Case analysis: Xiaohongshu advertising strategy!

Founded in 2014, HEDONE is an emerging domestic beauty brand. Mainly targeting urban white-collar workers, the company provides mid-range beauty products with average customer spending ranging from 80 yuan to 200 yuan.

In the first 2 to 3 years after its establishment, the brand mainly focused on exploration and product trial and error, and did not make much splash in the market. However, after entering Tmall in mid-to-late 2018, HEDONE took less than six months to rapidly grow its monthly sales from 490,000 to over 10 million, becoming a dark horse among domestic beauty brands.

After entering Tmall in August 2018, HEDONE’s monthly sales quickly exceeded 10 million in less than 6 months. (The above data comes from Business Advisor)

The reason for HEDONE's rapid rise, in addition to excellent product positioning and brand packaging, is that they are good at using social media platforms such as Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Kuaishou for off-site promotion, which is also the key to their success.

According to industry estimates: 30% of HEDONE’s Tmall store traffic comes from off-site content marketing, including but not limited to Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Kuaishou, and Weibo. These content marketing efforts not only successfully conveyed brand awareness to users, but also more effectively supported the growth of store sales.

Due to space limitations, this article mainly discusses HEDONE’s advertising strategy on Xiaohongshu.

Compared to Perfect Diary, which spends nearly one million yuan every month to post hundreds of thousands of notes on Xiaohongshu,

HEDONE's advertising on off-site platforms, especially on Xiaohongshu, focuses more on rhythmic large-scale advertising, small-scale promotion of single products, high, medium and low coverage, flexibility and maneuverability, not blindly expanding the scale, and is data-oriented, constantly pursuing the cost-effectiveness of advertising.

This is why we chose HEDONE from many beauty brands for case analysis. Their Xiaohongshu marketing strategy is worth learning for most beauty sellers.

With only a few hundred Xiaohongshu notes each year, HEDONE’s annual sales exceed 100 million yuan. We believe that HEDONE’s Xiaohongshu marketing strategy is very worthy of learning for small and medium-sized beauty sellers.

1. When small and medium-sized beauty brands place ads on Xiaohongshu, they should try to implement “pulse-style” placement operations

Like Perfect Diary, HEDONE also promotes itself on Xiaohongshu every month. The specific method is to find big Vs, Internet celebrities, KOLs, and amateurs on Xiaohongshu to write a large number of beauty recommendation notes, evaluation notes, trial notes, shoot trial videos, makeup videos, color test recommendations, unboxing reviews, etc.

Compared to Perfect Diary's wealth and ability to publish thousands of notes every month, HEDONE's promotion on Xiaohongshu is a rhythmic pulse-like operation.

Trend of the number of notes posted by HEDONE on Xiaohongshu every month in 2019

From the trend chart above, we can see that starting from May, HEDONE’s Xiaohongshu delivery operations have basically adhered to the rhythm of “large-scale delivery every other month” in a continuous cycle.

The biggest advantage of this "pulse" delivery method (the term comes from "Shi Yuzhu's My Marketing Experience" P22) is that it gives the brand the strongest exposure within limited funds.

According to marketing experience, large-scale launches every other month can save at least 50% of marketing expenses, but the rate at which the effect declines is far less than 50%.

HEDONE’s marketing strategy is very clear: it aims to save money while maintaining effectiveness.

And by comparing HEDONE's sales data, it can be found that HEDONE's large-scale launch rhythm perfectly matches the rhythm of e-commerce promotions.

March (International Women's Day), June (618 promotion), and November (Double 11) were the three months with the highest sales for HEDONE in 2019.

By comparing the two pictures, we can find that HEDONE’s Xiaohongshu promotion rhythm is as follows:

One month before the big e-commerce promotion month, Xiaohongshu will launch a large-scale campaign to preheat the products and attract users, and then reap high sales in the promotion month.

For example, in May, we launched a large-scale promotion on Xiaohongshu to prepare for the 618 promotion.

For example, in July, we promoted it on Xiaohongshu on a large scale in preparation for the 818 promotion.

For example, in October, we launched a large-scale promotion to prepare for Double 11.

For example, a large-scale promotion in December is to prepare for the New Year’s Goods Festival in January of the following year.

After a large-scale promotion, the amount of notes released was quickly reduced, and there was no lingering battle, so as to achieve cost-effective brand communication within the limited market budget.

2. Beauty brands should formulate different Xiaohongshu launch strategies for each product

From the previous data, you can see that as an emerging beauty brand with annual sales of around 100 million, HEDONE publishes no more than 100 notes per month. So what are the contents of these notes promoting?

Let’s take HEDONE’s Xiaohongshu notes in May as an example.

From the chart, we can see that HEDONE launched a total of 6 items on Xiaohongshu in May, including both new models that were the main focus and continuous promotion of previous classic models. The distribution ratio of the launch was very clear.

