A guide to Xiaohongshu advertising strategies!

So there is still one point missing here, that is the channel. Endorsement under the Xiaohongshu channel becomes more meaningful, because the Xiaohongshu channel is the only way for users to consume.

To sum up these points, we can actually find a problem, that is, the essence of advertising on Xiaohongshu seems to be to find the user's consumption decision-making path and to make advertising placements that adapt to local customs on the consumption decision-making path.

Therefore, in order to invest well in Xiaohongshu, it is very necessary to study how users make consumption decisions.

In order to study this, I did a test on myself a few days ago, using myself to simulate a real user who is interested in a high-priced product. (In the actual process, I don’t imagine myself as a researcher, but just as an ordinary user who wants to buy )

First of all, the purchasing demand was generated by me personally, not by any other content I was inspired by. I thought about it carefully, and this is very logical, because it is a product with a high average order value and low frequency, which means that if I don’t have a strong demand, I will not change or choose new things to buy.

Therefore, this demand can only arise from myself, and it is difficult for outsiders to impose it on me through marketing.

But no matter what, I am now considered a potential consumer of this category.

But at this time, I didn’t know which products in this category were better, so I went to search on Xiaohongshu and Zhihu, that is, to see some bloggers’ recommendations.

There are not many search terms, mainly: Which product in xx (category) is good? xx (category) product recommendations, etc., so the common point here is that the category words and recommended synonyms must be included.

At this time, the information I want to know is what brands are under the category and which brands are doing well, and then leave a ranking in my mind to roughly judge which brands are good and can be used as the main choice.

My favorite content at this stage is:

1. xx (category) product recommendation

2. xx (category) brand comparison
3. xx price - xx price xx (category) brand comparison
….and similar questions.

Although I haven't set an upper limit for the brands I want to keep, I roughly estimate that I should keep around 3-5 preferred brands.

If no dark horse brands emerge later, then my choices will be within these 3-5.

In this decision-making process, my main reasons for choosing are:

The brand appears frequently, and when various brands are compared, this brand will always be the one that will be compared, so I think it is a well-known brand or one of the main brands chosen by everyone so far.

At this stage, my main decision-making battlefield is actually on the common words under the category, so the first stop of the launch is to establish a preliminary brand image among the common words.

I will come up with the brand positioning based on the attributes of the people who choose this brand and the image revealed by the products, rather than the brand itself saying whether it is high-end or not.

For example:

For example, for headphones, I assume that I don’t know approximately how much this product of headphones costs, I don’t know how much high-end brands cost, and I don’t know how much low-end brands cost.

So I will roughly summarize a conclusion based on the recommendations of bloggers: the final price is 100-2000 (hypothesis)

Are 100 yuan headphones enough? Or is 2000 considered the entry level? I still don't understand this.

So if most students share using 100, and many working people use 300, and a lot of middle-aged-looking people use 1500, then I can roughly come up with an image of the brand positioning.

Put it into the actual scene, let me give you another example, for example, I saw a restaurant:

The people who appear in the photos of this restaurant are basically dressed elegantly and formally, and the environment is calm and solemn, so I would intuitively think that this is a high-end business restaurant.

If you tell me that this is for eating spicy hot pot, I'm sorry, that doesn't match my understanding.

Therefore, when a brand launches its advertising, the content, target audience, and sophistication of the advertising all determine the impression it makes on others. A wrong impression will result in the inability to match the precise target audience, and the effect will be worse.

For example, some brands like to say that they are high-end, even if the average order value of their products is only 0.5 of other brands, they still say that they are high-end brands. In fact, there is no need to do so. High-end products are high-end, and low-end products are low-end. There is no need to piggyback on each other's traffic, nor is there any need to save face, because people who match the products will always find the corresponding brand in their own way.

Planting:

During the decision-making process, I would often search for news involuntarily. Occasionally, I would search for brand names, but more often I would search for brand + product names, and search on multiple channels. The specific search channels are: Xiaohongshu, Zhihu, and WeChat search.

