The destruction and establishment of Xiaohongshu’s brand marketing! Target user pain points in 3 steps

With the replacement of consumer groups and consumption upgrading, the marketing of various brands has gradually become inward-looking. In the advertising on Xiaohongshu, many brands have created freshness and topics through joint ventures, hoping to achieve brand traffic exchange and narrow the distance with young consumers. Collaboration is not just a simple combination of actions. What can we do to achieve 1+1>2 in the true sense?

01 Seizing the consumer psychology of users, the underlying logic of brand co-branding

In today's world of advertising information explosion, why are there still so many consumers willing to pay for the premium brought by co-branding?

Consumer behavior always occurs under certain purchasing motivations. With the improvement of the demand level, psychological needs play a more and more important role in purchasing motivation and purchasing behavior than physiological needs.

Young users pursue fashion and trends, creativity and novelty, and have a higher level of consumption. When two brands that have never appeared before or are completely unexpected join forces, the freshness and uniqueness brought about can easily hit the interest points of this target group, that is, the psychology of seeking novelty and difference, thereby stimulating consumption and placing orders.

Figure｜Consumer Psychology

When purchasing products, they do not care too much about the price and quality of the products, but pay more attention to psychological and emotional satisfaction. For example, they spend a lot of money to buy high-end luxury brands, or buy some high-value joint products because of following trends and comparison.

"Co-branded" products have considerable traffic on Xiaohongshu and are popular among many young users. Qiangua data shows that in the past year alone, Xiaohongshu has published 246,100 "co-branded" grass-planting notes, with a total interaction volume of over 50 million and an average note interaction volume of 200+, including 2,533 commercial notes.

Figure｜Qiangua Data

Searching for the keyword "skin care", Qiangua data shows that in the same year, the total number of interactions for "skin care" notes on Xiaohongshu exceeded 250 million, while the average number of interactions was only around 150, which is 75% of the average number of interactions for "co-branded" notes.

Figure｜Qiangua Data

In the context of marketing involution and difficulty in attracting new customers, more and more brands are joining the ranks of joint marketing, shaping the minds of users through KOL recommendations.

For brands, every collaboration is an opportunity to expand channels and attract new users. Finding the pain points that can stimulate users' consumption psychology can lead to efficient conversions.

Looking at the proportion of "co-branded" business notes in the grass-growing notes, it can be seen that since April this year, the proportion of business notes has once again exceeded one percent, and has shown a steadily increasing trend, achieving qualitative growth.

Figure｜Qiangua Data

02 From users to traffic, insights from three dimensions

When it comes to collaborations, Uniqlo is definitely a classic example that cannot be avoided. In 2019, the trendy clothing "KAWS: SUMMER" co-branded with American contemporary artist KAWS was snapped up as soon as it was released. Some people even fought over it, making it a famous scene in the brand collaboration world.

The Panda Latte jointly launched by MANNER and The Beast recently caused a sensation on Xiaohongshu and WeChat Moments. In just one day, more than 900 notes related to MANNER x The Beast were posted on Xiaohongshu. The brands also gained popularity and exposure, and achieved the success of the joint venture.

Picture｜Xiaohongshu

Whether it is a clothing collaboration with an artist, or various cross-border collaborations with brands such as coffee, home furnishings, and beauty, their purposes are similar. They hope to activate social traffic through collaboration and drive dissemination or sales conversion.

How to add value through collaboration between different brands, magnify the advantages of cooperation, and extend brand power needs to be analyzed from three dimensions.

Figure｜Joint foundation

Users: Commonalities between brand tone and consumer groups

MANNER is an offline coffee chain brand based in Shanghai. The Beast is an art lifestyle brand that mainly engages in floral art, home furnishings, artworks and personalized accessories. Through the brand user portrait analysis of Qiangua Data, it can be seen that the area with the highest concentration of The Beast fans is also Shanghai.

In addition, their audiences are white-collar workers and young women in the workplace, which is consistent with the main user groups of Xiaohongshu.

Figure｜Qiangua Data

Last year, Weikozi and 999 Brown Sugar Ginger Tea jointly launched the popular "Auntie's Box" because the consumer groups targeted by the two brands not only include young consumers, but also target women.

Picture｜Weikezi X999 Brown Sugar Ginger Tea

Products: Harmony or complementarity

In terms of product, most of The Beast’s products are designed and produced in-house. They search the world for items with similar temperaments and pay attention to people’s emotions and tastes influenced by trends. MANNER combines the unique smell of coffee with it and launches limited-edition flavor coffee inspired by perfume, creating a harmonious blend.

Vicki satisfies customers with its taste and appearance, while 999 brown sugar ginger tea satisfies customers with its efficacy; Uniqlo represents comfort and high quality, while KAWS satisfies customers’ desire for fashion. Both of them complement each other’s strengths.

