Xiaohongshu brand marketing method!

After all your preparations, you didn’t expect that Xiaohongshu’s New Year gift would be a new banned list, right? Everyone is still talking about the rectification storm in 2021, and it got even bigger in 2022.

According to inquiries, the brands in the previous wave have not been "released" yet, but what "reverse scale" of Xiaohongshu have been touched by the 21 brands and illegal marketing entities (medical beauty institutions) in this period?

Xiaohongshu is the Baidu of life for young women. It is a routine operation for them to search before buying and post pictures after buying. It plays a key role in users' consumption decisions and has always emphasized that the core of the platform is "truth" - real content and a sincere heart.

However, when we searched, we found that most of the notes in the community were not authentic enough, and even fake notes could be seen at a glance;

At the same time, many obvious cooperation notes have not been officially reported through the Dandelion platform (if they are officially reported, they will be marked as sponsorship/advertising, etc.). These two behaviors alone have caused "false promotion" because these notes have affected user judgment and interfered with the order of the platform.

This also makes us start to really think - what should we do in brand marketing to achieve healthy growth on Xiaohongshu?

1. List of Violators

1. 21 illegal brands

Judging from the list, Xiaohongshu treats all brands equally, whether they are well-known brands like Hou and Adolf or small brands.

2. Illegal marketing entities (medical beauty institutions)

3. Illegal marketing of products (medical beauty)

And what does being banned mean?

This means that the public domain traffic of the banned brands on the homepage and search page of Xiaohongshu’s information flow will be cut off.

2. Reflection after watching the “excitement” – tips for other brands to survive

Don’t think that a brand ban is not far away from you, and don’t be gloating. Maybe one wrong operation will lead to failure, the money invested will be wasted, and your reputation will be affected.

Even a strong dragon will not suppress a local snake. Since the brand needs the land of Xiaohongshu to take root and sprout, it is important to understand and respect this land.

1. Follow the official account of Xiaohongshu

It allows you to understand the dynamic trends of the platform in a timely manner.

2. Stop cutting corners

Avoid these dangerous behaviors such as not reporting soft articles, using amateurs to spread the word, and ghostwriting and posting.

3. Medical beauty should be rethought

After all, it involves surgery on a human body. Haven’t you heard of cases of people losing their lives due to cosmetic surgery? If you let an amateur who has no ability to create content to draw pictures and write texts, if it were your family member, would you be willing to let her do it? Is this kind of behavior honest? Is it responsible?

4. Special rectification of transaction diversion

The launch of the "account and store integration" system has increased the vitality of Xiaohongshu, provided a lot of convenience for merchants, and played a certain role in the closed loop of transactions. However, due to transaction security issues that arose at the same time, Xiaohongshu began to strictly investigate third-party transaction diversions.

(Photo credit: Mr. Elk)

Measures taken include but are not limited to:

• Violating notes/comments are visible only to individuals
• Comments/private messages disabled
• Live broadcast interruption/ban
• Account traffic restriction/account ban

III. Countermeasures to this Action

Xiaohongshu has once again raised its revenue target for 2022. In 2021, Dandelion’s target was about 3 billion, and the target for 2022 was adjusted from 6 billion to 8 billion. Including information flow, the entire target seems to be 30 billion. According to gossip, Xiaohongshu's plan for 2022 is to become more commercialized.

Brands that have not registered yet must do so, with the focus on producing good content.

The specific operations are as follows:

• 1. Do not invest in accounts that like and hide each other's posts and brush data, and accounts that mainly accept advertising orders.
• 2. Increase the reporting ratio to 20-30%. During sensitive periods for beauty and skincare brands, the reporting ratio may be even higher than 30%.
• 3. Understand the reasons behind the blocked accounts and brands. Don’t save money by posting spam accounts. They are not very useful and will harm the brand.
• The content is too homogeneous, including the cover, which not only leads to low readership, but also affects the brand
• 5. Bloggers should declare their interests when accepting promotion orders from brands
• Don’t spread the quantity, place precise notes, and seek quality instead of quantity
• 7. Brands that put a lot of notes should still invest in information flow

4. Do these 4 things well and you can leave your competitors far behind

1. Have a high-quality content marketing team

In the next three years, if this company still fails to do a good job in content marketing, its competitiveness in the future e-commerce market, including traditional brands, will definitely be less than that of new companies. Why?

——Because future marketing is about scenario marketing, which is in very strong competition with content marketing. If a company simply relies on stealing traffic or other opportunistic methods to create content, the platform will definitely not approve of it.

Therefore, we must constantly hone our content marketing capabilities and keep up with the underlying logic of content marketing and changes in the preferences of new groups. Therefore, it is very important to build a team that can do the content part and output high-quality content.

2. No scenario marketing

With the restrictions on certain keywords imposed by advertising laws and platforms, we need to use content to tell consumers what the final picture will be. The platform generally accepts content that users like.

Therefore, we should create content based on what users like, rather than sticking to words with limited expressive power. By creating scenario marketing and understanding its importance, you will be able to distance yourself from your competitors.

3. Not knowing yourself and not knowing the other: Not getting to know the Gen Z crowd

Now, in addition to the precise positioning of the product itself (it is no longer a simple competition based on product efficacy), if you want to differentiate yourself from your competitors, you need to conduct in-depth and thorough research on the preferences of Generation Z - those born after 1995 and 2000 - so that you can stand out in the future market.

4. Not knowing yourself - What is good about your product?

Why do you want to use products to mobilize blogger resources and are they willing to exchange with us?

First of all, the products we make must be liked by users and bloggers, so that you can do a lot of promotion. Otherwise, if you rely entirely on yourself to promote them, the effective volume will be almost 0.

After investing a large number of water accounts, it will inevitably become a gimmick and false marketing. This is very dangerous, and it is normal to be banned. Therefore, we must return to the product perspective and work hard on the product itself.

(The next article will tell you how to use products to impress bloggers on Xiaohongshu, which can achieve the effect of free replacement.)

Summary: There are many brands involved in these two rectifications, and the frequency is not low. I believe that many more batches may appear in a while. When it comes to marketing on Xiaohongshu, brands that are currently in the "safe zone" need to think about what attitude to take and how to do it correctly. After watching the fun, don’t leave with nothing.

Let’s talk about what happened in the circle of friends of the banned brands in the comment section!

Author: Zhuang Jun

Official Account: Zhuang Jun Xiaohongshu Marketing