From face to hair, 4000 words to explain the secrets of creating a hit product across categories

The beauty and personal care brand "KIMTRUE" has created many hit products in the five years since its establishment. This article analyzes the secrets of its hit product creation from the two aspects of product research and development and marketing.

In the beauty and personal care industry, everyone wants to know what the next blockbuster product that will detonate the industry will be, and how to continue to create blockbuster products.

Among all brands, only a few can gain a foothold by relying on a super single product. However, for most of these brands, the dividends of super single products have expired before the brand develops new hot products. There are also very few brands that have grasped the secret of continuously creating hot products, allowing the brand power to be consolidated through each big single product.

In the popular beauty and personal care market, Daofa observed a brand called "KIMTRUE" that focuses on functional care. In the five years since its establishment, KIMTRUE has created many industry blockbusters, and the fig series launched this year has also produced a billion-level single product.

To this end, Daofa talked to the relevant person in charge of the brand and contacted Xiaokui, a former employee of a department of a cutting-edge personal care brand, in an attempt to answer the secret of continuously creating popular products.

01 Seize the trend of "emotional skin care" and strengthen the barriers of co-creation with influencers

It is good to lean on a big tree for shade, and the "big tree" that it leans on for the first time is the Jinjia Group, which started out as an agency operation.

Public data shows that as a leading company in the industry, Jinjia has served more than 20 international beauty brands of all sizes since 2007. Jinjia has accumulated experience in product selection logic and content marketing to create a hit product in China. Its own brand Qichu is the biggest beneficiary of this methodology.

Since its launch in 2019, Qichu has had many hit products. The mashed potato cleansing cream that made the brand famous, the hair care oil that is becoming the second growth curve, and the fig series of cleansing cream + hair care oil launched last year are becoming new super products.

(Source: 2024 Shanghai Jinjia 618 report card)

From makeup removers to hair oils, what are the reasons why Qichu makes consumers pay for its products? And why can it always grasp the major trends in the industry? Daofa found that Qichu grasped two trends and set up two major mechanisms.

Trend 1: Emotional skin care + self-pleasing experience, let products with a sense of happiness heal people's hearts

The fast-paced, high-pressure lifestyle of young people has led to the birth of the emotional economy. Skin care is a process of pleasing oneself. In addition to the functional value of the product, consumers are more willing to pay for their own emotions.

In the past two years, emotional skin care has become popular. Behind this change is the change in consumers' skin care intentions. For example, the use of gentle makeup remover creams instead of makeup remover wipes that easily rub against the skin not only emphasizes the cleaning ability, but also consumers begin to pay attention to "whether my skin and I are happy" during use.

Based on this, Qichu not only focuses on the efficacy of the product, but also pays more attention to the product experience. We start from the five senses of "see, touch, effect, care and smell", that is, product appearance, product touch, product efficacy, product care, and product taste, and continuously optimize product details.

After noticing the inconvenience of using a scoop, the company improved it to a magnetic scoop. When all hair care oils on the market emphasize their efficacy, the company focused on upgrading the efficacy of hair care oils while achieving "only moisturizing hair, not sticky hands". The company even emphasized in the promotional copy that "the refreshing fruity fragrance can also relieve the stuffiness in the bathroom".

Trend 2: From seeking stable fragrance to unique fragrance, making the brand "unique"

In the past, Qiechu's product strategy was to provide domestic products with high cost performance and seek stability. However, since the launch of the Fig series, Qiechu's pursuit of stability has turned into seeking differentiation.

Previously, Qiechu's hair care essential oils were common and well-known gardenia and osmanthus scents. As for the fig series, as a rare scent, it is difficult for consumers to imagine the scent before purchasing, so the product launch requires a certain amount of market education. From a branding perspective, Qiechu hopes to highlight brand differentiation through special scents.

We need to seek difference while also seeking stability. Based on the insight of big data in the market, we chose the fig fragrance, which is highly recognizable and unique, as the entry point, and added high-value packaging and promotional copy to stimulate consumers' interest in the product.

Market experience shows that brands that can seize the hot trend will not do too badly, while the quality of products determines the lower limit of sales. In terms of strengthening product strength, two major mechanisms were set up in the product research and development stage to capture the latest market trends and polish products.

Mechanism 1: Influencers deeply participate in product co-creation and provide the most authentic market feedback

Influencers who understand both products and consumers can often provide brands with more systematic and accurate market feedback.

