"Good content, longer red"
The rise of domestic products is one of the most important keywords in China's beauty market in recent years.
According to the data of Qingyan Intelligence, in the past decade, the scale of the domestic beauty market has continued to soar, with an average annual compound growth rate of 13.18%, which is 5.86 percentage points higher than the overall beauty market in China. At the same time, in 2023, domestic beauty products will surpass foreign brands for the first time with a market share of 50.4%. Behind these data changes are changes in market demand, the evolution of consumer behavior, and the boosting role of content platforms.
As an important position to influence user decision-making, Xiaohongshu has provided a growing soil for more and more domestic beauty brands with its vivid community perspective and powerful data capabilities, allowing more "domestic feelings", "Chinese style makeup" and "Chinese ingredients" to stand on the trend and occupy the minds of beauty users.
In order to explore the continuous upward momentum and future trend of China's beauty industry, today (April 23), Xiaohongshu Commercialization and Qingyan Intelligence jointly released the 2024 Xiaohongshu "China Beauty Industry White Paper" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper"). Through the decoding of the background of China's beauty market, beauty trends and the outlook of the "beauty plus" crowd, as well as the marketing value, this paper comprehensively analyzes the current situation and future trends of China's beauty market, and explores the source power and long-lasting password of the domestic beauty boom.
Anticipate beauty industry trends
There is no doubt that the rising rise of domestic brands is due to the high value of quality and cultural meaning of the new generation of consumers. As a unique content platform and beauty trend leading platform, Xiaohongshu has played a key role in deepening consumer awareness and building consumer trust, especially in boosting cultural confidence.
For example, many Chinese beauty brands have used the Xiaohongshu platform to showcase their traditional cultural elements, R&D and innovation capabilities, which not only provides an additional channel for brands to showcase their brand/product power, but also increases the opportunity to have a dialogue with users. In addition, the content of the notes shared by Xiaohongshu users allows users to gain an in-depth understanding of the cultural story and manufacturing process behind the product, thus forming a deeper cultural identity, which also stimulates consumers' emotional resonance and cultural confidence.
This can also be seen in the research of the White Paper. According to the survey, the rise of domestic beauty brands is not only an economic phenomenon, but also a manifestation of changes in social values. Among them, more than 90% of consumers have purchased domestic beauty products. Moreover, the younger the consumer, the higher the proportion of domestic brands, especially the post-00s group, almost everyone has the experience of buying domestic beauty.
Not only that, but a whopping 82.8% of consumers gave their domestic beauty products a rating higher than 6 points. Obviously, this evaluation fully demonstrates that the product strength of domestic beauty brands is constantly upgrading and has been recognized by consumers. In addition, more than 10% of consumers can accept domestic skin care products of more than 500 yuan, which can be said to break the cognitive limitation of "domestic products are affordable", proving that mid-to-high-end domestic beauty products also have a strong attraction and loyal fans.
In fact, as an important platform for marketing mentality and influence in the beauty industry, Xiaohongshu has successfully led many beauty trends with its diverse user groups, unique community atmosphere and content mechanism, and depicts a rich picture of the crowd. And this also helps brands to more accurately target consumers and market needs.
Taking the beauty and care trend as an example, in the field of skin care, the number of notes on "ingredients" has exceeded 27.4 billion, and the number of notes on "Chinese ingredients" has increased by 177%. In addition, the number of searches for skincare formulas with ingredients such as "circular skincare", "morning B and evening A", and "enzyme peel" exceeded 180%. At the same time, the need for refinement has also given birth to new trends and inspired new skincare trends. Under the creation of category trends, the notes of sub-categories such as essence oil, secondary polishing, and oil coating film have increased in different ranges.
In terms of makeup, the concept of "skin nourishment" is becoming more and more popular, and content such as "skin-nourishing makeup", "essence makeup" and "pure makeup" have seen high growth in Xiaohongshu. In 2023, searches for #lip refining have increased by 712% in #养肤底妆的笔记就超过了9万条. The "White Paper" also shows that the current national style and traditional culture have become a young new trend, and in 2023, the #中式老钱风关键词的搜索同比 will be +90671%, #远山眉的搜索量同比增加了1271%, and #战国袍妆容则是增加了309%.
Illustrated by beauty features
In terms of people, Xiaohongshu has always emphasized the concept of "people" (people are the most important), and is more willing to return to the essential "people" and "drives" to deeply understand the needs of "people".
For example, the White Paper argues that people's pursuit of beauty essentially stems from people's needs for personal construction and development, that is, the pursuit of "being empowered" in social relations, and individuals pay more attention to which level of social relations "beauty" empowers, which has become the core dismantling logic driven by "beauty".
