How did I sell sleeping bags on Xiaohongshu, a niche and unpopular product? | A trader’s story

With this trick, we got 5 million natural exposures on Xiaohongshu.

In addition to posting materials on new media accounts and finding influencers to send products, how else can a traditional outdoor brand carry out marketing communications in today's fierce market competition?

Instead of racking their brains for new ways, the approach of the sleeping bag brand "BLACKICE" seems pleasing but direct - that is, to refine the expert content strategy, that is, to rethink the usual blogger content cooperation, how it can be made more effective, and what kind of content can be more "out of the circle", thereby bringing voice and growth to the brand at a lower cost.

As a well-known domestic down sleeping bag brand in the outdoor circle, Black Ice, founded in 2009, has occupied the vast majority of the domestic high-end market share by relying on "high cost performance" and "professionalism". The hot outdoor track in the past few years has allowed many outdoor brands to taste the dividends, and also brought about a huge explosion of outdoor content on platforms such as Xiaohongshu. This inspired Black Ice to shift its sales and communication channels from offline to online.

As the social media leader of the Black Ice brand, Zhang Xiaohui, a veteran with more than a decade of experience in the outdoor industry, initially started out as a store and regional salesperson in the outdoor industry. After joining Black Ice in 2018, he began to manage social media communications on platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin. At the end of 2019, the sudden outbreak of the epidemic, the explosion of the outdoor industry, the participation of a large number of new players in the outdoor industry, the expansion of category boundaries and the price increase storm were all special moments that he and the brand experienced together.

As the outdoor craze of the past few years has gradually faded, we also talked with Zhang Xiaohui about how a traditional outdoor brand that has transformed into an online brand thinks about the following questions:

• How to seize the trend of national outdoor activities and radiate the awareness of niche professional groups to the general public?
• Can we make good use of the fragmented blogger content on platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin to better achieve exposure and seeding effects?
• At the same time, how can we break through the limitations of categories and seasons and achieve good content dissemination when we mainly sell down sleeping bags, which is an extremely niche product?

The following is Zhang Xiaohui’s own statement:

1. Blogger collaboration also requires creative thinking

Creating social media content for brands and products is not just about finding thousands of KOLs/KOCs, sending the products, publishing the content, and collecting the data. Whether it is large-scale commercial placement or blogger seeding, you must respect the content creators and the laws of communication themselves.

Before co-creating content with bloggers, I think you should first ask yourself a few questions: What do you want to express (content)? Who do you want to express it to (audience)? How do you express it (display format)? Where do you express it (channel)? How many people see it (exposure)? What is the result (content influence)?

First, the brand concept should be visualized and broken down into different content forms. These contents should not only be true, but also comply with the rules of different platforms and meet the characteristics of bloggers. The brand concept of Black Ice is very simple: I hope my friends can have fun outdoors and sleep comfortably. This concept can be visualized into many contents.

Secondly, different bloggers have different content formats and personal characteristics. So we need to think differently and try to "differentiate content to different people" when creating content, try to magnify the characteristics of these bloggers, expose the product as much as possible through unique content, strengthen the audience's impression, and when they need similar products, they will think of Black Ice first.

The most memorable time was when I was chatting with my friend "Protein" (Xiaohongshu blogger: Eat more protein) about the experience of using the equipment for activities in Meili Snow Mountain. She sent a photo of herself crawling into a sleeping bag to enjoy the scenery. She looked like a caterpillar and was very happy. At that moment, I felt that she had also become a part of the scenery.

Caterpillar-Picture from blogger @Eat more protein

Unexpectedly, the "caterpillar sleeping bag" later became a classic case study for us. At that time, I disassembled this photo, made it into a case study and sent it to many blogger friends, asking them to take similar and fun photos while ensuring outdoor safety. This provided the basic material for the "caterpillar sleeping bag" in the early stage.

Afterwards, we released these materials in various forms and on multiple channels, and they were very popular. When you search for Black Ice Sleeping Bags on Xiaohongshu, you can see various photos of caterpillar sleeping bags, such as high-altitude "caterpillars", snow "caterpillars", jumping "caterpillars", and "caterpillars" in groups. Caterpillar sleeping bags have become a form of outdoor photography on Xiaohongshu, attracting many users to imitate and take photos spontaneously.

