How to do industry research on Xiaohongshu? A must-read series before operating Xiaohongshu!

What preparations should be made in the early stage to operate Xiaohongshu well? In this article, the author puts forward his own insights and views on this issue, and recommends it to people who are interested in operating Xiaohongshu.

How to objectively research the situation of an industry on Xiaohongshu? How to see the competitiveness of the industry? How can new entrants make a breakthrough?

Today, I will try to give you some new ideas based on my research ideas for clients. Taking the "children's picture book" industry as an example, if you want to understand the current status of the industry in Xiaohongshu, you can go through the following four aspects.

1. Read the industry monthly report

Picture books belong to the cultural or educational industry. I first searched on Jianghe Chat Marketing Knowledge Planet, "Little Red Book + Education" and "Little Red Book Culture", and downloaded the June education and training insight report.

In the latest monthly report for June, I found 3 pictures related to picture books. Picture books belong to the category of children's early education, ranking fourth in the category, second only to stories, art, and animation. The high user search rate also shows that Xiaohongshu users pay high attention to picture books and have a demand for them.

The proportion of mainstream business searches on Xiaohongshu

Picture books belong to the blue ocean market, with low cost per click and few users investing in brands. As can be seen from the figure, the cost per click for learning machines is high, which indirectly reflects the fierce competition in learning machines.

At this point, I wondered why there were so few picture books released? Could there be the following reasons? On the one hand, picture books are mainly published by publishers and distributors, and there are few brands; on the other hand, picture books have lower overall profits than learning machines, and distributors' profits make it difficult to advertise. Of course, this is just speculation, and it needs further market verification. When understanding any industry, you should think with doubts.

Competition in the Children’s Early Education Category of Xiaohongshu

The official hot search terms for picture books are concentrated on bedtime stories and age groups. The core of picture book recommendations is age groups, and users have stronger demands for different age groups when purchasing. There are no brand names in the hot search terms for picture books, which indirectly shows that this industry has categories but no brands.

Top search terms for segmented business

Insight: In a market with categories but no brands, any new entrant must think about why this industry has categories but no brands. Is it because of the industry itself, or because no brand is willing to promote it? Or is it due to other reasons? We can use other search engines to look deeper into industry reports.

2. Read the notes on the site

After looking at the current status of the category, you can look at the entire site notes through third-party tools and apps. Use the third-party tool Huitun to search for "picture book". There are 600-700 notes published every day. On July 16, 633 notes were published that day, with an average interaction of more than 100. Imagine if you were doing Xiaohongshu, how would your notes stand out among 633 notes?

Number of notes on the Little Red Book of Gray Pig's "Picture Book"

At this point, we continue to go deeper and use the tool in Xiaohongshu to search for "picture book". We see a drop-down box with 17 keywords in total. We analyze them one by one and we need to understand the factors behind each keyword:

Notes: 312W+ notes, large number of notes, fierce competition;

Mall: 330,000+ products;

Picture books: picture book illustrations, picture book design, picture book courses, picture book typesetting, and picture book self-production;

Age: Adults & Children, including children, picture books are recommended for 3-6, 4-6, 6-8, 0-3 years old;

Type: Picture book English, picture book library.

Xiaohongshu "Picture Book" drop-down box

The drop-down words are the search habits of users captured by the Xiaohongshu system, and are also the specific needs of users. You can look at the specific note type according to your own category. If we are doing a picture book library, we can still refine it and look at the drop-down words of the picture book library. In order to better understand the picture book industry, we count the top 10 search results for "picture book" in the site (if you focus on a certain industry, you must analyze it in units of 100). Due to concerns about third-party tools, the data is not prepared and is manually counted here.

From the top 10 search results for “picture book”, we found the following information:

There are advertisements in positions 3 and 10, indicating that all brands want to grab the picture book word. However, a closer look at these two advertising positions shows that they are not picture book brands, but picture book training camps and parent-child camping. This also indirectly confirms that picture book brands do not have enough profit to advertise. Marketing revolves around 4Ps, and the price P also determines whether there is enough advertising budget to invest.

Looking at the account types, 80% are personal maternal and child accounts, and more than 50% of personal accounts will post product links to earn commissions. There is also a note about a popular article, with product sales of nearly 6,000 sets, indicating that the picture book industry has no investment budget and uses commissions to find maternal and child bloggers to promote products.

Top 10 notes on Xiaohongshu's "Picture Book"

Analysis of the top 10 content shows that bloggers are promoting single picture books based on stories, appearance, and series. If you are promoting picture books, you must organize the selling points and demand tables, then 1-on-1 BD bloggers, send products, and then make commissions.

3. Look at the mall sales

How are specific picture books selling on Xiaohongshu? Search for "picture books" and sort by sales. Among the top 10, 8 are Little Bean and 2 are Fox House, both of which have monthly sales of more than 10,000+.

Scrolling down 20 places, Xiao Bian still occupies more than 50%. Xiao Bian and Fox House have intercepted most of the picture book traffic. After the next 100 places, some individual merchants have gradually appeared. This also indirectly reflects that Xiao Bian and Fox House have done a lot in Xiaohongshu. For the top merchants, we need to further analyze how they do it and what points are worth referring to.

Top 10 best-selling picture books on Xiaohongshu

4. Look at industry benchmarks

Disassemble and select the top picture book merchants Fox House, from the four types of professional accounts + experts + advertising + live broadcast + store :

Professional account: 48,000+, 242 posts, 106,000+ likes and favorites. The content is about new book releases and fan-favorite activities. Each note also has a business card.

Experts: The brands are pulled in Huitun, mainly by junior experts and amateurs, and there are no current records. More through the expert commission to bring goods, because of the high sales volume on the site, it is not ruled out. A lot of reports and advertisements were done in the early stage;

Gray dolphin fox home gray dolphin data

Searching for Fox House on Xiaohongshu, I found that many accounts’ notes have Fox House’s business card, and there is no comment area component. Currently, Fox House basically sells books based on commissions. The core of picture book commissions is BD experts. The unified commission price allows bloggers to make real profits.

Live broadcasts: 4 per month on average.

Let’s look at a single picture book brand, such as a trip around the world in 24 vegetable markets. The publisher looks for bloggers to distribute the books, but we found that the prices of popular articles and the latest notes are different. The new revelation is: if the product is commissioned on Xiaohongshu, the price must be controlled well. This way, the blogger can continue to work as a distributor for a longer period of time. Otherwise, the commissions are different and the motivation is not strong.

Gray Pig Fox Home Background Data

To sum up the above, we have four methods to understand an industry from monthly reports, site notes, shopping malls, and industry benchmarks. After finding these phenomena, the next thing we need to do is to develop insights and solutions, and think about how to make breakthroughs as a brand.

The above are my ideas and methods for researching an industry.

Author: Jiang He, WeChat public account: "Jiang He Talks Marketing"