Therefore, when beauty products are advertising on Xiaohongshu, they must not only follow the rhythm of the entire e-commerce industry's promotions, but also formulate different advertising strategies for the main products.

For example, by advertising on Xiaohongshu, the sales of a single product can be quickly boosted.

Let’s take HEDONE’s hot product “Butterfly Effect Lip Glaze” in the past two months as an example.

The product was launched in mid-to-late September 2019. In October, the following month, HEDONE published 28 notes on Butterfly Effect Lip Glaze, which quickly increased the popularity of the product.

After a new product is launched, the operation of quickly creating a large number of notes on Xiaohongshu has an obvious effect on boosting sales.

From the sales growth trend chart, we can see that after laying out a lot of notes in October, Butterfly Effect's sales continued to climb and reached a peak in November. (The above data comes from Business Advisor)

After quickly launching this single product, HEDONE did not continue to increase its investment, but instead reduced the number of investment notes, using the "ripple effect" of previous investment to continue to drive steady sales, in order to ensure budget savings and make marketing funds consumed just right.

In addition to boosting sales of new products through advertising, HEDONE's Xiaohongshu advertising strategy also includes the continuous promotion of classic models to ensure that classic models always retain their popularity.

For example, HEDONE’s classic hit, the Modern Times Dreamy Lip Glaze Series.

Since the series went on sale in October 2018, it has accumulated sales of more than 26 million, mainly due to the continuous off-site promotion after the product was launched.

After the large-scale promotion period in December last year, HEDONE continued to promote the series on Xiaohongshu with an average of 1 to 4 notes per month.

HEDONE will select KOLs with tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of fans to promote the "Modern Times Lip Glaze Series" on a small scale every month.

Thanks to subsequent small-scale promotions, the series can still contribute millions of sales to HEDONE’s Tmall store every month. (The above data comes from Business Advisor)

3. Beauty brands should create a closed loop from being seeded-search-trust-conversion when placing ads on Xiaohongshu

Once we are familiar with HEDONE's delivery rhythm, it is very important to understand which level of KOLs they will invest in.

By mining the Xiaohongshu data launched by HEDONE in 2019, we can see that:

HEDONE will not blindly invest in big Vs or celebrities. Instead, the focus of investment will be mainly on KOLs, experts, and amateurs with 100,000-500,000, 50,000-100,000, and 10,000-50,000 fans.

We believe that this should be a more cost-effective marketing strategy chosen by HEDONE's marketing department after multiple tests.

Due to HEDONE's relatively small monthly launch volume and the pace of launching multiple products at the same time, there are higher requirements for the combination of launch combinations.

Their delivery combination is very regular, it is a very standard pyramid combination.

Let’s first look at it from a monthly perspective. In May 2019, HEDONE released a total of 44 pieces of content. The entire delivery portfolio is as follows.

From the chart, we can see that HEDONG’s advertising tries to cover all levels, but it will not invest too many resources and budget in big Vs with more than 500,000 fans (there is only 1 person). Instead, it will mainly invest the budget in mid- and low-level KOLs with 10,000 to 200,000 fans. Experts and amateurs.

Let’s take August 2019 as an example. In August, HEDONE released a total of 43 articles, with the following distribution combinations.

It can also be seen from the above picture that in addition to a few big Vs with a salary of 500,000 or 200,000 or more, most of the budget is still focused on experts and amateurs with a salary of around 10,000 to 60,000.

Let’s put aside the monthly analysis and look at it from the perspective of single product promotion.

For example, let’s take the “Crystal Jelly Eye Shadow”, a product that HEDONE strongly recommended in May 2019.

HEDONE still follows the pyramid combination for its product placement on Xiaohongshu.

As shown in the figure below, during the promotion period of Crystal Frozen Jelly, in addition to a big V with more than 1 million fans leading the promotion, more resources were mainly concentrated on mid-level KOLs, experts, and amateurs with 10,000 to 100,000 fans.

Why did HEDONE choose such a marketing combination?

Because HEDONE wants to create a complete closed loop for users from "planting grass-searching-trust-conversion".

I repeat myself:

Planting grass-search-trust-conversion.

First, the big V will produce high-quality makeup content mainly based on HEDONE products.

Then they “plant grass” for their hundreds of thousands or millions of fans.

After being inspired, fans will start searching for brand keywords on Xiaohongshu to read more relevant content about the product.

Then users will be able to search for HEDONE's trial experiences, recommendations, real trials, and other content posted by mid-level small KOLs, experts, and senior users.

These contents will awaken users' impulse buying desire and give users a strong sense of trust and security.

Then the conversion of users will be a natural outcome.

Although the investment was small, it was logical and strategic enough, and eventually formed a complete closed loop.