The picture comes from bloggers @板栗同学@猪毛夫妻

For Black Ice, each photo of the caterpillar sleeping bag contains a lot of information: product exposure, actual usage scenarios, the status of the participants, and beautiful scenery. Through these scene photos, users can intuitively understand that outdoor life is not just about climbing uphill and walking, and they can also know what kind of sleeping bag to use in what environment.

At the same time, it is a new way of taking photos and entertainment, because it is difficult to take such photos by yourself, and you must interact with your teammates. When the content setting meets the core needs of everyone, including bloggers and users, more people will naturally participate in the dissemination.

In recent months, there have been more than 800 spontaneous posts about Black Ice products on Xiaohongshu and nearly 5 million organic impressions. You can see that in addition to purchase guides and reviews, we have also produced a lot of personalized and life-oriented content.

For example, you can wake up in the morning, put on your sleeping bag, open the tent curtain and see the scenery of life; or after the college entrance examination, you can start your youth journey in the train berth with a sleeping bag on your back.

The picture comes from blogger @头铁肖肖@艾斯SSSS

In the past two years, as the atmosphere in the outdoor industry has gradually calmed down, we have further moved away from the original very functional, user-education narrative to find and refine practical scenarios and lifestyles.

In fact, this is also a transformation from "people looking for goods" to "goods looking for people". Instead of waiting for users to really find the need for a sleeping bag before introducing it, why don't we create more interesting content to tell everyone "it's time to go out for a walk".

2. Content breaks through the circle? Consider the audience's needs first

Many brands want to expand from a niche to the mass market, and Black Ice is no exception. Moreover, outdoor sleeping bags are an unpopular category. In the past few years, we have been working on breaking the circle of content, which stems from two key backgrounds:

First, the product foundation has been strengthened. From 2009 to now, Black Ice has developed a relatively professional and complete outdoor product system, including clothing, sleeping bags, and equipment products. Sleeping bags include down sleeping bags, cotton sleeping bags, and fleece sleeping bags, with filling volumes ranging from 200 grams to 1,600 grams. Clothing includes down jackets, jackets, and so on.

Black Ice's sleeping bag product matrix

The reason for expanding the product category is to meet users' more comprehensive outdoor activity needs while breaking through the original seasonal limitations of down sleeping bags.

The second is the rise of outdoor activities among all people. In the past few years, a large number of new players have participated in outdoor activities. Rather than professional sports, most of them prefer to relax in a natural environment. So we adjusted the promotional content in a timely manner, adding lighter outdoor life content on the basis of professional orientation.

So we can see that now not only professional athletes who climb Mount Everest are using Black Ice sleeping bags, but casual campers are also discussing our products.

The promotion channels are also different from before. In the past, we focused on offline and dealer channels. In recent years, we have put more efforts on Xiaohongshu and Douyin, which are national interactive platforms. Douyin mainly uses exposure and brings goods. Xiaohongshu focuses on scene display and planting grass. We actually put more emphasis on the K side of KFS. In the interaction with bloggers and influencers, we will try to produce more interesting and fun content with diverse styles. Although the workload has increased, the effects of product exposure and crowd radiation are good, and the professional attributes of the brand are also retained.

The medium of our content relies on the product. Sleeping bags are a special product. They are mostly displayed in sleeping scenes (such as in tents) and are difficult to present independently. So the challenge for us is how to present sleeping bags in a fun and interesting way that can highlight the product functions and gain better exposure and reach more people?

Usually when we create content for communication, we will break down the content types into different forms according to the core information that the brand wants to convey at the moment and the selling points of different products. For example, sleeping bags can have equipment sharing, real-life demonstrations, and product evaluation introductions; clothing can have outfits; and tableware can be divided into outdoor and non-outdoor scene usage sharing. Different categories are suitable for different scenes and content themes.

