Is Xiaohongshu’s “grass planting marketing” changing?

The trend of grass-roots marketing on Xiaohongshu is undergoing new changes.

Recently, a piece of news about "Xiaohongshu will close the Taobao link function in notes from August 2" has caused heated discussions in the marketing circle. This is a major adjustment of Xiaohongshu in content seeding marketing. This move has a wide impact, and brand owners and creators are paying close attention.

Morketing learned that Xiaohongshu will make adjustments in two aspects. First, it will close the Taobao links in the grass-planting notes, but the function of external links in the live broadcast room will remain unchanged; second, starting from July 26, it will severely crack down on advertising note content.

1. Why should we cut off “Taobao external links”?

Since its establishment in 2013, Xiaohongshu has positioned itself as an overseas shopping sharing community. By 2020, the number of monthly active users of Xiaohongshu exceeded 100 million, and it has developed into a lifestyle platform and a portal for consumer decision-making. The number of brands on the platform has also exceeded 80,000, and discovering interesting products on Xiaohongshu has become a consumption habit for young people.

After becoming a traffic platform, Xiaohongshu has been focusing on advertising profits while constantly experimenting with e-commerce models. Therefore, Xiaohongshu did not hesitate to launch the "mall" section on its homepage. This move is intended to direct users' attention, guide transactions between platforms, and strengthen its e-commerce genes.

However, this generation of young people did not do as Xiaohongshu imagined, and only planted seeds on Xiaohongshu , but the transaction process of pulling out the seeds took place outside the site. In order to extend the transaction links of young people to Xiaohongshu, Xiaohongshu started to launch "Taobao Link" a year ago, which directly directs transactions to the Taobao platform through note content.

But not all bloggers can post Taobao links. According to Yibang Power, Xiaohongshu’s regulations for bloggers at the time were: they must have 5,000 followers and have 10 notes that have been liked, reposted and commented on more than 200 times. Later, this requirement was lowered to more than 1,000 followers.

So, after a year of testing, why did Xiaohongshu finally decide to cut off the Taobao links?

1. To close the transaction loop for its own platform. In the Internet ecosystem, almost any traffic aggregation platform, when it reaches the mature stage, hopes that all traffic will remain within the ecosystem, and even the closed loop of users from "planting grass" to "pulling grass" is completed within the ecosystem.

Xiaohongshu is not the first case of cutting off Taobao links. In August last year, Douyin banned products with third-party links from entering the live broadcast room. After this move, live broadcast merchants used Douyin stores to carry out live broadcasts and sell goods, realizing a closed-loop transaction of short videos + e-commerce.

2. Taobao links interfere with user experience. A blogger of Xiaohongshu said that most consumers' impression of Xiaohongshu is still at the stage of product recommendation and information acquisition. The content with Taobao links is often added by advertisers who want to know the content conversion ability of the blogger and present ROI data, but most bloggers are unwilling to add Taobao links.

However, in practice, it was found that after the Taobao link was added to the note content, consumers would subconsciously think that this was an advertising-type note, which in itself was contrary to the platform attribute of Xiaohongshu to promote content. Therefore, adding external links has become a link that affects the user experience. Perhaps Xiaohongshu also feels that this path is not suitable.

3. Xiaohongshu is trying a new model of "selling goods through small lists". While it is clear that adding Taobao links will not bring any substantial changes to the platform's e-commerce revenue, according to Kaibo Finance, Xiaohongshu is internally testing an event called "Good Taste Officer Selection Contest" and has invited top creators from various vertical tracks to participate.

Morketing learned that the main form of this function is that creators can add "My Little List" in their planting notes, creators can add products to the list from the "Product Selection Pool" of Xiaohongshu Welfare Club, or they can put products on the shelves on Xiaohongshu themselves.

2. Xiaohongshu becomes a marketing breakthrough for new brands

Based on the above analysis, Xiaohongshu quickly changed its platform content marketing method, gave up on continuing to direct traffic to Taobao, and did not hesitate to make new marketing attempts.

In terms of branding, everyone understands that using Xiaohongshu to plant seeds is the first step, and it is more inclined towards branding rather than guiding direct purchases.

