"Perfect Diary" content marketing model!

The rapid popularity of Perfect Diary , a domestic brand to be introduced in this article, is inseparable from the creation of a content marketing model. Perfect Diary's marketing covers almost all popular marketing channels.

In recent years, I like to study domestic products. In addition to the heart of supporting domestic brands, you and I have it because:

• They rise quickly, generally achieving industry-leading sales in about 2 years;
• The industry they are in is highly competitive and they are very innovative in their marketing;
• The core relies on the rise of e-commerce and the control of key traffic to stay ahead of competitors.

Perfect Diary , this domestic beauty brand, may be a little unfamiliar to most people. When I first heard of it, I thought it was a diary launched by MaruMei. (Please forgive my ignorance)

This emerging beauty brand has been relatively low-key in the public eye in the past, but looking back at Perfect Diary’s development history, its growth rate is astonishing. You may even exclaim “Oh my god” like Li Jiaqi.

• During the 2018 Tmall 99 promotion, Perfect Diary achieved No. 1 sales in the beauty industry, far surpassing foreign brands such as Maybelline and L'Oreal.
• During the Tmall Double 11 in 2018, it became the first cosmetics brand on Tmall to achieve sales of over 100 million yuan within 1 hour and 28 minutes of the opening, making it a dark horse among domestic cosmetics brands. The prices of various products range from 39 yuan to more than 100 yuan.
• In January 2019, it ranked 7th in the Taobao Tmall beauty monthly sales ranking, followed by top international brands such as Givenchy, Shiseido, Dior, and Armani.

It has only been a year and a half since Perfect Diary opened its official flagship store on Tmall in August 2017, and the brand has been established for just over two years.

The founder’s expectation for Perfect Diary is to create “the new L’Oréal and Estee Lauder Group of the Internet” and to build a Chinese Beauty Icon with international influence.

Perfect Diary’s rapid rise to popularity is inseparable from the creation of a content marketing model. Perfect Diary’s marketing covers almost all popular marketing channels.

1. WeChat

Speaking of Perfect Diary, we have to mention HFP. As a domestic brand that has also emerged in the past two years, it has also been very aggressive in content marketing, sweeping social media, especially WeChat. Those who are interested can review an article I wrote before: "Annual sales of over 1 billion, this domestic brand that was founded four years ago, what did it do right in terms of content and channels? 》

Perfect Diary’s advertising on WeChat is far less than that of HFP, and all of its advertising is not a single direct advertising. Instead, it is presented in a platter format together with other brands’ products, and more often in the form of category reviews or evaluations:

"These domestically made lipsticks, which sell over 100,000 units a month on Taobao, are very useful for only a few dozen dollars!" 》

《Pulling the grass丨MD Ampoule, Perfect Diary, Scent Library, this year's hottest "Internet celebrity products!"

"Even foreign friends are crazy about domestic cosmetics, the third one is really amazing!" 》

《Chinese Eye Shadow Review 2 | Juduo-Perfect Diary-VNK-Tasu-Holdlive》

"Perfect Diary, HFP, Zhiyouquan...Chandou and Marie Dalgar in 10 years?"

Perfect Diary does not focus on WeChat, not because it does not attach importance to it or has insufficient market budget, but because different categories are destined to have different channels and content presentation forms.

HFP focuses on skin care products, while Perfect Diary focuses on beauty products . People are concerned about the ingredients and allergies of skin care products, so the main distribution channel for skin care products is WeChat, which can carry more pictures and texts. Because as an emerging brand, it needs to tell users from all aspects of brand development, ingredients, research and development, safety, etc. that my brand is safe, healthy, gentle on the skin, and has various functions: moisturizing, whitening, etc.

However, people who make up basically don’t pay attention to these points. They only care about whether it looks good and sexy after application.

So you can see that Perfect Diary’s focus is not on WeChat, but on Xiaohongshu, which can carry more beautiful pictures, as an important marketing channel.

2. Little Red Book

Girls who love beauty will definitely have Xiaohongshu on their phones. As the main community for heavy users of beauty products in China, it has active users, strong content production capabilities, and most of them are young women. The content is mainly in categories such as beauty products, health products, accessories, and clothing.

As of January 2019, the number of registered users of Xiaohongshu has exceeded 200 million, with daily active users exceeding 10 million. Nearly 90% of users are female. In terms of age distribution, users aged 25-35 account for 63% of total users, because users in this age group are in a period of stable or rising career and have relatively strong consumption power.

It can be seen from the data of Xiaohongshu that the number of users of beauty products ranks first, which also provides a data reference for Perfect Diary's layout on Xiaohongshu.

As of now, Perfect Diary’s Xiaohongshu brand account has 1.35 million followers and 833,000 likes and collections, with the number of followers far exceeding that of well-known domestic and foreign cosmetics brands.

1.35 million fans, what does this mean? The extremely popular HFP has 64,000 fans on Xiaohongshu. The total number of fans of other local brands such as Pechoin (26,000), Marie Dalgar (45,000), international brands MAC (62,000), and L'Oreal (109,000) is less than the last two digits of Perfect Diary.