Creating content is not just about outputting content. You also need to consider the needs of your audience. Simply put, it should be "what I'm interested in", "what's relevant to me", or "what's useful to me". Different types of content have different effects, such as the following three categories:

Equipment sharing: Through different types of players, different activity environments, and different equipment combinations, we provide new players with more equipment selection references.

Real-life demonstrations: For example, usage scenarios or activities such as winter snow camping, high-altitude hiking, or climbing Mount Everest not only allow the audience to better understand the product and increase their trust, but also make it clearer what kind of product they need for specific scenarios.

Product review: Players/bloggers/experts comment, summarize and share the product through actual usage experience, so that the audience can have a deeper understanding of the product.

After we have built the content framework, we will look for bloggers and experts in different fields who share the same brand philosophy to interact with, and ask them to use the product first, feel, experience, and understand our product in real scenarios. This will make the content more real and interesting. With more content and more exposure, it will be easier to reach groups in different fields.

3. To plant grass, you need to learn to integrate it into life scenes

Traditionally, sleeping bags are only used when camping or outdoors, and down sleeping bags are only used when it is very cold. The limited scope of use, coupled with slow product iteration and low replacement frequency, makes it difficult to promote a single sleeping bag.

In fact, Black Ice sleeping bags have different materials, shapes, and filling volumes, and can be used in most seasons and environments. But it is certainly difficult to break the circle with just this, so we have been producing product content that is different from traditional concepts. For example, when sleeping on the floor at the airport, you can use a sleeping bag to sleep overnight, you can use a sleeping bag on a train berth, or you can use a sleeping bag during a lunch break in the office. Through this differentiated content display, we can form continuous content exposure.

The picture comes from blogger @卡西@安安去野

At the same time, we will also produce some content with specific topics, such as high-altitude hiking equipment in summer, sharing of must-have equipment for certain routes, and warmth for winter outdoor activities, etc. This can be combined with clothing and equipment products to break the limitations of seasons and categories and form multi-angle exposure.

The picture is from blogger @二四@山野里阿乐

Although we have tried to tell brand stories, we basically only tell them when it is necessary. I think brand stories are a plus for brand power, but they are not the core. In my opinion, consumers are more concerned about the current state of the brand and the first impression of the product that the brand creates for consumers.

For example, from the end of last year to the beginning of this year, Black Ice implemented the first wave of new down standards, and the price of down raw materials increased dramatically, so the terminal sales price increased significantly. There were comments on various platforms, and the pressure was quite high. People originally valued Black Ice's cost-effectiveness and thought that we raised prices for brand premium, but this is not the case. When we knew that the price increase was a problem for the entire industry, we no longer deliberately made excuses for ourselves.

The fading of outdoor enthusiasm is naturally a common problem in the industry. When some players choose to withdraw from the circle, some players stay and choose their favorite outdoor methods, which means the track is refined. This requires us not to blindly output products, but to produce some content that matches different segments as much as possible, such as parking in cars for the automotive field, paddleboarding, boating and camping for water sports, etc.

The picture comes from bloggers @3D Wriggling Girl @Axiong and Little Camel

There is still huge room for the outdoor equipment market in the future, but the boundaries will not be so obvious. Outdoor products will be used in daily life and at home, and outdoor activities will become daily life. The requirement for brands is to have richer product categories, while the requirement for communication is to be more vertical, more down-to-earth, and more life-scenario-oriented. Between professionalism and popularization, I believe that any brand can find a language that suits itself.

4. Analyst comments:

During the more than two-hour conversation with Zhang Xiaohui, I could feel that he actually had many ideas about product content marketing, such as "put yourself in the shoes of the target audience, or become them", "do a good job of content accumulation, and lay a solid foundation to have a node-specific explosion".

In today's market communication, although countless fragmented small contents are not as powerful as big ideas, they are the touchpoints for most users to actually receive information. How to tap the potential of these "small contents" to plant grass is worth further research and discovery.

Author | KUMA
This article is written by the author of Operation Party [Knife Skills Research Institute], WeChat public account: [Knife Skills Research Institute], original/authorized to be published on Operation Party, and any reproduction without permission is prohibited.

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.