How to create a hot-selling online celebrity product: channel promotion

These days I saw a comparison picture about new and old brands. The title of the picture was: How many years did it take for them to become the first in the industry?

For example, Coca-Cola took 134 years, Yuanqi Forest took 5 years; Nestlé took 153 years, Sandonban only took 5 years; L'Oreal took 113 years, Perfect Diary only took 3 years; Haagen-Dazs took 99 years, so guess how many years it took Zhong Xue Gao? 2 years!

We will not delve into the dimensions and criteria for judging, but the message the pictures convey reminds me of this saying: This is the best time for new brands and the worst time for old brands.

If you think carefully, many popular internet celebrity products have been born in the past two years, such as Wang Baobao, Hua Xizi, Shicui, Ramen Shuo, etc. These products almost all have one feature: they came out of nowhere and have good sales.

I prefer a saying, see the essence through the phenomenon; the mass birth of Internet celebrity products must have its principles behind it, such as the vigorous development of infrastructure, the improvement of the supply chain, the rapid spread of information, etc., which provide a suitable soil for the growth of popular Internet celebrity products.

Now that the soil is there, it is not easy to create a hit internet celebrity product. There are many examples of failure. There are many reasons for failure, such as poor product development, lack of understanding of promotion, inability to keep up with the supply chain, etc. Let’s not talk about the failed examples for now, let’s first talk about how those successful cases were achieved.

In this article, I will take the promotion of my own fast-moving consumer goods on Xiaohongshu and Weibo as an example to explain to you how I created popular online celebrity products in terms of channel promotion .

This article is divided into three parts:

1. Why choose Xiaohongshu and Weibo
2. Promotional tips for Xiaohongshu and Weibo
3. Soft article delivery is essential

1. Why choose Xiaohongshu and Weibo?

People who are slightly familiar with popular internet celebrity products basically have a consensus that the main battlefield for promoting internet celebrity products is Xiaohongshu, and some are on Weibo.

The products I make are fast-moving consumer goods. Before promoting them, I surveyed my peers and found that almost all of them chose Xiaohongshu as their main channel.

Why choose Xiaohongshu and Weibo?

There are two reasons:

First, the target user groups are close. Look at the audience of Perfect Diary, young and beautiful girls, which almost covers all the users of Xiaohongshu; the sugar-free concept of Yuanqi Forest, most of the people who pay attention to this are girls who need to lose weight; there is no need to say more about Wang Baobao, a must-have for those who control appearance and a favorite of exquisite girls. Where else can it go if not on Xiaohongshu for promotion?

Secondly, the platform's grass-planting attribute determines that it is naturally suitable for Amway product recommendation. In addition to Xiaohongshu and Weibo, I have also tried to promote it on other platforms, such as short video platforms, but there is always a feeling that I cannot form a synergy because the content on short video platforms is too mixed; unlike Xiaohongshu, which mainly recommends product content, just like Taobao Live is for selling things, how pure, while other platforms also have singing, dancing, and playing games; if users want to buy cheap goods through live broadcasts, they will definitely go to Taobao Live first.

2. Promotional techniques for Xiaohongshu and Weibo

During this period of promoting our fast-moving consumer goods products on Xiaohongshu and Weibo, the biggest trick I figured out is probably how to get brand exposure without spending any money. Are you all happy to see this? Finally, there is a trick to share on how to get brand exposure with zero budget.

1. The first stage of channel promotion is to lay a foundation with massive content

Just like my previous B-side business promotion, when promoting our fast-moving consumer goods, the first stage is to increase the volume.

There is a similar statement in the book "Full Stack Operations Master". Whether it is To b or To c, the essence is To people; for example, on platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Weibo and Baidu, when users search for our product information, they can search it and tell them that we are a product that many people are using, thereby promoting purchase conversion.

Since it is preparatory content, it means that the amount of content that needs to be laid is very large. If the cost of each diary on Xiaohongshu is very high, the budget for laying out massive content will definitely not be low. Later, when I was researching Xiaohongshu's promotion products, I discovered a term "free replacement". This term is worth at least a million and can save us a huge amount of advertising costs.

Free exchange means that we provide products to Xiaohongshu influencers for free. They take photos, write articles and publish diaries, and the products belong to them. As for the fees, there is no charge.

Everyone knows the cost of our fast-moving consumer goods, which is very low. We mailed more than 500 samples to more than 500 Xiaohongshu influencers, and the biggest cost turned out to be the express delivery fee!

Since we have established more than 500 Xiaohongshu influencers, our products have dominated the screen when searched for the brand words or industry words of our products on Xiaohongshu. I feel a little embarrassed about such a fierce and low-cost promotion method in the later stage. I think we should leave a way out for our competitors.