4. How do KOLs at different levels arrange their content?

Once you understand the overall closed-loop thinking behind HEDONE's campaign, you will naturally understand the content styles that big Vs, KOLs, and amateurs at all levels want to post.

Super V with more than 500,000 followers:

The big Vs at this level are mainly beauty experts, makeup experts, and fashion bloggers. They will personally use HEDONE products to apply makeup and demonstrate the effects. The entire copywriting and tone will try to emphasize professionalism and gorgeousness as much as possible. Their main purpose is to strongly "plant grass" for the product in the minds of users.

The following picture is from left to right:

ID: Big Cat Mommy 1.56 million fans Makeup test eyeshadow

ID: A Meng Bu Men 530,000 fans Eyeshadow test

ID: ssslin Fans 1.24 million fans Trial color eyeshadow palette

KOL with 100,000-500,000 followers:

If the more advanced big Vs only play the role of product exposure and implanting "product expectations" into the minds of target users, then this level of KOL is the main force driving consumer purchases.

They mainly output more detailed content based on their own content characteristics: including unboxing reviews, in-depth trial experiences, top recommendations, etc.

Compared with the more "aloof" recommendations of big Vs, KOLs at this level will pay more attention to the detailed introduction of selling points, and the copywriting will be more flamboyant and enthusiastic: you will lose money if you don’t buy it! Who can stand this! All these hawking-style copywriting are mainly concentrated on KOLs at this level.

The following picture is from left to right:

ID: Ice cream and Zaizai 200,000 fans Trial eyeshadow palette

ID: South of the Yangtze River 200,000 fans Strongly recommend blush

ID: Miss Haru 350,000 fans Try the Papaya Eyeshadow Palette

KOLs, experts, and amateurs with 5,000-100,000 fans:

After super Vs have recommended the product and mid-level KOLs have strongly promoted it, the goal of this level of influencers is to build user trust in the product by publishing content .

Therefore, the content they publish mainly focuses on the post-purchase user experience, and the writing style tends to be plain and simple, creating an atmosphere of good effects after real user experience, so that users can build trust in the product and ultimately convert it into purchasing orders.

The content posted by experts and amateurs below the waist level does not need to be too professional or flashy, but needs to emphasize the real feelings and real experience after purchase.

Therefore, although the number of notes HEDONE posts on Xiaohongshu each month is relatively small, it is still very well organized and layered. High, medium and low-level big Vs, Internet celebrities, KOLs, and amateurs match and rely on each other, allowing users to form a complete closed loop from being planted to final conversion.

5. Summary of HEDONE’s Xiaohongshu advertising strategy

Well, when you see this, I believe you have a clear understanding of HEDONE’s overall marketing strategy on Xiaohongshu. Let’s make a final summary.

First of all, as a seller of beauty, toiletries, snacks, clothing and other categories, you must pay attention to continuous content marketing on off-site social media such as Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Kuaishou, and Bilibili. Because it will have a huge impact on the store’s search traffic and sales.

Secondly, if a store wants to place ads on Xiaohongshu, it should formulate a full-year placement plan based on the annual promotion budget, the pace of new product launches, and the pace of major promotions, and carry out pulsed placement actions. While ensuring the effectiveness of the delivery, try to pursue high cost-effectiveness of the delivery.

In addition to formulating detailed monthly budgets, each category can also develop promotion strategies for individual products based on new product launches. By quickly posting content on Xiaohongshu, the sales of new products can be quickly increased; or by conducting long-term and stable content marketing for classic models, the classic models can always maintain a certain popularity and sales volume.

Whether formulating the delivery mix for each month or for a single product, sellers must ensure full coverage of high, medium and low levels, and establish a closed loop of delivery that allows users to go from "planting grass-search-trust-conversion".

Because if you only invest in those with low number of fans, the exposure will not be enough; if you only invest in those with high number of fans, there will be a lack of the recommendation atmosphere of mid-level KOLs for the products, and the conversion rate will not be high.

In the process of formulating the delivery mix, it is necessary to be clear about the roles of KOLs at different levels. Some are responsible for seeding, some are responsible for recommendations, and some are responsible for building trust. The corresponding copywriting and content must also be formulated and implemented according to this strategy.

Although its sales volume is more than ten times lower than Perfect Diary, looking at HEDONE's entire Xiaohongshu launch strategy, it is still executed in a rhythmic, methodical, hierarchical and purposeful manner. This is also an important reason why many emerging consumer brands have been able to rise rapidly in recent years.

We should proceed step by step, not rush for quick success, firmly and logically, and methodically implement marketing strategies and tactics, supplemented by high-quality products.

We will wait until the day when we finally rise.

So, fellow e-commerce sellers, have you done it?

Author: Liu Weidong Near Field E-commerce

Source: Jinchangdianshang