In the early stages of product development, Qichu will have multiple rounds of in-depth communication with influencers. The feedback from influencers will tell us which products are currently being considered and the most cutting-edge market insights, which will become the direction of Qichu's new product development. In addition, when the product is ready, in addition to consumer evaluation, evaluation with hundreds of influencers is the top priority, and product improvements will be made based on their key opinions.

The benefit of co-creating products with influencers is that they can provide the most authentic feedback that best meets market demand, and can provide advance insights into selling points and pain points. In addition, after multiple rounds of communication, influencers will have a relatively high memory of the product, which will facilitate subsequent marketing promotion.

Mechanism 2: Pay attention to user feedback in real time and quickly iterate products

The ability to quickly iterate products is also one of Qiechu's advantages. The relevant person in charge said that the brand shares all big data from front-end customer service to back-end R&D, pays attention to user feedback in real time, and iterates and improves quickly based on the premise of benefiting consumers.

Competitors have not yet realized the demand changes, but Qichu has already taken the lead and done better. This is the key to Qichu's answer to how to maintain brand competitiveness in such a fiercely competitive environment.

Only by staying ahead of the game can you stay at the table.

In line with the real market, the brand strengthens the competitive barriers co-created by influencers. At the same time, it firmly grasps the general trend of "emotional skin care", innovates user experience with the "five senses", and is slowly becoming a more mature domestic brand.

The content marketing advantages that Jinjia has accumulated previously have, to a large extent, also pushed Qiechu to become the first brand to benefit from the short video platform. Next, we will continue to analyze the logic of Qiechu's marketing investment.

02 Based on product reputation, adhere to the logic of maximizing ROI

Public data shows that Jinjia started its MCN business in 2013 and independently incubated influencers. This also laid the foundation for Jinjia to start up faster than domestic brands of the same period.

As a company that relied on influencers to launch its products in the early days, Qiechu has already developed a business philosophy of efficient launch. During 2019-2022, Qiechu stepped on the trend of short and medium-length videos and launched its products to the market. Thanks to Jinjia's long-term internal experience accumulation, Qiechu's many considerations during launch also made product promotion smoother and seized the first opportunity.

Daofa learned from Xiaokui, a former employee of a department of a cutting-edge personal care brand, that the core logic of celebrity promotion and celebrity screening criteria of most brands are similar, but theirs is more comprehensive and systematic, and has a set of efficient steps in promotion budget, promotion strategy, content strategy and traffic investment strategy.

1. Promotion budget: Use the best-selling products to increase publicity and sales, and seize the channel dividend first

When allocating promotion budget, we should first distinguish whether the product is a hot-selling product or a regular product, and then adjust the channel distribution ratio based on this.

Hot-selling products need to have both sales and popularity, so the focus of channel placement is on Douyin and Xiaohongshu. For regular products, the purpose is to maintain stability. No matter which platform is chosen for placement, ROI and sales data are key indicators.

Taking the launch of a major promotion product in the past as an example, in terms of the proportion of platform launch budget, Douyin occupied most of the budget, Xiaohongshu and Weibo had similar budgets, and more emphasis was placed on the WeChat channel.

It is worth mentioning that Qiechu invested in the WeChat channel. According to Xiaokui, around 2022, the dividends of public account private domain group buying experts still exist. Qiechu learned from the feedback of celebrities that the ROI of many big celebrities' group buying on WeChat is still greater than 1. At that time, only Guyu, HBN and Qiechu were still paying attention to and continuing to cultivate this channel. This channel also accumulated a lot of brand momentum for Qiechu on the WeChat side and incubated the initial seed users.

2. Promotion strategy: Find effective experts to do what needs to be done

There are two main issues to consider in the promotion strategy: how to find effective influencers based on the principle of maximizing ROI, and how to allocate the proportions of influencers at different levels.

What is an effective expert?

Daofa Analysis believes that the right influencer may be able to produce popular content, but it cannot meet the ROI standard. Effective influencers need to meet the brand's "both needs". If the influencer meets the advertising needs in the first cooperation, but the budget increases in the second time or the influencer's sales data decreases, it may lead to not cooperating with them at first.

To evaluate the effectiveness of influencers, it is necessary to comprehensively consider the sales effect and promotion budget.

In considering the effect of bringing goods, the initial reference data dimensions include but are not limited to: basic data of influencers (used to evaluate stability and upward trends), detailed information of the influencers’ recent 10 notes and orders (cooperating brands, cooperation time, search results on Douyin and Tmall), and prediction of the effect of bringing goods.

As for the promotion budget, the transparent and shared influencer placement platform established within the group has greatly helped the group to be efficient and accurate in its influencer placement. Since the group has more than one self-owned brand, the influencer placement platform has collected historical data on brand placement, covering dimensions such as influencer placement costs, product promotion time, product promotion content, and product promotion effects, so that brands can avoid detours in subsequent placements.

