Have fun on Xiaohongshu and keep this guide to promoting homestays!

Xiaohongshu APP is a lifestyle platform for young people. 90% of users learn about brand/product information on Xiaohongshu. Among the user groups, 80% are female users, 60% are iOS users, 60% are users in first- and second-tier cities, and 70% are users born after 1990. Another most notable feature of Xiaohongshu users is that they "advocate a refined life, like traveling, taking photos and sharing; they are young, have purchasing power, and have a high level of aesthetics." This also creates a unique advantage for brands - "brands can convey brand stories and establish user connections through content and interaction."

On the Xiaohongshu platform, there are a large number of travel experience notes that focus on sharing. Guides, hotels, homestays and other information appear frequently. The number of notes under the keyword "travel" is as high as 1.52W, which is in line with the media attributes. At the same time, the tones of the following four platforms have brought extremely strong grass-planting properties. It can be said that Xiaohongshu is an excellent platform for the homestay industry to obtain new dividends!

So, if we want to realize the marketing closed loop of the homestay industry on Xiaohongshu, from planting grass to pulling grass and then to posting grass, how should we do it? Let’s take a look at the gameplay and cases below~

1. How to promote homestays on Xiaohongshu

The key to promoting homestays on Xiaohongshu is to understand the purpose of users’ consumption in homestays. That is - eating, drinking, playing, living and shopping, in detail:

1. Food : Prepare a food guide within 5-10km for the B&B, covering as many creative restaurants as possible. The guide is obvious, and naturally attracts fans and promotes the B&B;

2. Drink : Check in at local specialty coffee and milk tea shops, focusing on Internet celebrities and hot spots to significantly increase popularity;

3. Play : When traveling, "where to go" and "where is fun" are the key. For those niche and interesting tourist spots around the homestay, publish notes with exquisite details and full of useful information to efficiently attract traffic!

4. Accommodation : soft articles are inserted from the perspectives of "room types", "services", "design creative concepts", "advantages", etc., and small programs such as "book now" are added to achieve the goal of planting grass → conversion in one post;

5. Shopping : With the boom of "tourism economy" and "revenge consumption", notes such as "recommended articles on local products worth buying" are very likely to become popular articles.

Based on the above, combined with Xiaohongshu’s advertising resources, we have summarized the following gameplay:

1. Information flow delivery

Display position: Information flow ads have specific ad positions in Xiaohongshu, starting from position 6 on the discovery page + 10 (6, 16, 26... appear randomly);

Delivery suggestions:

• Budget: Recommended starting from 800/day;
• Plan: Keep 3-4 notes to maintain delivery;
• Region: Set up first-tier and second-tier cities and surrounding cities for placement;
• Time period: You can focus on placing ads during breaks and after get off work;
• Note: It is recommended that the pictures should mainly be beautiful pictures of the homestay environment and decoration, and the content should mainly be check-in and photo sharing. It can instantly attract users' urge to click.

Advantages:

Traffic enters the port, and users browse and search with their own consumption intentions; guide users to search independently to increase the search volume; help users form grass-planting decisions, occupy the minds of consumers, and attract traffic to the search page.

2. Search delivery

Display position: Search placement on Xiaohongshu has specific ad positions, starting from 3 on the search page + 10 (3, 13, 23... appear randomly);

Delivery suggestions:

• Budget: Recommended starting from 800/day;

• Plan: Keep 3-4 notes to maintain delivery;

• Region: Set up first-tier and second-tier cities and surrounding cities for placement;

• Time period: You can focus on placing ads during breaks and after get off work;

• Note: It is recommended that the pictures should mainly be beautiful pictures of the homestay environment and decoration, and the content should mainly be check-in and photo sharing. It can instantly attract users' urge to click.

Advantages:

Provide target users with independent search content and content with reference value for users who make consumption decisions; provide a search and weeding closed loop for users who have found the content on the discovery page, and guide users to make consumption decisions.

Below we have summarized some optimization suggestions for the homestay industry’s notes on Xiaohongshu:

In the notes in the figure above, we use the following methods to optimize the notes:

The header image highlights the panoramic view of the B&B, showing details from far to near, and the slightly exaggerated note title attracts users' attention and matches the famous local tourist attractions of the B&B to enhance relevance.

Similarly, in the notes in the picture above, Emoji expressions are used to increase the vitality and readability of the notes, increase useful information for users, reduce churn rate, participate in current hot topics to increase natural traffic distribution, and other methods, thereby influencing user consumption decisions, increasing brand influence, driving user conversions, improving ROI, and increasing user conversion quality.

So what kind of benefits does this gameplay bring to B&B operators? Let's first look at the narrative from China Daily:

The homestay owner "Lao Hu" feels that posting only promotional photos of his homestay on Xiaohongshu is too monotonous. With his continuous enrichment, the content of his homestay's Xiaohongshu currently has three directions: the exquisite private baking of "Lao Hu's" wife; the original woodworking handicrafts designed by "Lao Hu" himself and the comic creation based on his daughter "Ye Bao". "Lao Hu" placed these contents in the context of his homestay, and created a series of content about beautiful accommodation, food, and beautiful things, which received good reading and conversion. After just over a month of operation, many notes received tens of thousands of readings. In May, Xiaohongshu channel accounted for nearly 15% of the orders.

👆Image source: China Daily

This form of promotion that "opens up the links between seeding and booking" has enabled Xiaohongshu's homestay GMV (total transaction volume) in May to exceed last year's total. As a content community, Xiaohongshu is also more conducive to homestay owners building their own brands through content operations.

In terms of strategy, we "placed the Moganshan keyword, shared original party content, @ the corporate account to jump to the homepage, pinned the comment area to the top of the conversion channel, configured the corporate account with the reservation function, and made the online reservation conversion path smooth", and achieved the following high-quality results:

Click-through rate: 9.94% (3% higher than the market level)

Average cpc: 0.3-0.5 yuan

Effect analysis:

1) Pay attention to the quality and form of notes, and update the test more frequently;

2) Stabilize the delivery of two high-quality notes, continue to increase the frequency of content output, increase note interaction, and improve fan activity.

2. Case Study

An online travel platform integrating tourism resources of an overseas destination:

Resources: Search note styles

Delivery strategy:

1) Targeted search terms are selected for placement based on the content of the notes, and a large number of users’ attention is gained through the native note seeding method;

2) The materials mostly use real-life landscape pictures with a relatively uniform style, mainly soft strategy content, to attract users' attention, and to collect coupons and participate in activities;

3) [Strong marketing] + [grasping pain points] to create a cost-effective, spontaneous travel experience.

Marketing goal: attract customers to buy high-cost overseas travel products and complete payment

The homestay owner "Lao Hu" said that his homestay was just opened this year, and he hopes to differentiate and brand himself among the fiercely competitive local homestay group as soon as possible. Many of the beautiful accommodations, delicious foods, and beautiful items created by his corporate account cannot be presented on OTA platforms, but these are what make his B&B unique. Xiaohongshu is of great help to new B&Bs in building their brands. This is just as the person in charge of "Orders Are Coming" said, "Xiaohongshu's order users are also part of the content ecosystem. They can produce high-quality content, help B&B owners build their reputation and influence, and create a closed loop from content to transactions and then to content."

For modern people, the unique characteristics of B&Bs such as "leisure, relaxation, ease, and freedom" have become a rigid demand. As the epidemic situation gradually improves, such rigid demands will also show an explosive growth trend. B&B operators should seize the opportunity and actively carry out online promotions.

Author: Wei Si Dun Mobile Marketing

Source: Weishidun Mobile Marketing