In this way, Xiaohongshu proposes the crowd dismantling logic of "me and me", "me and close others", "me and social relations", and "me and pan-social networks". As a result, a number of underlying needs based on the drive, such as the integration of beauty and care, self-pampering, self-expansion, cultural resonance, and balance efficiency, are extended, and the corresponding products are used as solutions to help users realize their needs for beauty.
The need to become beautiful is to bless "personal charm", and the national style is one of the typical examples. With the continuous rise of young people's cultural self-confidence, people with the characteristics of new Chinese beauties have begun to discover the inspiration of color and style from traditional culture, and highlight their personal charm with oriental faces and oriental makeup. For example, the #Guotai Min'an face #Quanzhou hairpin makeup, which exploded in Xiaohongshu, are all their creative inspiration.
With the need to become beautiful in order to bless "physical strength", this kind of people become beautiful in order to be safe, error-free, efficient and convenient. For example, the characteristic people in the beauty industry represented by beauty and skin science students and makeup trainees pay attention to the practicality and convenience of products, and can help them maintain a good state in scenarios such as commuting/business trips/travel. #应急急救产品. #出差护肤等热门笔记即是由此而生. In addition, based on the demand for "internal motivation" and "influence" driven by the beauty of the crowd, the white paper explores the life scenarios of people with characteristics in the beauty industry, such as the technological avant-garde, the art and makeup school, and the domestic product sentiment party.
Xiaohongshu believes that when marketing returns to people-oriented, a full understanding of "people" can improve the quality and efficiency of brand planting. Starting from the consumption motivation, brands can see more potential opportunities associated with lifestyles, and tap a wider range of opportunities to break the circle across categories and groups.
It can be said that Xiaohongshu has become an important bridge of communication between consumers and brands. On Xiaohongshu, content creators share their life moments, product experiences, and shopping recommendations, forming an authentic and credible information dissemination channel. For brands, this is not only a window to showcase their products, but also a valuable resource for collecting user feedback and understanding consumer needs.
Through bottom-up content generation and sharing, Xiaohongshu accurately captures consumer interests and preferences, providing brands with a unique insight into consumer behavior. It can be said that Xiaohongshu, which leads beauty trends and insights, provides a marketing vane for beauty brands.
The whole life cycle empowers brand business growth
As a "life guide" for the people, Xiaohongshu provides users with a reference in the field of skin care, makeup and personal care. As a marketing vane for beauty brands, the third chapter of the White Paper decodes the marketing value of Xiaohongshu by interpreting specific cases.
First of all, it is the "efficient grass planting" created by Xiaohongshu. Through real user experience and comprehensive data analysis, we have created a transparent and trusting consumer guide ecosystem, effectively building a tighter bridge between consumers and brands.
As we all know, when a product is in different life stages, there will be different marketing appeals. Therefore, Xiaohongshu proposes differentiated solutions based on the product introduction period, growth period, maturity period and renewal period.
Specifically, in the introduction period, the brand needs to achieve "product pair, crowd pair, communication pair", the primary goal is to present the right product to the right user, and verify the accuracy of the communication strategy; in the growth period, it is to "fast" as the criterion, the most important task is to quickly penetrate the mind of the target group, quickly seize the track; in the mature period, expand the crowd, In the rejuvenation period, brands need to listen to the voices of users, gain insight into the real needs of upgrading products, and find the second growth curve of product life with innovative strategies and innovative plays.
In other words, brands only need to focus on "products" on Xiaohongshu and find corresponding solutions along the product life cycle.
The "White Paper" takes Mao Geping's "skin clothing" makeup primer as an example. According to reports, Mao Geping's new makeup primer aims at the subdivided needs of "mixed skin" by combining the insight and analysis of the Xiaohongshu data platform, and carries out efficient grass planting, and has embarked on a road of "out of the circle when it comes out of the new".
Specifically, the brand joined hands with Xiaohongshu's "Treasure" series IP "Treasure New Products" to launch the topic of #skin's new clothes with the official account, inviting KOLs and users across the network to try out the experience wear and participate in the evaluation of new products, deeply conveying the brand mentality of "Mao Geping Former Master of Makeup", and successfully building it into a "treasure and good thing" in the hearts of users through the launch of new products. During the cooperation period, the new product ranked among the top 1 in the pre-makeup category, and the search volume of the brand and product also increased by 8,500%.
In the above case, one of the most important models used is the crowd anti-funnel model, which helps brands find the most critical "core group" through accurate "user-product-demand" matching. Use content and promotion to stimulate the active response and sharing of the core population, form word-of-mouth communication based on the influence of people in the community, and penetrate into the high-potential people with similar needs and pain points layer by layer.
