Xiaohongshu marketing method!

The "Insight Report on the Rise of Domestic Products" released by QuestMobile in 2020 shows that among the four major mainstream social platforms in China, Weibo, Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu, Xiaohongshu has attracted attention with its high sales conversion rate of 21.4%.

In the complex media ecology where there are so many flowers that it is difficult to see the whole picture, Xiaohongshu has provided the "behind-the-scenes driving force" for a large number of new consumer brands such as Perfect Diary, Yuanqi Forest, and Zhong Xuegao to build their business from "0 to 1" by focusing on and influencing vertical and interest users. It has also become an incubator for more and more cutting-edge brands.

As brands focus on e-commerce live streaming, promote short videos, and go all in on Bilibili's marketing rhythm, Xiaohongshu has become a "value depression" worthy of careful cultivation and a must-fight place for future brands. Amid growth anxiety, how can new and old brands leverage Xiaohongshu marketing to win this content-seeking battle that appeals to thousands of people?

1. Grass-growing economy: content as touchpoint and product as connection

Public data shows that by the end of 2020, Xiaohongshu’s monthly active users had exceeded 100 million, of which the emerging consumer generation under the age of 30 accounted for about 70%, and people in first- and second-tier cities accounted for 50%.

In terms of content environment, Xiaohongshu has more than 43 million content creators, and the total exposure of notes per day exceeds 10 billion. Their yearning, pursuit and love for a better life, their sincere sharing, communication and recommendation, have brought together huge consumer traffic.

When talking about Xiaohongshu marketing, the first thing we should make clear is that Xiaohongshu’s most distinctive feature that distinguishes it from other platforms is that it focuses on interest-based consumption and social networking, and emphasizes a closed loop of trust built on real experiences.

On Xiaohongshu, new brands prefer to reach consumers with high-quality content, and accurately deliver product selling points and brand value points through content and relationship networks.

In a closed-loop chain where everyone is a "grass-planting officer", ordinary people will entrust the sense of trust in consumption decisions to ordinary people who are willing to share their purchasing experiences and create high-quality content.

In the process of trust transfer, KOL (opinion leader) originally in the media sense has transformed into KOC (key opinion consumer) with more consumption significance. The reconstruction of nodes changes the relationship chain between brands and users.

The high-quality UGC content from countless ordinary users forms a value network for purchasing opinions. From the perspective of the purchase decision-making process, according to the AARRR funnel model, the user's marketing matrix presents an "hourglass shape". In the complete chain of Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, and Refer, the core marketing value of word-of-mouth marketing lies in its center position in the hourglass.

Currently, e-commerce platforms, social platforms, media advertisements, etc. are all trigger points to stimulate consumers' purchasing interest. When consumers want to further understand and verify, they will come to the Xiaohongshu platform to search. After planting grass and making decisions, they will buy on the platform or go to different shopping platforms.

Through different topic tags, Xiaohongshu has formed different vertical circles. While topic tags provide KOLs with exposure opportunities, they also focus on amateur KOCs who have a deep understanding of the field and are more curious about it to bring up topics, post notes, and interact with each other, thus forming a sustainable UGC content cycle.

From a content perspective, beauty and fashion KOLs are still the most popular on Xiaohongshu, accounting for 59% and 50% respectively. KOLs in the food and daily life categories also account for a high proportion. It is worth noting that the demand for fitness, maternal and child care, and home content is relatively high, but the number of popular influencers is insufficient and no advantageous cluster has been formed. It can be seen that Xiaohongshu’s KOL ecosystem is still in a state of growth and evolution.

The "grass planting" strategy with content as the touchpoint and products as the connection is very effective for the growth of new brands. This is the underlying logic behind the brand's popularity on Xiaohongshu.

The most successful among them is Perfect Diary, the “first domestic beauty stock”, also known as the “first new brand stock of Xiaohongshu”.

In 2018, Perfect Diary began to emerge on the Xiaohongshu platform. With the sharing and recommendation of a large number of high-quality content KOLs and KOCs, Perfect Diary quickly established its image: high cost-effectiveness, high-value design, strong promotion ability and rapid iteration of new products, and continued to gain fans with its content and product strength.

When the grass-planting effect spilled over to the e-commerce platform, it drove the growth of Perfect Diary’s sales, making it the “pride of domestic products” that combines product quality and sales.

There is more than one Perfect Diary-style success.

• New and cutting-edge brands such as Huaxizi and Zhong Xuegao have seized the opportunity to become popular online brands.
• Mature brands such as Li Ning and Estee Lauder have also become younger and more popular among Generation Z by transforming content on Xiaohongshu in a way that is closer to consumers.

2. Exploring new growth: multi-tool linkage resonance

As a brand, how to seize the community dividend of Xiaohongshu? If you want to do your work well, you must first sharpen your tools. In July 2020, Xiaohongshu launched the "KOC Connection Plan" to create a brand co-creation link with the B2K2C approach.

The so-called B2K2C refers to the influence chain of "brand-KOC-consumer": the brand and merchant ends accumulate word-of-mouth and influence on Xiaohongshu through KOC, thereby influencing the consumption decisions of the C-end.

The traditional chain of first cognition, then trust, then purchase and high loyalty has changed. Under the content-oriented approach, the logic behind the popularity of new brands is to directly drive brand power through product strength.

Based on the above ideas, brands can use the "Four Ones" tool on Xiaohongshu. "Enterprise Account", brand cooperation platform, advertising platform and live streaming sales maintain close and in-depth interactive communication with core consumer groups.

Enterprise accounts are equivalent to "admission tickets", brand cooperation is the "amplifier" of marketing effects, advertising as a marketing tool is equivalent to an "accelerator" that allows brands to quickly gain exposure, and live streaming with goods is equivalent to a "weeding machine" that completes the final step of conversion.