Perfect Diary started its layout on Xiaohongshu at the end of 2017, and its notes from celebrities, top KOLs, mid-level KOLs, and ordinary people almost swept Xiaohongshu. The popular articles were continuously spread on Xiaohongshu for the second time, forming a fission-like spread.

There are 78,000 notes when searching for “Perfect Diary” on Xiaohongshu.

Unlike WeChat public accounts, you can hardly find two identical notes on Xiaohongshu. Perfect Diary cooperates with beauty bloggers, providing them with basic content about the products, and then the bloggers recreate the content themselves. Then the blogger’s content becomes the content of his own account. Currently, the official account has published 321 notes, most of which are original works from other bloggers. Perfect!

What is Perfect Diary’s content + channel strategy on Xiaohongshu?

1. Content

Among the 78,000 notes, the number of ordinary notes far exceeds that of video notes.

This means that for Xiaohongshu bloggers, pictures and texts are the most convenient way, and videos have higher requirements for content production.

Among the 78,000 notes, the number of notes for each product is different.

The top three notes are concentrated on lipstick, eye shadow, lip gloss, and liquid foundation, which are the products with the highest volume on various social platforms.

Image excerpted from the 2018 Beauty Social White Paper

2. Channels

For cosmetics products, which are categories strongly related to color, trying out colors and comparing them is the best way to achieve sales.

Therefore, in the marketing strategy of Xiaohongshu, Perfect Diary cooperated with bloggers from four levels.

• Attract consumers' attention and discussion through celebrity recommendations;
• Through the color testing of top and mid-level influencers, consumers can be truly inspired to buy.
• Then ordinary consumers return to the UGC platform after purchase for secondary dissemination.

1) Celebrity placement:

We found celebrities such as Ouyang Nana, Lin Yun, and Angela Zhang to promote the product, and use the celebrities to bring short-term, explosive attention and discussion.

• Ouyang Nana's recommendation received 83,000 likes, 36,000 collections, and 2,728 comments;
• Lin Yun's recommendation received 18,000 likes, 23,000 collections, and 2,382 comments;
• Angela Chang had the least among the three, with 9,170 likes, 7,125 favorites, and 647 comments.

Why do brands like to choose celebrities for advertising?

The "2018 Weibo E-Commerce White Paper" mentioned that more than 60% of users are willing to buy the same products as celebrities, and more than 70% of users have a positive attitude towards products recommended by celebrities.

On Xiaohongshu, many popular products have been spawned by the promotion of celebrities.

• For ordinary people, celebrities are often the creators of fashion trends and the epitome of beauty, and they have high authority, which makes users have more trust in products used by celebrities.
• Using the same product as your favorite star is an endorsement of the product by the star, which psychologically feels like support for your favorite star, narrowing the one-sided psychological distance.

2) Top + mid-level KOLs recommend products and try out products;

You will find that the header pictures of KOLs’ recommendations are all in the form of color test, which can easily catch the user’s attention visually, which is also the advantage of makeup products.

3) After purchasing, ordinary people share their experience of using the product on Xiaohongshu, which results in secondary dissemination and increased voice;

According to the analysis of the fan distribution of Weibo users who participated in the discussion of "Little Red Book" in the past month by Weiredian (wrd.cn), there are about 300K Weibo users with 0-49 fans, about 110K Weibo users with 50-199 fans, and about 60K Weibo users with more than 2,000 fans. These data indirectly show that in addition to the "planting grass" and "bringing goods" capabilities of celebrity KOLs, sharing by ordinary people is the most preferred content among the Little Red Book user group.

So, how should brands make good use of Xiaohongshu advertising?

Option 01: Sufficient budget

First, create topics through celebrities + top KOLs to expose product content and volume. It will then spread further through middle and bottom KOLs. Because the KOLs that consumers follow usually have a high degree of overlap, this model is more capable of cross-reaching users at all levels.

Through the promotion of various KOLs, product awareness is repeatedly strengthened to generate purchases. The ideal content distribution matrix is ​​generally: top stars (1-2) + top and mid-level KOLs (50-100) + amateurs (200-300).

However, in the process of building a celebrity + KOL content distribution matrix, quality + quantity are factors that we must consider and balance. In principle, the personal tone of the KOL should be close to the overall tone of the brand, rather than blindly pursuing the number of exposures.

【Tips】

Nowadays, many bloggers engage in data manipulation, which leads to ineffective brand placement. At this time, you can look at which accounts have been placed by brands such as HFP and Perfect Diary that focus on product and effect integration. You can just place the placement without thinking, and the effect will not be too bad.

Scenario 02: Limited Budget

For a new brand, considering the return on investment, the best choice is to cooperate with small and medium-sized KOLs who are in the middle level, have content production capabilities and development potential.

