Written | Cold Zelin
Edit the | Wang Pan
Recently, following several name changes, Meituan's e-commerce business was renamed "Meituan E-commerce" again and began to apply for registered trademarks.
At the same time, with the revision of meituan's e-commerce, a grass planting community called "Treasure Box" was placed at the secondary entrance, also like a small red book, where users can post their own shopping notes or reviews, and can also see the content posted by others.
E-commerce and the community grasp both, which means that Meituan hopes to build a traffic closed loop from planting grass to conversion.
On the other hand, Taobao also upgraded Weitao to subscription as early as the end of 2020, showing the community for evolved buyers - shopping, making a precious bottom menu bar position, and since then shopping has also become the main position of Taobao content planting. In contrast, Taobao's desire for the content community is even greater than that of Meituan.
Thanks to the volume of Taobao itself, the monthly active users of the shopping platform quickly exceeded 250 million, and the daily active users exceeded 50 million, surpassing Xiaohongshu in one fell swoop.
But in terms of user stickiness, it may not be possible to talk about heroes in terms of numbers, and a research report released by Dongxing Securities in August last year showed that 90% of Xiaohongshu users had searched on their platforms before purchasing goods. This data may be difficult for the content community embedded in Taobao to reach such a proportion.
However, in the double eleven promotion of "loaded guns and live ammunition", shopping did play its due effect. The total exposure of content shopping during the Singles' Day period reached 25 billion times, more than 250 million users viewed the grass content, and the proportion of diversion from content planting grass was as high as one-third.
Nowadays, most Internet companies are keen on planting grass, Zhihu, Douyin, B station you can see a variety of grass content, but the purpose of business is always in profit, how to distinguish the simple grass content, consumers are becoming more and more overwhelmed.
The impulse consumption behind planting grass
For the current Internet consumption force "young people", perhaps how to distinguish whether a piece of clothing is a pure cotton material is somewhat difficult, not to mention like its parents, a pinch of the hand, you can identify the material of the clothes, good or bad.
As a result, someone helps you buy back a variety of products from different brands for evaluation, and you only need to listen to the opinions and then pay to get a product that you think is appropriate, over time, this group of bloggers who do reviews continue to accumulate fans and prestige, become opinion leaders, and some people also from the initial half-belief to the loss of independent thinking ability, just "buy, buy buy".
Our consumption scenarios, habits, and even perceptions are completely online.
Just like the black sesame pills that have recently exploded under the "bald economy", after fifteen or six yuan and one pound of black sesame seeds are kneaded into balls, they become 2-10 yuan a "god pill", and in many promotional slogans, they have been labeled with anti-aging and aging, valley health, anti-de-aging blackness, supplementing vitality, calcium and bone strengthening.
The applicable population is from the elderly to the children.
In the CCTV investigation, the production license number of many products begins with SC, which is a food production license, and does not have a license to publicize the effect. For some people, eating too much will not only not grow hair, but also may cause a burden on the body.
However, this still can not stop the hot sales of black sesame pills, according to the Ministry of Commerce's big data on the testing of key e-commerce platforms, in 2022, the sales of black sesame pills increased by 105.9% year-on-year. The reason for the surge in sales of this product is inseparable from the "planting grass" notes.
Whether we search for black sesame pills in Zhihu, Little Red Book, and shopping, we can find a large number of planting notes, most of which tell you the benefits of black sesame pills through before and after picture comparison and hands-on experience, and there are also bloggers who do not have any qualifications from the ingredient list to analyze which brands of sesame pills are more authentic.
But very few planting notes will popularize the science to consumers, and black sesame pills are useless for greasy hair loss and even aggravate hair loss. Sesame oil yield is around 45%-50%, and eating a certain percentage of sesame seeds means that half of them are sesame oil – rich in fat.
However, for many people who suffer from hair loss, tempting copywriting and "renderings" that strongly impact vision are very easy to cause impulsive consumption.
For those consumers who are skeptical about this, the brand side can still convert many consumers through long-term large-scale launch or "dark warehouse" type copywriting. As for the determined crowd, it may not be the audience for these products.
Those who are superficially in the picture and text of the popular science "ancient method" nine steaming nine sun, in fact, click into the home page, pull to the end, or sell their own rubbing of black sesame pills.
Why are you passionate about growing grass?
In fact, black sesame pills are not a special case, the previous medical beauty, beauty instruments, egg steamers, air fryers, foot stickers, fascia guns and a series of other trends, all of which are through the needs of planting grass notes.
Xiao Wu, a veteran Xiaohongshu user, shared with us a piece of her experience.
A few years ago, Xiao Wu was planted by a video on the Internet, bought an egg steamer and a bread machine, and in the first few days he felt fresh and insisted on using it every morning, but after a while, the two small household appliances lay in the cupboard eating ash and never used it again.
Not long ago, Xiao Wu saw on the Little Red Book that many bloggers recommended breakfast machines that can steam steamed steamed buns, corn, and sandwiches, which are high and small, and are deeply liked by girls. And when she actually got it in her hand, she realized that this was no different from the two small appliances that had been dusty in the cabinet for many years, but the design was more compact and replaced with the current popular color, and a more exquisite name was changed to "breakfast machine".
This is why "planting grass" is deeply loved by Internet companies, through exquisite pictures, videos and copywriting to stimulate users' impulse consumption, creating a demand that most people do not have.
In fact, we carefully recall that before all the consumer trends appeared, there was a period of anxiety on the Internet, and after the appearance anxiety, beauty and skin care products began to sell, and behind the promotion of exquisite life was the best-selling of various small household appliances.