How to use multiple tools to achieve ideal exposure based on platform traffic rules is also a top priority that brands need to clarify.

Jess, head of Xiaohongshu's open platform and e-commerce, once said: "Xiaohongshu's video notes are more than twice as many as its text and picture notes. In terms of support policies, we will first recommend video + live broadcast to brands, followed by text and picture + live broadcast, and then text and picture."

After interpretation, we will find that the weight of video content is gradually increasing, and the transaction closed loop in the platform has begun to show results. The strategy of "short video planting + live streaming with goods" will gradually become the core direction of Xiaohongshu's future content development. This is also the improvement and evolution of the content ecology of Xiaohongshu, which started as a note.

The video method is basically the same as the note method, and there are two main combinations:

(1) Live broadcast + notes/short video

Take advantage of the strong linkage between live broadcasts and notes to create high-quality daily content to match them. During the live broadcast, users can enter the celebrity’s account to directly view relevant high-quality content, and form a strong linkage with past content during the interaction.

(2) Live streaming + e-commerce

Xiaohongshu’s main function includes the mall, which completes the whole process from seeding to purchasing. In this case, when the influencer is making a recommendation, it happens to be between Taobao and Douyin live broadcasts. Clicking on the relevant product recommendation content can directly jump to the mall product link, realizing the complete transformation from seeding to buying.

It is worth noting that in June 2021, Xiaohongshu App implemented an internal beta function on a very small scale: it opened up the jump between the Xiaohongshu App and the WeChat Mini Program, that is, users can directly jump from the brand account of the company in Xiaohongshu to the WeChat Mini Program Mall to make purchases. This may mean that Xiaohongshu will complete the combination of public domain grass-planting traffic and private domain traffic.

The "New List and Guosen Securities: Internet Private Domain Traffic Industry Research Report" shows that WeChat has the highest user stickiness, which is 81.3%. If it is completely connected and the traffic gate of WeChat is opened, it will bring huge conversion potential for Xiaohongshu's brand marketing.

3. Refined operations to maximize brand effectiveness

What is refined operation? It is a differentiated operation strategy that combines channels, conversion processes and user behavior data to improve the overall target conversion rate and maximize brand effectiveness.

Brands can pay attention to the following aspects in the refined operation of Xiaohongshu platform:

The charm of selling products by tapping into lifestyle marketing lies in its “silent and subtle” effect. It is not a simple and crude direct selling of products, but a direct hit on the products, consumption, and sharing of the experience.

The high conversion rates of many new consumer brands are largely due to their integration into the lifestyles of their target users.

Take the internet-famous coffee product "San Dun Ban" as an example. It did not go straight to the point of product features, but instead focused on the "lifestyle" and created more than 10,000 derivative contents on Xiaohongshu about how to drink, cups, fat loss, reviews, blind boxes, and pairings. It is the fun life, light luxury, health, and positive energy attitude towards life that made San Dun Ban quickly popular.

Find new brands that target the advantages of precise user circles under the trend of refined marketing.

In addition to the important labels of female consumption and content e-commerce, the circles on the Xiaohongshu platform are becoming more and more diverse. It is particularly important for brands to choose a vertical group of people that fits their own consumption track. After the content is produced, how to find the precise user circle? Research on search wit is essential.

The search engine functions of Xiaohongshu can actually be summarized into three processes: indexing, matching, and display. When the user enters keywords to search, the engine will search within the content library and complete the match based on the characteristics of the notes and keywords, and then sort and display them according to the corresponding rules.

This requires brands to first draw accurate user portraits, then summarize the keywords they are interested in based on their characteristics, optimize SEO, and thus gain exposure and display among the core population.

Only by rationally selecting KOL and KOC influencers who are compatible with brand needs can you obtain high interactive ROI.

The reference dimensions for selecting influencers include the number of fans, fan growth trend, posting frequency, like popularity trend, etc. We use these data to judge the quality of the influencer and evaluate whether their interactivity and influence meet the brand requirements.

Secondly, through the core data such as the influencer’s notes analysis and fan analysis, we can summarize the influencer’s personal style and the types of notes they are good at, so as to provide the most suitable content guidance for the influencer when the brand is launching.

The structure of Xiaohongshu's creative experts includes: top KOLs with influence, mid-level KOLs with the ability to promote products, and KOCs with good reputation. Each of them plays a significant role in quickly building popularity, vertical circle influence, and real order feedback.

Brands can maximize exposure through a combination of “mid-level influencers + bottom-level influencers” marketing strategies.

When it comes to influencers’ selection, the more popular the better is not necessarily the case. On the one hand, the adaptability of the tone must be considered, and on the other hand, the possibility of a hit product being created must be taken into account.

Xiaohongshu's algorithm is based on recommending real and useful content to users, rather than simply based on the number of fans of the blogger. Therefore, even if the number of fans of mid-level influencers is not as large as that of top-level influencers, they will still receive more platform traffic and produce popular articles due to the addition of high-quality content.

IV. Conclusion

In summary, in Xiaohongshu's marketing insights, whether it is embracing the high-profile approach of planting grass, or the creative activation of brand effectiveness through the use of a combination of multiple tools, or the methodological details of the creation, search, and cooperation ends under refined operations, they all reflect the incremental opportunities that the vitality of planting grass brings to new and old brands, and the series of innovations and changes that brands make in response to changes in user habits.

Behind the trend of video-based content promotion, the reconstruction of purchasing links, and the upcoming integration of public and private domain traffic, there are major changes in the content ecology. The sea is wide and the fish can leap for it. Let us look forward to the birth of more cutting-edge brands and "metamorphosis" brands.

Author: Community Marketing Research Institute

Source: Community Marketing Research Institute