There are many relevant topics in this scenario, but they can be roughly divided into two types:

One is official news (the latest history and update status of official releases).

One is user messages (some sharing and recommendations or complaints from bloggers)

Let’s talk about the official news first. In this scenario, official news, such as new product updates, or what honors the brand has won, etc., give me a sense of participation and increased confidence.

I don’t think that anything official is an advertisement . Instead, I feel that it provides the feeling I want, which is the “official attitude.” What is the official attitude? It means that when choosing products with high unit price, what you buy may not be the product itself, but part of what you buy is the official “prestige.” The products themselves may be similar, and it is the “prestige” that creates a premium.

It makes me feel that although it is twice as expensive, it is really fragrant.

In addition, I will refer to a lot of bloggers' information during the process, such as product recommendations, some comparative reviews, etc., because at this point I have passed the stage of paying attention to the brand, and the focus will be more on some product parameters and actual product experience or function recommendations.

Although I work in brand marketing, in this consumer decision-making situation, I did not develop an "occupational disease" and think that everyone looks like an advertisement. I also found it magical. It turns out that in real decision-making scenarios, people may become less smart or may not care so much about these "details."

So when I watch these bloggers' videos, I actually pay more attention to the content and the reviews, and I don't care whether it is an advertisement or not, although I can see that some of them are indeed advertisements after careful observation, and even after watching the beginning I can guess that it is a good review.

But in the process, there are some types of content that I personally hate, such as reading some advertising slogans that I don’t understand. In fact, not only can I tell that it is an advertisement, but I also feel that the blogger has received money and has no sense of responsibility.

At the same time, I thought about the situation where everyone is disgusted with advertisements and bloggers’ failures. I suddenly figured it out. It turns out that the people who are disgusted with advertisements are not users who come from consumption scenarios.

Rather, the users themselves are fans of the blogger, and when they are staring at one person, any details or differences will be magnified, so the advertisement is as obvious as a thorn to the blogger.

As a user in the past consumption scene, I actually had no idea what this blogger did in the past, so I didn’t care whether it was an advertisement or not. Instead, I paid more attention to the content, but the premise was that it was not the kind of script-reading advertisement.

Secondly, in the decision-making process, I will do something cool, which is to actively look for **.

Every product has its shortcomings, for sure. But I will also pay special attention to the comment section during the decision-making process to see what people are saying. Nowadays, not many brand marketers pay attention to the comment section. Of course, some brands do pay attention, but their methods are particularly crude. They keep the good reviews, delete the bad reviews, or even maliciously post some good reviews. The problem is that the good reviews are too obvious, as obvious as a thorn.

But when I was here, I didn’t pay much attention to the positive reviews. Instead, I paid a little attention to the negative reviews because I wanted to know where the bottom line of negative product reviews was.

Simply put, how bad is it? Because at this point I have almost reached the end of my consumer decision, and the comments are only to help convince myself :

See, it doesn't seem that bad.

It seems that I can almost accept it.

It doesn't seem to be that easy to break.

It seems that the breakage was an accident.

It turns out that users think they are very rational and objective during the decision-making process, but in fact... they are still influenced, and the influence is great, so that they fall into the marketing trap again and tend to buy without thinking.

Therefore, for brands, they should pay special attention to several points in the process of planting grass:

1. The content performance under brand words + product words, that is, the first screen after the search. If there is little relevant content on the first page, I will feel that this brand seems to be used by few people. The second is quality. If the content performance is relatively exquisite, I will feel: I said it, the things I choose are so cool.

2. Creation of comment area. Don’t post fake positive reviews, and don’t delete negative reviews maliciously. Sometimes, an official response to the question may be a good way to control comments.

3. Be persistent in your investment. I don’t want to see a product shared a few months ago, because I would feel that the brand has declined recently and no one will buy it.