And hurried young people have always been difficult to associate with the word "exquisite", so in the context of the inner volume, health, baldness and other anxiety came into being, and the corresponding products are also stepped up by manufacturers, on the shelves of major platforms, in front of consumers.
We can't be sure if there are two invisible hands behind these anxieties, but anxiety must be a greenhouse for merchants to pursue profits.
Many consumers have also laughed at themselves for paying the "IQ tax" after purchasing such products, and after the next time the product that tests IQ is online again, they still can't help but listen to the slogans of KOLs, Oh buy Karma, buy it!
Why can't you resist this "magic"?
An MCN agency insider told Photon Planet that most brands nowadays like to take the form of shop volume, perhaps only one or two head KOLs, and more resources will put hundreds of waist KOLs and KOCs. Through the amount of heaping, it creates a sense of fire, thereby inducing consumers to form a "herd effect".
Every seemingly self-conscious decision you make may be nothing more than the product of the intersection of capital, algorithms, and strategies.
It is understood that usually brands will have their own delivery rhythm, on the one hand, KOC quickly paves the amount as an SEO function, a variety of keywords repeatedly brainwash consumers, laying a cognitive foundation; on the other hand, the introduction of waist, head KOLs to enhance texture, strengthen word of mouth; and finally release some vegetarian-level follow-up singles, not to pursue texture, but to enhance the sense of detail and layering.
The end result is that the ubiquitous "planting grass" notes under the algorithm push consumers to try.
Wang Fengfeng reached a monthly sales of more than 40 million yuan through platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin; Zhong Xuegao's sales increased by 5 times in one year; and The perfect diary of Xiaohongshu was successfully listed in three years.
But is such a popularity obtained by product quality, cost performance, and innovation, or is it just a bad currency that is formed through the disorderly accumulation of capital to drive out good money?
All business models should be based on trust, just like TV shopping in those days, when consumer trust disappears, this model loses its meaning.
Three modes
In fact, although various platforms are emphasizing "community + e-commerce", which is the so-called content e-commerce, at present, no one can fully integrate the two functions into the same software.
At present, Internet companies are expecting to achieve a complete closed loop of private domain traffic planting and pulling grass in the station through three models. One is the first community represented by Xiaohongshu and Douyin; the second is the first e-commerce community represented by Taobao; the third is the e-commerce and community represented by meituan.
The formation of these three models has its own special historical composition, not to be investigated, but the same is that they are all in the same context, as the dividend fades, technology companies can no longer get more traffic through model innovation, not to mention the cost of traffic is also rising.
As a result, the three current models also have their own advantages and problems.
Xiaohongshu started with content, and at the moment when Internet traffic is increasingly peaking, it is very important to have the ability to "make blood" by itself, and at the same time, it has won the trust of most users after many years of deep cultivation of content.
However, e-commerce tests the supply chain, logistics, after-sales and other capabilities, and the three camps of "cat and dog fight" occupy multiple markets such as clothing, 3C, and sinking, and it is more difficult to break through the blockade. This also led to most users being planted on The Little Red Book for a certain product, but turning around and going to other e-commerce platforms to place orders.
According to "Late Post", even in 2021, when Taobao's external link is cut off, the revenue of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce business will account for only 10%, and the remaining 90% will come from advertising.
This revenue structure is very similar to Baidu, which has become a simple diversion tool, and has a "traffic" skill but can only charge advertising fees.
According to the data, 60% of the traffic of Xiaohongshu comes from the search page. The active search feature makes its tool properties stronger, but according to our observation, this tool properties are actually different from Baidu in that year.
At present, the Internet is seriously islanded, which also means that the content characteristics of different software determine its search scope, and on the Little Red Book, life knowledge, beauty, and shopping are the mainstays, while the traffic such as food, knowledge Q&A, and movies is held by Apps such as Meituan, Zhihu, and Douban.
Categories have always determined the height of the search tool ceiling.
At present, Xiaohongshu is still accelerating its commercialization process, according to the new list data show that from January to June last year, the number of Xiaohongshu business notes increased by more than 149%. It is foreseeable that when commercialization and user experience cannot be balanced, Xiaohongshu will lose its advantage.
On the contrary, Taobao shopping and Xiaohongshu are in a different situation, backed by a huge e-commerce system, but lack of content hematopoietic ability.
As mentioned above, the data performance of shopping during the Double Eleven period given by Taobao is quite different from the actual GMV growth. In 2021, the total amount of commodity transactions during Alibaba's Double Eleven period was 540.3 billion yuan, an increase of 8.45% year-on-year, the lowest in the calendar year, and at the same time, there was a significant decline from last year's 26% growth rate.
Simply put, the active users who shop did not save Taobao's downward growth.
In our actual experience, shopping is more like a combination of Kuaishou, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu, with uneven note quality and vague crowd positioning, and perhaps due to the large base, the construction of community atmosphere also needs to be improved.
However, compared to the beauty group, shopping still has certain advantages in content, UI, and operation.
We look at the Meituan treasure box, unlike the shopping users can only associate their own purchased goods, due to the lack of historical order data, when the treasure box publishes notes, users can associate unconscumbered goods, which reduces the credibility.
It is not difficult to find that the structure of "community + e-commerce" is not new, but most of them have not formed a healthy cycle. Some are just algorithms and capital push the freshest "grass advertising" to users, and brainwash them day after day like "pyramid schemes", while the process of pulling grass is like opening a blind box, and you never know whether the harvest is surprise or fright before opening.