Xiaohongshu traffic logic, KOL model, content marketing

This article selects the essence of the course to provide you with a practical summary of brand marketing investments over the years to help increase brand marketing in 2022.

From consumer level to consumer decision-making, from brand content marketing 3.0 to hot search term layout, from KOL delivery model to influencer screening, this article integrates all models according to the logic of the entire chain of brand marketing delivery.

01 Do you really understand your users? ——Let users become traffic boosters

In 2021, as a UGC community platform with a relatively high proportion of female users, Xiaohongshu naturally became the brand investment camp for creating the "she economy" consumption theme. Therefore, we wrote in "Is "she economy" a new crisis for brands? The article "Xiaohongshu's Precision Marketing Understands Women's Hearts" breaks down the strategies of multiple brands to accurately penetrate the "her economy" market.

According to public data from Xiaohongshu, the monthly active users of Xiaohongshu have exceeded 200 million, and the proportion of male users has reached 30%. Brands targeting male users have gradually settled in Xiaohongshu, such as Dear Boyfriend and Li Ran. It can be predicted that the male market will develop faster on Xiaohongshu in 2022.

This year, the platform has gradually moved towards the direction of pan-life and pan-entertainment, thus generating many high-growth industries besides beauty and skin care. Pets, bags, shoes, underwear and home clothes grew rapidly in 2021, and most of them are an important part of food, clothing, housing and transportation.

In addition to high-growth industries, the rise of the single economy has also brought a wave of dividends to many brands. In the article "A new wave of 240 million single people, Xiaohongshu brands seize the traffic trend in 3 steps", the huge red ocean of the single economy is mentioned. Self-heating foods, small packages, mini home appliances, etc. are all products of this traffic trend.

When a niche gradually becomes a trend, traffic is the "booster" that makes the trend become popular. The essence of traffic is users. We need to break down user demands, understand user consumption logic, and respond to ever-changing situations with the same approach.

Where there are users, there will be demand. Brands must first understand users’ motivations for using Xiaohongshu, which are usually divided into two types: shopping type and active search type. According to Xiaohongshu’s public data, users who prioritize search account for 38% of the homepage traffic. That is, more than one-third of the homepage traffic can be harvested through the brand’s proactive strategy.

Based on these two usage motivations, we use Perfect Diary’s marketing strategy in “The annual explosive article rate is 14%+, what is the content marketing code of the Xiaohongshu brand?” 》 divides users into several types: core consumers, target consumers, and potential consumers. It is through the hierarchical classification of consumers that brands can more reasonably arrange the keywords of note content and achieve comprehensive reach of users.

How to solve user needs? How to influence users’ minds to assist them in making decisions? KOL marketing has become the mainstream strategy for brand marketing, and its emergence has reshaped the consumer decision-making path. According to the AIPL model, one of the three major marketing models, the traditional consumer decision-making path is: Awareness – Interest – Purchase – Loyalty.

The entire AIPL process can be completed with several or even one touch of KOL marketing. The preliminary consideration and evaluation process of the traditional consumer closed loop are extremely compressed or skipped, and the purchase stage is entered directly. A new consumption closed loop thus emerges: purchase – experience – recognition – binding.

Whether it is the "her economy" or the "his economy", whether it is the "single economy" or the "lazy economy", these are consumption trends generated by the improvement of user consumption levels. Stripping away the shell of the trend, it ultimately comes down to user demand.

The key to solving the core problem is to understand Xiaohongshu's user portrait and consumer decision-making path, lock in target consumers, deeply explore industry trends, and capture user needs to carry out precise marketing.

02 Focus on content, supplemented by hot search terms - content strategies for brands at different stages

When brands enter Xiaohongshu, they are divided into three different stages: start-up, growth and maturity, based on brand voice and duration. These stages correspond to the brand planting stages 1.0 to 3.0 officially released by Xiaohongshu.

In "Xiaohongshu Content Marketing 3.0+KOL Matrix | Double 11 Brand Case", we have broken down in detail Xiaohongshu's marketing content strategy from stage 1.0 to 3.0: strongly related content accurately reaches the target audience, weakly related content widely reaches potential audiences, and pan-related content conveys brand tone. Accurately locate each stage of the brand, layout the hot search terms of content and launch KOL marketing.

When users use Xiaohongshu, they often actively search for information to assist in their consumption decisions. Keyword search is one of the important sources of note traffic, which is also the fundamental reason why brands attach great importance to the operation of hot search terms when promoting products on Xiaohongshu.

Search traffic is one of the important traffic sources of Xiaohongshu Notes. During the entire process of "mining-optimizing-actualization" of traffic bonus words, brands and creators can deeply explore users' emotional needs and corresponding traffic bonus words through TA demand insights, helping notes to harvest more traffic.

Through the 7 methods of mining traffic bonus words, many content keywords can be accurately mined. Taking Estee Lauder as an example, data from the past 30 days show that Estee Lauder has discovered multiple category words, efficacy words, scene words, etc., and through the classification and layout of these content keywords at the consumer level, it can accurately reach the target users.