The promotion strategy of Weibo can be completely copied from Xiaohongshu, resulting in a situation where both Xiaohongshu and Weibo are dominating the screen.

2. The second stage of channel promotion is the conversion of mid-level influencers

If you only do the first stage of massively laying out influencers, the effect of traffic conversion is actually not very high; because these free influencers themselves do not have many fans, and the number of readings of a single diary or Weibo is not high; although it can also bring some traffic to Taobao, but if you want to create a popular online celebrity product, this traffic is not enough.

We must move on to the second stage and find mid-level influencers to carry out conversion. The advantage of mid-level influencers is that their content production is more sophisticated than that of low-level influencers, but the disadvantage is that they need to be paid. We selected mid-level influencers with 50,000 to 100,000 fans and invested in a batch of them. The cost per person ranged from 2,000 to 5,000 yuan. When we invested in this batch of influencers, we had no idea.

After being used to free promotion, you will definitely feel a little unbalanced when you go for paid promotion; do you have to charge money just because you have some fans? He~tui~bad review.

However, when it came to actual conversion, it did teach us a lesson; these paid promotion experts published two popular articles, one with 10,000 likes and the other with 90,000 likes, which directly boosted Taobao's off-site traffic.

I came to the conclusion that there is a probability for a hit article to appear. If the probability is one percent, then more than one hundred articles must be published. We were also lucky that a hit article was produced after only a few articles were published. If you want to win by strength, the only way is to publish more articles. There is no other way.

3. The third stage of channel promotion is to do data analysis

Doing Xiaohongshu and Weibo advertising is a very meticulous job. How many posts should be placed every day, when to publish the content, and what the data feedback is, all need to be counted and followed up in a timely manner. When I first started to do Xiaohongshu advertising, the 20 diaries I posted that day had almost no likes. I even doubted whether what others said about Xiaohongshu advertising was a scam.

After collecting data for a month, it was found that the data of these diaries were slowly increasing; there was a diary that was replaced without any fee, and its reading volume reached 100,000 times one month after it was published; this reading volume was calculated based on the ratio of readings to likes, and a third party cannot see the reading volume of other people's diaries.

During the data analysis process, we mark out those with good data performance, good picture quality, and excellent copywriting, and put them into our own database of high-quality talents for secondary and tertiary collaborations.

After successfully promoting a product on Xiaohongshu and Weibo, I feel that channel promotion of a hit product is not difficult in itself. The difficult part is how to use this channel thoroughly and meticulously. Because channel promotion is a meticulous job, it is not a sudden outbreak like a nuclear explosion as we understand it. Instead, after the basic work is done, the birth of a hit product will naturally come to fruition.

What are the basic tasks? A large number of experts are laid out and mid-level and top-level talents are deployed.

3. Soft article delivery is essential

How do we define whether this is a hit internet celebrity product? What users say doesn’t count; what the media says counts. The placement of soft articles plays the role of media endorsement.

The reason why the brands mentioned at the beginning of this article are recognized as Internet celebrity products is because the media are talking about them; when the media talks about them more, I or others will also cite them when citing cases of Internet celebrity products, forming a positive cycle.

When I put out soft articles, I mainly use free media, and then search Baidu to see if they are included; the media that have performed well include Baijiahao, Sohuhao, and Penguinhao. The good inclusion of these three media is one thing, and what is even better is that the account information is weakened; people who are not familiar with the media, when searching for product information, will mistakenly think that the soft articles I have sent out are sent by a third party when they see them, which increases users' trust.

For example, I recently wrote an article titled "Unveiling the top advancement rules of a certain brand, how did it become a popular online celebrity product in 2020?" (Note: the title of the article has been slightly changed); I write a soft article like this every week and put it out. As soon as the article is released, the B-end channels will naturally take a new look at our products. Some competitors even buy our products specifically for research - this is the value of soft article placement, which forms a voice in the industry and instills the idea that we are a popular online celebrity product, which is conducive to channel expansion, investment and financing, etc.

4. Final

Channel promotion is just one of the many links in creating a popular internet celebrity product. Don’t think that the product will become popular as long as the promotion is done well.

You see, some popular products become obsolete after being popular for one or two years. Is it because of poor promotion? No, since it has been a hit, it shows that they have experience in promotion. The reason why they can’t survive is probably because of the product.

If there is no repeat purchase, the brand will not survive long.

Therefore, if you want to create a long-lasting hit online celebrity product, first, you need to have a good product, and second, you need to be able to use the promotion channels. You must be able to use Xiaohongshu and Weibo for promotion.

Author: Tiger Talks Operations

Source: Tiger Talk Operations