How to cold start a new consumer brand from 0 to 1

How to cold start a brand in a niche market? This article will give you some ideas on how new consumer brands can start cold from 0-1 based on the start-up cases of Daily Black Chocolate, Spēs, Ruofan, and Cature Xiaoke.

Case 1: Spēs

Brand Background:

Founded in 2019, it took only 6 months to create the TOP3 sales data of all categories on the Xiaohongshu platform. The product was officially launched in January 2020, and achieved a sales volume of 20 million on Tmall Double Eleven in November. This is Spēs , a new domestic hair care brand.

How can a new brand achieve top sales on Xiaohongshu?

Spēs' sales channels are mainly online, with an emphasis on Tmall and other self-operated channels. There are currently no distributors. In the early days, the brand did not invest much in Taobao, and mainly promoted the improvement of ROI on Tmall through off-site penetration. The off-site advertising platforms are mainly Xiaohongshu and WeChat Moments advertising.

Spēs’s refined Xiaohongshu delivery method

Spēs’s delivery method is somewhat similar to HFP. After entering the Xiaohongshu platform in April 2020, the brand carried out a phased delivery:

Phase 1: The main focus is on small KOCs and ordinary people with around 1,000 fans. The content is mainly trial experience. Through some ordinary people’s review and real usage experience, users can more intuitively understand the characteristics of this product and feel confident about the product.

The second stage: deploy a large number of mid-level bloggers with hundreds of thousands of followers, and the content focuses on direct promotion and strong push of the products. Users found that some small influencers were strongly promoting this product, which aroused their interest.

The third stage: deploying millions of big V top bloggers, focusing on soft product implantation through nursing guides, with weak commercialization.

At the same time, the brand team cooperated with a large number of central China bloggers on Xiaohongshu to carry out live streaming sales. Currently, the proportion of live streaming sales remains stable, accounting for about 70% of the total.

Case 2: Daily Dark Chocolate

Brand Background:

The brand was founded in 2019 and it took only one and a half years to grow to become the No.1 in the growth of the dark chocolate sub-category! Such a growth rate is inseparable from the establishment of its perfect private domain system.

How to establish a private domain system?

Time: February 2020

Getting started: First learn how the top beauty and skincare brands operate, starting with the basic DM card to guide users to add personal WeChat accounts, and then set up welfare hooks such as discounts to drive traffic to fan communities.

Several adjustments after optimization:

DM card is adjusted to postcard + bookmark format

Enable WeChat for Business (avoiding restrictions on personal WeChat accounts)

Open the member applet and connect it to the official account

After months of building a private traffic pool and accumulating experience, the brand has formed a private closed loop of official accounts + communities + mini programs .

What attempts has the team made to increase followers?

Attract fans from other social networks:
① Discuss cooperation with the marketing department of channel partners (such as Zhong Xue Gao and Ole') and distribute coupons in their social networks ② Cooperate with other brand communities and push posters about the exchange of their products and benefits

Make adjustments to the private domain repurchase rate?

① The price of private domain is slightly cheaper than Tmall ② (Currently in progress) Member-only products for private domain channels ③ Equipped with exclusive customer service ④ Private domain members have the privilege of new product experience officer (new product tasting)
⑤ Make regular contact with users based on their chocolate purchasing cycle (calculated on a weekly basis), and conduct some online and offline activity contact on the official account.

Private domain combined with WeChat information flow advertising, 1+1＞2

Moments advertising is the main way to deliver information in WeChat, and its content focuses on sharing life with a weak sense of commercialism.

During the initial launch, the advertisement was ultimately directed to the official account. Later, after the mini program was launched, direct purchases were made, and a guide to adding the community would pop up after the order was placed, with a conversion rate as high as 25.7%.

One item one code gameplay?

The DM card in the offline product packaging has different contents for scanning every day: you can receive discounts, play games, be guided to add corporate WeChat and other channels, so as to maximize the role of the code.

Case 3: Ruofan and Cature

Brand Background:

Ruofan is the first liquid meal replacement brand in China. It was founded in 2015 and pioneered a new category of "liquid bento" in China.

New product launch through joint crowdfunding

Ruofan’s new product launches will be carried out in conjunction with crowdfunding channels. The brand has cooperated with JD Crowdfunding, Taobao Crowdfunding, Kaishiba, and Modian Crowdfunding .

Welfare hook: Users who participate in crowdfunding can get preferential prices and enjoy long-term discounts by becoming members.

The product will only be produced after the crowdfunding is successfully launched, and will not be sold in stock.

Cature Xiaoke - The first batch of seed users choose crowdfunding channels

Xiaoke is a pet care brand in the new consumer sub-category in China. It was founded in 2017. Its first batch of products: Mao Danxia cat litter was successfully cold-started through crowdfunding through the product selling point of log cat litter, and accumulated thousands of seed users.

The above are some good cases of cold start of several new consumer brands discovered by the author. If you have other good cases, you can share them with me in the comment section so that we can learn and expand together.

Author: Wang Da's Operation Notes

Source: Wang Da's Operation Notes