This can be seen in some successful brands, such as Perfect Diary, the "first new brand stock of Xiaohongshu". In November last year, Perfect Diary's parent company Yatsen E-Commerce officially landed on the New York Stock Exchange. Its prospectus showed: As of September 30, 2020, it had nearly 15,000 cooperating KOLs, including more than 800 KOLs with more than 1 million fans. During its growth process, Xiaohongshu, a community with a strong grass-planting mentality, played an important role.

According to Qiangua data, Perfect Diary posted 4,621 related notes on Xiaohongshu during the Double Eleven period, a year-on-year increase of 47.97%. Therefore, Xiaohongshu is an important marketing platform for it.

There are also oriental beauty brand Hua Xizi and bird's nest brand Xiaoxiandun, both of which use Xiaohongshu as a marketing breakthrough point to reach their target consumer groups.

For new brands, Xiaohongshu can help them plant seeds in users’ minds. For Xiaohongshu, content is a continuous source of traffic for the platform to monetize. According to the "2020 KOL Social Media Investment Analysis Report" released by Weibo, the top five social platforms in terms of advertising spending by advertisers in 2020 were Sina Weibo, Xiaohongshu, WeChat official accounts, Douyin, and Bilibili. Xiaohongshu entered the top five, and the amount of money spent by advertisers increased by 119%.

What Xiaohongshu is doing is constantly standardizing brands' marketing behaviors on Xiaohongshu by upgrading marketing tools. In January this year, Xiaohongshu announced that its "brand cooperation platform" will optimize its products and change its name to "Xiaohongshu Dandelion".

It is understood that Xiaohongshu Dandelion aims to provide full-link cooperation services for brands and creators. Before cooperation, the platform provides a wealth of blogger-specific tags to support brands in screening potential bloggers; during cooperation, the entire order transaction process is completed through the platform, which is safe and guaranteed; after cooperation, in addition to providing multi-dimensional and efficient data review, the cooperation notes can also be synchronized with the enterprise delivery platform and used as delivery materials to directly connect advertising delivery.

3. The next stop of Xiaohongshu marketing is "professional account"

In addition to cutting off the Taobao link and launching the "Dandelion" platform, Xiaohongshu also announced a major platform update project, officially implementing the "account and store integration" mechanism from August 2, establishing a new account system and a series of policies.

In short, the most obvious change of "account and store integration" is the adjustment of the community account system. In the future, there will only be two identity authentication systems on Xiaohongshu: professional accounts and non-professional accounts.

It is understood that the scope of professional account certification includes interest-oriented identities such as food bloggers and fitness bloggers, as well as professional identities such as lawyers, doctors, and teachers. Managers of coffee shops, fruit shops, and B&Bs can also apply for professional accounts.

In the face of this change, it can be understood that if brands want to do in-depth marketing on Xiaohongshu in the future, they must join the "professional account" camp and interact with fans as a professional account. Professional accounts also provide functions such as online stores, topic guidance, and offline store guidance.

Jess, head of Xiaohongshu's open platform and e-commerce, also explained the reason: "I hope that every individual, small and medium-sized business and brand who is willing to share sincerely on Xiaohongshu, interact with users in a friendly manner, and provide good products and services can be born from content and grow in transactions on Xiaohongshu."

We found that under the new rules of Xiaohongshu, professional accounts can connect with users more deeply, and the scope of professional accounts covers not only big brands, and there is no requirement for the number of fans. Some small and medium-sized brands with limited budgets can also use professional accounts for marketing. It stipulates that brands with monthly sales below 10,000 are exempt from commission, and a 5% commission is charged for monthly sales above 10,000.

IV. Conclusion

In the past year, whether it was testing Taobao links, cutting off Taobao links, or launching "Dandelion" and professional accounts, Xiaohongshu has been balancing content and commercialization.

From the user's perspective, when content completely becomes profitable advertising rather than sincere sharing, users will inevitably leave at an accelerated rate, which is fatal to the platform.

For brands, marketing on Xiaohongshu is not just about posting promotional notes, but also about sincere communication with users and emphasizing the brand service value. Perhaps "professional accounts" are a new marketing direction.

Author:TobyLu

WeChat public account: Morketing