• If your budget is limited and you only have gifts, you can consider giving away products to establish connections with mid-level KOLs and below. Invite KOLs to experience the product and integrate it with KOLs’ content selection to reduce overall expenditure costs. If the KOL likes the product very much, he or she may even help to introduce it to consumers for free.
• If the budget is more sufficient, you can directly find a channel company to package and launch mid-level KOLs and invite them to write experience notes. Of course, the cost will be higher than for a collection. [The current market price is 300 amateurs, 1,000+ fans, and the total cost is less than 50,000]

【Tips】

When inviting KOLs to publish soft articles on WeChat or Weibo, communicate whether the blogger’s Xiaohongshu notes can be used as free resources, or whether the Xiaohongshu notes can be published at a preferential price.

3. Station B

Perfect Diary has also followed closely behind the short videos that have become popular in the past two years. For example, on TikTok, Perfect Diary’s official account has received 2.4 million likes and has 311,000 followers; on Bilibili, a two-dimensional social network, Perfect Diary’s official account also has 18,000 followers.

Bilibili ranks first among the top ten apps preferred by young users aged 24 and under. The main users of Bilibili are the "Generation Z", 81.7% of whom are young people born between 1990 and 2009. More than 50% of the users are college students and middle school students in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. They are a generation born on the Internet, have a certain economic foundation, and a strong willingness to pay. They are the target group that brand owners are vying for.

There are many beauty UP hosts in the beauty section of Bilibili, and their fans have reached tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands or more. The affordable, student-friendly, low-priced and easy-to-buy products recommended by the beauty UP hosts are more popular. Perfect Diary seized on this point and entered Bilibili.

Since the cumulative search volume cannot be seen on Bilibili and only 50 pages can be seen, Perfect Diary has at least over 1,000 related submissions on Bilibili, mainly focusing on Perfect Diary's eyeshadow palettes, foundation, lipstick swatches, reviews, recommendations and makeup tutorials .

Even though the number of views on Bilibili is only a few hundred thousand, after communicating with colleagues from Bilibili, they count one view for each IP. Even if an IP is viewed 100 times, it is counted as 1 view. If converted to the view volume on other platforms, it must be multiplied by at least 10 times!

The videos on Bilibili are generally long. If they were on other platforms, no one would probably watch them. For example, on Douyin, the official recommendation is only 1 minute. Most short videos on Weibo are under 5 minutes, while videos of more than 10 minutes are very common on Bilibili. The key is that the number of views is still very high.

According to the "2018 KOL Industry White Paper", Bilibili has the highest fan loyalty, which is also an important reason why fans are enthusiastic about watching even though many videos on Bilibili are more than ten minutes long.

This is reflected in the commercialization that KOLs have a strong ability to promote products to their fans. The most famous case should be Jiaxue Magic Water. After being recommended by the big UP host Benny, Jiaxue Magic Water was sold out.

benny Dong Zichu, B station account: Qianhu Changsheng, has 1.34 million followers and is one of the top 100 UP hosts of B station in 2018.

Jiaxue also put up a notice thanking Benny in its official flagship store. Of course, the reason why Jiaxue's Fairy Water was so popular in such a short period of time is that it has the same ingredient as SK-II Fairy Water, yeast extract - niacinamide. Of course, the ingredient formula is definitely not exactly the same as SK-II, but the popular alternative to big brands has allowed Jiaxue to regain traffic.

When brands launch on Bilibili, it is recommended to choose UP hosts who are consistent with the brand’s tone, so as to better mobilize the active participation of fans.

If you want to attract young people of Generation Z, you must have high-quality content to capture their hearts, so that you have a chance to attract them to Bilibili. If brands want to communicate more effectively with Bilibili users, they should focus on interesting, creative, and valuable content, even if the videos are long.

Perfect Diary has only 200,000 followers on Weibo, and does not have any particularly outstanding operational highlights or strategies in its daily operations, so I will not elaborate on them here.

in conclusion

Why are a large number of domestic brands beginning to rise?

People born in the 1990s, especially those born after 1995, are very much pursuing a personalized lifestyle. In this new wave of consumption upgrade trends, users are shifting from ostentatious consumption upgrades to experiential consumption upgrades. The era of simply pursuing luxury goods and big logos is no longer the era of the post-90s and post-95s. They are more pursuing personalized products and are more inclined to please themselves.

"Many companies have not discovered that user consumption trends have actually changed, especially international brands, but domestic brands have strong manufacturing capabilities and are quick to respond, which is why domestic small and medium-sized brands are rising rapidly now." And in terms of content production and channel distribution, they focus on the positions that post-90s and post-95s like, especially on platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Bilibili.

In fact, marketers no longer need to be obsessed with WeChat or Weibo. In fact, with the successful rise of domestic brands such as HFP, Perfect Diary, Winona, and Zhiguan through new media platforms such as WeChat official accounts, Weibo Xiaohongshu, and Douyin, relying on content marketing, it indicates that the brand's gameplay has been upgraded and updated, becoming more diversified and more crowd-oriented, and will also bring more thinking and innovation to marketers.

Author: Marketing Lao Wang

Source: Marketing Lao Wang (wltx-2015)