For smaller brands, by benchmarking the content keywords of competitors and using the logic of mining seven types of traffic words, it is helpful to discover more other blue ocean words and create brand differentiation.

In August this year, Xiaohongshu officially shut down its note-taking merchant card and introduced a new “account and store integration” policy. The promotion of "account and store integration" connects users from planting grass to pulling grass with one click, forming a closed transaction loop for brands on Xiaohongshu. This is undoubtedly an opportunity for brands to grow content and transactions. At the same time, it also puts higher demands on content polishing.

It can be foreseen that "account and store integration" will become one of the monetization models that Xiaohongshu platform strongly recommends, and brands can pay more attention to it.

The BC direct connection model of professional accounts is actually an upgraded iteration of the B2K2C model. By disassembling Perfect Diary's classic strategies of retention, conversion, and repurchase in private domain communities, we discuss with you some private domain strategies that can be used as a reference in the operation of Xiaohongshu's professional accounts.

With the stage-by-stage saturation of vertical content and the homogenization of scenario-based marketing, Xiaohongshu's content marketing marked by small theaters has become a new development trend, and popular industries have begun to enter the era of content marketing 3.0.

No matter which stage a brand is in, deepening content and deploying keywords are the key measures to harvest traffic, closely following the concept of "born from content, growing in transactions" advocated by Xiaohongshu, and achieving a win-win situation for the platform and the brand.

03 Multi-level traffic harvesting - KOL screening & delivery model + brand delivery cycle

As brands enter Xiaohongshu at different growth stages, from the start-up stage to the mature stage, we have gained insight into the various marketing methods of brands: brand IPization, brand co-branding, node marketing, Internet celebrity to long-term popularity... Even though thousands of brand marketing methods can harvest traffic on Xiaohongshu, the core still depends on the brand's delivery rhythm.

The process of brand placement requires clear thinking and rhythm control, and exposing the right content at the right time will be more conducive to the brand gaining users' minds and achieving brand awareness. In addition to the advertising during major promotional events such as 618 and Double Eleven, brands should expand their advertising to more daily promotional activities.

Xiaohongshu’s brand marketing is composed of a KOL matrix. In the long-term practice of promoting influencers, several KOL delivery models with good market recognition have evolved, including the pyramid, olive, five-pointed star, and main-satellite types.

In the article "Xiaohongshu Content Marketing 3.0+KOL Matrix | Double 11 Brand Case", we analyze how brands use different content strategies and KOL delivery matrices at different stages to give full play to the role of Xiaohongshu platform and bloggers as consumer decision-making leaders, help brands penetrate the Xiaohongshu user market, create a certain brand voice, and gain more ROI.

Choosing the right KOL is the core content of the campaign. In Qiangua’s marketing services, we have developed a precise three-dimensional model for selecting people, screening high-quality KOLs through the three dimensions of basic data, business quality, and grass-planting quality.

Based on the logic of the three-dimensional selection model, high-interaction content outside of vertical fields is also a content direction that brands can focus on exploring and deploy. Frontline traders in the industry also call it the "main-satellite" model, and use it more in screening KOLs.

In "The annual explosive article rate is 14%+, what is the content marketing code of the Xiaohongshu brand? 》, the content operation strategy of Perfect Diary’s corporate account was disassembled, and then the application of the main-satellite model in KOL screening was derived, that is, the form of “KOL+weakly related content”.

Select KOLs in non-vertical fields to promote content, and use the content directions they are good at, that is, the satellite fields that KOLs are second or third good at in content creation, so that they can reach more certain potential consumer groups.

In the article "A Nanny-Level Tutorial on Xiaohongshu KOL Screening, Placement and Review", the process and methodology of Xiaohongshu KOL marketing are sorted out, providing brands with more detailed and effective strategic methods from selection to placement and then to review.

KOL marketing has become a traffic pool that every brand cannot ignore. KOL marketing has evolved from extensive promotion to refined operations, and under the involution of brand marketing, new marketing strategies have emerged, focusing on mid-level influencers, KOS and KOC.

In the future, there will be more forms of delivery models, and brands will adjust more suitable delivery models through self-positioning and target needs in different periods.

04 Conclusion

As the Xiaohongshu platform develops in a diversified way, we are facing more opportunities and challenges. The content marketing model is constantly changing, and there are unlimited possibilities for brand growth.

• The core of brand marketing is users. Use industry trends to gain insight into user needs, lock in brand target users, and conduct precise marketing campaigns on Xiaohongshu.
• With content as the core, keywords are arranged from 1.0 to 3.0 corresponding to the different growth stages of the brand, fully reaching the three levels of consumers: core, target, and potential.
• By combining different content strategies and KOL delivery matrices at different stages, the role of Xiaohongshu platform and bloggers as consumer decision-making leaders can be fully utilized. In addition to launching important promotions, we should also pay attention to daily promotions to effectively reach more users.