Non-standard marketing Xiaohongshu

Text: Taka Opinion

As one of the few platforms on the Chinese Internet that still has dividends, Xiaohongshu is becoming more and more popular in the marketing circle this year.

Small and medium-sized enterprises value its low marketing cost and want to "give it a go, and turn a bicycle into a motorcycle"; there is not much surplus grain for big brands, so they have to spend it carefully, and they can't let go of the places where there is an increase.

Enterprises large and small rushed to Xiaohongshu, embracing the mature experience of practicing on other platforms, thinking that they could hold the handle, only to find out later that they were different - those methods did not apply at all in Xiaohongshu, and there was no way to copy them.

For brands, if the marketing of platforms such as Douyin is a scientific question with a standard answer, then Xiaohongshu marketing is a comprehensive question of scientific science + liberal arts, which is non-standard - from commercialization to the transaction end, the answer will vary greatly depending on the category, brand, and SPU, and it is difficult for enterprises to promote large-scale, batch, and industrialization.

Live non-standard: eat content

Live broadcast is the favorite of the current brand, let's start with live broadcast.

Douyin live broadcast has developed into a mature assembly line, and each link has a standard production model, which can be quickly promoted and replicated, and there are also shortcuts, such as "just make a preview" and "just do it at a low price". Someone succeeds, others imitate him and get good results. It's a math problem.

Taking the anchor as an example, the anchor of Douyin Live can be a "tool person" - they don't need to be Internet celebrities with personal charm, but like male and female workers in a textile factory, they work mechanically and repeatedly, and repeatedly introduce products according to the "pain point + effect + price activity" script every day. The work threshold is so low that even beginners can master various elements through 3-day training.

Xiaohongshu users don't eat this set very much.

For example, simply low prices will not work. The cutting-edge domestic brand is half a day away, mainly engaged in high-end mattresses, and the product pricing is concentrated in the 3K~1W range, and the sales of a single live broadcast on Xiaohongshu can reach 1.7 million. Its founder, Mohamham Zeng, said: "Users here are more patient and can interact with you back and forth. For example, I want you to tell me your budget, sleeping feeling, height and weight first, and then I will recommend a mattress to you. The audience will do what I ask me to do, and they won't say, 'What are you doing with all that uselessness, hurry up to the event!'" Instead, they were disgusted by the strong sales pitch and sales pitch that shouted at the top of their voices.

Another example is that successful streamers are difficult to replicate. After Dong Jie's live broadcast on Xiaohongshu became popular, many people followed suit, from stars such as Yang Rong, Zhang Li, Dong Xuan, to Internet celebrity bloggers of all sizes, but no one could make such a big splash like her.

Dong Jie's success is very personal - the "cold autumn" filter, exquisite taste of life, eloquent expression, and personal experience of using products. These factors work together to form an attraction to consumers, not because she memorizes the script.

The same goes for Zhang Xiaohui. Her unique life experience is the fundamental reason why fans trust and consume, and others can't easily follow suit.

In the final analysis, Xiaohongshu Live is a job that eats content, and users are paying for content.

This content is quite much about the individual understanding of the product. Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui will tell a lot about what they think of this product, what is good about this product, and the story behind it. These contents deepen consumers' awareness of the product and also bring users the enjoyment of reading content.

On the other hand, it comes from user interaction. Xiaohongshu anchors will do a lot of "useless work" and share their lives with fans a lot. For example, the painful experience when traveling on a business trip, the confused moment when choosing products, they will ask fans, do you like the things you choose this time, what you don't like, can you tell me, and have a deep interaction. In this process, users deeply resonate and identify bloggers with the same preferences, and bloggers become more authentic, flesh and blood, and become "friends" of users.

It is not difficult to see that Xiaohongshu live broadcast has much higher requirements for anchors than other platforms. This makes many businesses scratch their heads - Douyin live broadcast, finding a process-based anchor can solve the problem, and Xiaohongshu may require the boss to go down in person.

This is the case with Zeng Mohan, who has been idle for half a day. In the category of mattresses, the knowledge barriers are high, there are many information gaps, and it is difficult for ordinary anchors to have corresponding professional reserves. The founder has a natural emotional connection with the product, and knows how to explain the product thoroughly.

There are also brands that invite users to serve as anchors. In the live broadcast room of Yanzhiwu's Xiaohongshu, real users will be invited to tell why Yanzhiwu was chosen, based on what opportunity to come into contact with the bird's nest category, and so on. Only those who have actually eaten and approved of the product can truly tell the essence of it, rather than acting out according to the script.

Therefore, Xiaohongshu live broadcast cannot be copied in batches, but needs to be carefully polished by merchants in order to find a plan that suits them.

Non-standard pallets: niche, design

Live broadcast sales, at the level of goods, Xiaohongshu e-commerce also focuses on non-standard products.

