022, Xiaohongshu will leverage the five major theme IP content marketing ecosystems to create more lifestyle brands on Xiaohongshu.

① Major events

It has great exposure and strong interactive influence, from the "New Year CNY National Year Search PK" from January to March, to the "Summer Online and Offline Carnival" from May to July, to the "Mark My Love Life" from August to October, all of which are worthy of attention from all brands and should be planned and participated in in advance.

②Innovative marketing by celebrities

Xiaohongshu invites celebrities to share their life and usage experiences.

The influence and appeal of celebrities can achieve high exposure and establish word-of-mouth for product promotion in the short term, and is a very important part of the closed loop of voice.

③Full life scenes

Embed advertisements into real-life scenarios to lead more consumption trends.

It is divided into the Good Life Series and the Smart Life Series. From beauty, skin care, life, daily necessities to home appliances, etc., a series of brands that focus on scene creation can participate.

④Festival Marketing

Create a festive sense of ceremony.

The main nodes are the Girls' Day and Cherry Blossom Season in March and April, the 520 node in May, the Chinese Valentine's Day in July and August, and the Double 11 Festival in December and January. Brands can seize the minds of users through early layout.

⑤Interactive conversion

Xiaohongshu has also taken action in terms of high interaction and precise conversion.

Through new interactive forms such as wishing wells, one-stop recommendation and surprise correspondents, combined with major marketing promotion nodes such as 618 and Double Eleven, we will do our best to boost the brand's traffic harvest.

In today's world where content traffic and commercial traffic are interconnected, only by taking a bottom-up, more democratic approach, co-creating products with consumers, listening to their voices, and meeting their consumption needs, can brands revitalize their brands and achieve long-term development on this fertile soil.

The iteration of new scenarios may have just begun.

Source: Bobo's Kitchen