According to the "White Paper", in 2023, many domestic beauty brands will join hands with Xiaohongshu to create brand events in terms of volume, to achieve rejuvenation and break the circle in mind, and to build a long-term marketing façade in the position. "Not only are cutting-edge brands quickly seizing traffic here, but also excellent mature brands can accurately seize growth opportunities here. Xiaohongshu empowers and achieves a "red brand". ”
Taking Yangshengtang as an example, in terms of brand building, it joined hands with Xiaohongshu's S-level IP "Treasure Ingredients in China" and linked Xinhua News Agency to endorse it, establishing a high-end skin care brand image of "scientific and technological strength and cutting-edge ingredients". At the same time, through laboratory traceability videos, multi-dimensional evaluations of beauty bloggers/ingredient experts/skin experts, and strong output of platform exposure resources, we will cooperate with accounts such as exquisite middle class and noble lady skin care to create a content matrix and strengthen the transparent transmission of brand value concepts. In the future, Yangshengtang will continue to expand the ingredient party group, the efficacy demand group, and the luxury skin care group, expand the product matrix with explosive products and new products, and continue to amplify brand awareness from buyer pulses to normal store operations. In the end, the number of searches for the birch sap ingredient increased by 100% month-on-month, and the search for the Yangshengtang brand increased by 97% in 2023.
With the improvement of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce ecosystem, the three key fields of store live broadcast, buyer live broadcast, and product notes have shown a blowout growth. In 2023, the overall sales trend of the beauty care industry will rise, and the notes and live broadcast fields will continue to make efforts, and the potential of brand live broadcast will be further released. For example, Afu has become a domestic beauty brand with monthly sales of nearly 10 million yuan in Xiaohongshu in the past March through high-flying special live broadcasts (live broadcasts of head stars/buyers/managers) and brand live broadcasts that continue to be intensively cultivated.
It can be seen that through Xiaohongshu's precision marketing strategy and the closed-loop business channel of "marketing + sales", domestic beauty brands can not only achieve product sales growth, but also enhance consumer loyalty to the brand, and enhance the overall brand awareness and professional image.
Help domestic beauty products become popular
Overall, this white paper presents the current face of China's beauty market from various aspects such as data insights, consumer behavior and habits, and beauty sub-category trends, and provides development direction for beauty brands. At the same time, through the marketing analysis of a number of domestic beauty cases, it also reflects the empowerment and assistance of Xiaohongshu to domestic beauty brands.
There is no doubt that in the past year, the market environment has changed rapidly, domestic beauty products have risen against the trend, and "Hualiu is the real top stream" has gradually become a general consensus among young people. With this, the iteration of user consumption concepts, experience and practicality have become the new consumption themes of the current era, and this demand also puts forward higher requirements for the product innovation and marketing layout of domestic beauty brands.
According to the White Paper, Xiaohongshu's four-level grass planting power includes the natural distribution of product content, the fast and accurate amplification and stamping of KFS-high-quality content, the product life cycle× SPU solutions and enterprise product strategy. "In the future, the launch of grass planting will rise to the product strategy level of enterprises, and the co-creation of Xiaohongshu and brands will go one step further, providing brands with pre-insight in product planning and product selection. With the help of Xiaohongshu's understanding of the track, it helps brands to have good products first, and then good launches." And this is where Xiaohongshu's long-term vision and unique value lie.
As user expectations for new products escalate from "meet the unmeet needs" to "demand creation". Xiaohongshu's powerful user attributes, search and information functions, as well as the attributes of the birthplace of fashion trends, make the co-creation of new products have unique advantages, and rich content native and personalized user tags can make good products grow "with the end in mind".
At a time when cultural confidence, products are in the way, and technology is blessed, Chinese beauty brands are in a critical period of continuous rise, and Xiaohongshu is ultimately helping domestic beauty brands grow their business with its unique advantages in grass planting platform and self-closed-loop marketing value. The fire of the beauty and domestic product craze, with the help of Xiaohongshu, will continue to "burn".
It is worth noting that on the 24th, the "Zhenghong - 2024 Xiaohongshu China Beauty Industry Summit" will be held in Shanghai Zhangjiang Science Hall. At the summit, Xiaohongshu will not only conduct an in-depth interpretation of the content of the "White Paper on China's Beauty Industry", but also combine case analysis to dismantle commercial marketing methods, closed-loop business experience, etc., and join hands with CCTV to jointly open the "See China" IP.
On the 23rd and 24th, the summit will also hold a special beauty selection meeting outside the venue, and 250 domestic and foreign beauty brands and 200 Xiaohongshu buyers will be present. This selection meeting is not only to prepare for the 618 promotion, but also to build a direct dialogue field for brands and buyers to discuss the new possibilities of domestic beauty business.
How do Chinese beauty brands break through the fierce market?
April 24 at 15:15
"Just Red - 2024 Xiaohongshu China Beauty Industry Summit"
It will be broadcast live online
Scan the QR code of the poster or agenda list to make an appointment for the live broadcast of the summit
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2024 China Beauty Industry White Paper
Released by Xiaohongshu commercialization and Qingyan