Looking at the pallets of Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui, it is not the world of hard currency such as Lancôme and Estee Lauder, but full of hand-made, niche brands, designer products, etc.

Because the end of the standard product is low price. Compared with comprehensive e-commerce such as cats and dogs, Xiaohongshu, as a community e-commerce, has a small flow and low efficiency, and it is difficult to get a price advantage comparable to the former as a standard product, and it cannot compete in the richness of goods. Users may plant a standard product on Xiaohongshu, but when placing an order, they still tend to go to a platform with lower prices, more credible after-sales service, and more authentic guarantees.

The price of non-standard products has not yet been broken. For example, fashion clothing, designer products, or overseas niche high-end products with poor information. By grouping goods in these categories and relying on buyers to improve the efficiency of matching people and goods, Xiaohongshu e-commerce can accelerate consumption decisions.

On the other hand, the composition of the community also determines that non-standard categories are more suitable for growing here. Female, young, and high-lined, are the typical user characteristics of Xiaohongshu and the representative of the exquisite crowd. Their tastes are often more picky, and it is difficult for ordinary mass standard products to stand out, and non-standard design and creative products are more likely to be popular.

商业化非标:大渗透VS小切口

There are thousands of people on the e-commerce side, and the commercialization of Xiaohongshu (that is, the advertising part) is also very different from the past, and brands cannot copy the routines of other platforms "take it".

Traditional Marketing, which pays attention to large exposure and penetration, advocates 360-degree all-round coverage, first reaches large-scale crowds, and then leaks users layer by layer. It relies on huge traffic and budget to keep the entire crowd open and maintain a high level of brand recognition.

Contrary to this kind of "big face" approach, Xiaohongshu's crowd incision is very small, often starting from the core user and extending outward, first finding the precise group of people (the part of the population targeted at the beginning of product development), and then expanding to a wider range of relevant people. Xiaohongshu calls it the anti-funnel model.

Yang Junwei, head of content marketing at Ecovacs, gave an example of the "Chinese New Year crowd". CNY is an important marketing node for enterprises, and the brand's advertising logic on other platforms is that if a person has seen several Chinese New Year-related information flows, he will be labeled with a unified label of "New Year's interest group", which will be subject to the brand's indiscriminate advertising.

But when it comes to Xiaohongshu, the New Year crowd will be further subdivided, such as the experiential New Year crowd, the nostalgic New Year crowd, the New Year ritual crowd, and the New Year prayer crowd...... Become a different sub-group of people.

The more detailed the crowd is, the more accurate the content can be pushed. Brands can produce content that is more suitable for their actual life conditions for different Chinese New Year groups, which greatly improves communication efficiency.

Not only does the content of the ad vary from person to person, but the product can also be very different. For example, in the same group of mothers, each mother's concept and idea are diverse, and they will be divided into many different types. Some people "fine parenting", carefully select the best everything to give their children, and some people "Buddha free-range", hoping to save time and effort to easily take care of the baby, leaving more time for themselves. The former prefers beautiful white labels and designer brands, while for the latter, it is more effective to push the brand's products, because the quality is guaranteed, and the rest assured is also worry-free.

In addition, Xiaohongshu can also expand new increments for the brand.

Taking acne products as an example, students and young people are its main market. In fact, people of different ages may be troubled by acne at a certain moment, such as seasonal sensitivity, stressful staying up late, and menstrual periods...... In these moments, they may all need acne products. Xiaohongshu can isolate these demand motivations and accurately link brands to relevant people.

In other words, in the past, brands used to frame all the needs of a group of people vertically, but on Xiaohongshu, they can also horizontally cut the similar needs of different groups of people.

Xiaohongshu's accuracy is not to clarify who this person is, but to let the brand understand what kind of things this person wants at this stage. This is something that many mainstream platforms want to do but haven't done yet.

The root of the support behind it is Xiaohongshu's extremely long-tail traffic distribution mechanism. On the one hand, it does not advocate relying on large traffic to scare the explosive models, and restrain the appearance of too many bloggers and content with a head-pinching plan; on the other hand, its content and user portrait system are very specific in the label classification, and will not arbitrarily push users to expand and generalize the first-level category, so that the distribution of traffic can be extremely accurate and long-term.

From e-commerce to advertising, Xiaohongshu's marketing as a whole has a big "non-standard" status. It is not a model that relies entirely on data algorithms, but contains quite high gambling elements - the identification of crowds, the sensitivity of content, and the sophistication of user experience, all of which will make brands feel incomprehensible. This is also the charm of Xiaohongshu. It is precisely because of these uncertainties that brands, especially startups with limited funds, have an opportunity to gamble and leverage greater spillover value, or even rewrite the landscape.