Traffic: mutual traffic and topic creation

In terms of traffic, the free Panda Pu Pu that comes with the purchase of a Panda Latte is a new product that The Beast focused on promoting in July. The popular star Gong Jun was invited as the brand spokesperson, which triggered a Weibo topic reading volume of over 300 million.

MANNER, a boutique coffee brand founded in 2015, has received financing multiple times over the past few years and achieved explosive growth. Its recent collaboration with the emerging underwear brand Neiwai also attracted some attention.

Figure｜The Fauves

Limited-edition coffee and exquisite peripherals stimulate users’ desire for novelty and high appearance, while the cute giant panda element, which has its own sense of user identification and represents the image and culture of China, has directly captured the hearts of many consumers.

The same is true for Weikezi and 999. Weikezi's girly brand tone has helped 999 open up the market among girls, and 999's previous successful joint ventures have also made the brand an "Internet celebrity", enabling both parties to achieve a win-win cooperation.

After linking the users, products, and traffic of the two brands, we will create marketing content with youthful language, deliver it precisely on platforms that match the product audience, and achieve communication with fans.

03 Cognitive focus, brand power +, the foothold of brand co-branding

Every year, countless brands choose joint marketing, but there are only a few cases that can be truly remembered and have a long-term impact on brand building. After users become tired of the novelty, we need to tap into the core competitiveness of product content, find a scenario, and penetrate it repeatedly and in a focused manner to better enhance consumers' awareness of the brand.

Figure｜Qiangua Data

The search results of Qiangua Data’s hot search terms show that in the past 7 days, the popularity value of “co-branding” in Xiaohongshu is 10,300, which is higher than 99.93% of other words in the entire site; in the past 30 days, a total of 2,706 brand-related notes have deployed this hot search term, with Pop Mart ranking first and Juduo ranking fifth.

In May this year, the domestic girl makeup brand Juduo and the trendy lifestyle brand Pop Mart jointly cooperated to launch the super popular PUCKY Elf Flying series of makeup products. The high-value cute makeup and the fun of opening blind boxes are combined into one, attracting the attention of every girl who loves fashion and coolness.

Picture｜Xiaohongshu

The beauty industry has always been the focus of Xiaohongshu's brand investment. There are more than 140,000 notes when searching for Juduo on Xiaohongshu. Under the influence of Xiaohongshu's diversified development, other industries have also shown vigorous vitality. Since the announcement of the joint venture on May 14, Pop Mart's notes have increased by 21.23%, and the total number of interactions has increased by 31.91%.

Based on the long-term high voice of both brands on Xiaohongshu, this new product will continue to be launched in a concentrated manner on the platform, triggering users' spontaneous participation, further strengthening the brand image and product reputation, and having a deep impact with the core audience.

Figure｜Qiangua Data

Highly compatible cross-border collaborations and focused penetration are opportunities for brands to explode in the short term. They can also convey the brand's conceptual value. Most importantly, they can maintain the brand's freshness and innovation through continuous innovation.

It should be noted that brands should grasp the scale and boundaries in the process of joint marketing to reduce marketing failures caused by inconsistent tones or frequent joint brands.

For example, Heytea once collaborated with Durex, but because the copywriting was skirting the line, it caused negative word of mouth; and the Wang "Zha" pomelo launched in May this year in collaboration with Mr. Muscle also made a large number of netizens say that they "dare not dare to drink it."

Picture｜Heytea joint

According to media statistics, from 2017 to May 2021, Heytea has collaborated with 74 different brands in four years. In the joint interactions with a large number of brands/IPs in different fields, users may have a vague understanding of the brand, which ultimately leads to the brand only having popularity but lacking brand recognition and identity.

It can be seen from Qiangua Data’s brand review hot words that among the TOP10 hot words in Heytea reviews, there are three brand words of other milk tea brands, which deviates from the user focus.

Figure｜Qiangua Data

When a brand chooses to make its presence felt through one collaboration after another, instead of exploring real innovations, the brand's true value and memorable points will be diluted invisibly.

Selecting core scenarios and groups, accumulating content and innovating it, and then continuously and repeatedly delivering brand value concepts will be more conducive to extending brand power after brand collaboration.

04 Conclusion

Strongly growing new brands have all realized the multiple benefits that co-branding can bring to their brands. Only by grasping the core key points and avoiding potential problems can the true purpose of co-branding be achieved.

Joint marketing needs to understand consumer psychology and find the pain points that can stimulate users' consumption psychology in order to maximize consumption stimulation.

Users, products, and traffic are the core foundation of brand collaboration. The higher the degree of fit, the more likely it is to communicate with precise fans.

The purpose of brand collaboration is to form user cognitive focus and extend brand power, continue to penetrate scenes and crowds in depth, and avoid simple and repetitive logo combinations.