In addition, effective influencers from different channels play different roles.

Douyin focuses on volume and sales, while Xiaohongshu widely spreads KOC or amateur notes. This is a channel strategy determined by the brand based on the attributes of different platforms and product positioning.

Let’s take a specific example:

In product promotion, the emphasis on volume + sales is initially placed on the Douyin platform, so the focus is on high-quality influencers at the head and waist level and college student influencers at the waist level, which account for a large proportion of the budget but are relatively small in number;

As a key decision-making platform for users to search after reading, Xiaohongshu emphasizes the use of a highly cost-effective method to place reviews by amateurs. There are many celebrities who post reviews, but most of them are low-profile KOLs and replacement KOCs, with little budget investment.

Weibo and WeChat mainly use hard advertising, and influencers use a form similar to "group buying" to carry out conversions.

It is worth mentioning that the cooperation with influencers can be divided into one-time and multiple-time cooperation. One-time cooperation is the most common, and multiple-time cooperation is mainly for high-quality bloggers with wide influence. The cost of one-time cooperation with big bloggers is relatively expensive. Multiple-time cooperation can make ROI greater than 1, and it can also deeply influence the minds of consumers, making users feel that promoting this product is not a "food behavior" of the blogger, but a sincere promotion.

The success of Qichu is inseparable from the achievements of influencers. In essence, the brand is paying attention to traffic while paying attention to scientific delivery. User insights in content strategy are an important advantage of the brand.

3. Content strategy: Product content focuses on selling points and pain points, and expert content fits the trend of hot articles

How to create differentiation when content is highly homogenized? Daofa found that the solution is divided into two steps: product content strategy and expert content strategy.

The product content strategy mainly solves the differentiation of the core selling points and the pain points of scenarios. The core selling point of the product is to emphasize the cost performance of the product, the price is lower than that of big brands, and the functions are ahead of domestic products. At the same time, in the product description, the data should be kept different from the competing products as much as possible.

Secondly, find the key pain points of the scene and be responsible for the conversion.

The insight into the pain points of the scene comes from two aspects: on the one hand, it comes from the common pain points of the category. For example, makeup remover needs to be clean and not hurt the skin. On the other hand, it comes from users' complaints about competing products. Feedback such as makeup remover smells bad on the face and makeup remover oil makes the face sticky. Based on this, the brand pushes back its own product advantages and constantly emphasizes them in product content.

How to make influencers create good content is also very important. For Qiechu, high-quality product content, content that fits the personality of influencers, and hot trend content can create better exposure, seeding, and conversion data for works, so more budget is placed on the release of product content.

In addition, in order to increase the popularity of content, when cooperating with influencers, we will initially break down the content of high-quality business orders from the influencers who have been confirmed to cooperate, and create similar or upgraded content.

4. Delivery strategy: find time based on platform trends and prioritize potential hits

Finally, after the "right location" and "right people" are in place, you also need the right "right time", that is, the launch strategy.

How to choose the delivery time? The initial approach is to observe the notes posts on the two major channels, Xiaohongshu and Douyin, over the years, and the changing trends in the reading volume and interaction volume during the delivery cycle, and concentrate the delivery during the period with the highest data (that is, the most popular content).

In terms of traffic strategy, based on the three major criteria of "good data - popular articles, high clicks on the first picture, high-quality influencers and top influencers", these contents are given priority. First, create a buzz with a voice in the US vertical circle, and use the "ripple effect" to make product launch and promotion smoother.

In order to make the advertising more efficient, the brand has also established a special advertising team internally to help promote the products.

The links are closely linked, and the first step of marketing makes this thing cost-effective enough. In the era of "many demons dancing" in the beauty industry, we have already learned the secrets of performance marketing.

03 Analyst Comments

The previous cases show that creating a hit product is not metaphysics, but a systematic project.

As the group's biggest advantage, celebrity resources are not only a traffic tool, but also a fast channel for brands to connect to the real market, and they are also the key group for Qiechu to create hot products on the marketing side. From products to marketing, Qiechu has always been user-oriented.

For Qiechu, after the traffic of celebrities faded, the challenge of ROI was looming. Only by improving brand power in all aspects can we move to a new stage.

From last year’s brand upgrade to the collaboration with the TV series “Nine Layers Purple”, it is all showing off, and Chu is working hard to make up for its brand power homework and build its own content assets to resist the challenges brought about by the fading of celebrity traffic.

Author | Lao Xie