4. Review content, recommendation content, and user experience content, the three types of content are indispensable.

Because each type of content solves different problems and the stages of solving the problems are also different, so each type of content is indispensable. (But this only applies to high-priced products, which have a longer decision cycle, so a wider range of types is needed to cover them. For some low-priced products, 1-2 types may be enough, such as buying daily paper towels.)

"Planting grass" is actually a very long process. During this stage, long-term and high-quality message reach is actually very important. Most people used to understand the dimension of "reach", that is, hard advertising, as long as it can be seen by others.

However, we actually have no idea how to reach people in a high-quality way. For example, how much review-type content should be included, where should it appear, what effect it can have, how much recommended content should be included, where should it appear, and who should be affected at what stage. In fact, we have no idea about these things.

And as far as I know, in the field of Xiaohongshu, the number of institutions that can invest according to this idea can actually be counted on one hand.

After planting

After the product is recommended, the last step is conversion and purchase. At this time, I will naturally choose a matching platform to purchase. Generally speaking, the channels are Taobao and Tmall. However, the product I recommended is slightly special, so I can only go to the official website. However, because it is the target audience, I can only go to the official website to buy. This logic is actually known early on, so it does not seem to have any impact on my conversion path.

However, this is only my personal opinion. Others may not understand it so clearly, so strong guidance is needed, and this point cannot be ignored.

But let’s assume that it is the case with Taobao. After all, the purchasing habits of most brands default to Taobao Tmall. There is nothing to say about this. If you can buy it on Taobao Tmall, there is no need for special guidance. But you still need to pay attention to the reviews on Taobao! ! !

After some new brands have done marketing, users are also interested. However, when they go to Taobao, they find that the sales volume is in the single digits and there are no reviews. Who would dare to buy from them? Don’t you think so?

However, for some products that require fixed channels to purchase, it is better to have some guidance. However, directly mentioning that it can be purchased on xx platform is bound to be a violation, so you can change some of the wording in Xiaohongshu, such as preferential methods for purchasing xx product, and use preferential methods to cover the channel guidance, and it will most likely pass the review.

Because sharing shopping experiences and shopping tips are content that Xiaohongshu allows, but directly saying to go to xx platform to buy is advertising. The difference between the two should still be distinguished.

Of course, the above all assumes that the products are purchased through external links. The easiest way is definitely to open a store on Xiaohongshu.

The second is the post-purchase process. From the perspective of the products that I am interested in, since they are high-priced products and have a large premium (cost of luxury), if I buy them, I will most likely share them.

But based on actual experience, the content shared may not be very positive. How terrible is a bad review in the Internet age!

It can’t be called public relations, but it is still necessary to follow up on users’ real sharing based on the actual situation, and at least make clear the official service attitude and solutions.

This will actually convert bad or good reviews into positive impression points for the brand.

At this point, the entire grass-planting process is over.

According to my entire process of planting grass, I can find that several points are extremely important. If you haven’t read the above, you can actually look at the following key points.

Before planting:

"Brand exposure" and "positioning image" under the category

Planting:

Product "parameters", "product experience" and "user reviews" (product strength and reputation)

After planting:

"Purchase channel", "Product sales and reviews", "Share processing after purchase"

The launch of Xiaohongshu is a targeted solution to these key links.

For example, the reason why we publish review content on Xiaohongshu is to allow users to get to know the real experience of a more complete product in advance even though they don’t have the product yet, thereby reducing the user’s selection cost.

The reason why we should invest in content that recommends similar products is to allow the brand to be exposed in the category and give users the impression that the product is currently chosen by most people.

Therefore, as a brand, when you are working on a marketing plan on Xiaohongshu again, you can set up "ambbles" in advance at each key node based on the user's real process of planting grass , so that when the user comes in, the impact will be generated naturally.

After reading this article, I hope everyone will not waste money on advertising.

Have you learned it?