7 counter-common senses of Xiaohongshu’s people-oriented marketing

Xiaohongshu, a community focusing on people-oriented marketing, has cultivated seed users who truly love brands through its unique platform concept, creating a new marketing model. Now, this personalized service model is growing stronger.

Yesterday, I had the honor of attending the Xiaohongshu Seed Awards, which is the industry’s first marketing award focused on seeding content. I took 5,000 words of notes during the 4-hour event. I was in awe. There are experts in every gap in the industry.

There are 9 new cases. Each company’s understanding, tactics, and approach are different, but the core is "people-oriented marketing". I have summarized them into 7 marketing common sense, which are also counter-common sense on other platforms.

I hope this condensed business code can provide some inspiration to existing and new entrants.

1. Stimulate the upward force of human nature, rather than exploit the downward force of human nature to make money

This one is put first because making money by taking advantage of the decline of human nature has become a social addiction. Everywhere there is declining traffic (borderline/hint/addictive), declining consumption (inducement/intimidation/hidden fraud/asymmetry), declining profits (killing the familiar/huge profits/inferior products), etc.

Xiaohongshu is one of the few good places. It believes that the community has values ​​from the beginning. The platform has been exploring content that makes users' lives better. For example, why do you want to be beautiful? What does home mean to you? What has exercise brought you?

I particularly like a term they use internally, called 15° elevation angle. It is neither looking straight ahead, looking down, nor looking up vertically. It vividly expresses the platform's operating philosophy.

2. Sell consumers a lifestyle, not just products

The excessive pursuit of low prices is another trap that has begun to backfire on the entire business ecosystem. Not only do businesses lack profits to support their development, but consumer interests are also harmed in the long run.

In fact, from the user's perspective, low price is only one of the factors in the consumption process, and goods are a medium to make life better. On Xiaohongshu, merchants do not need to sell goods on their own. A more efficient way is to understand, stimulate, and meet the existing needs of users.

Mijia is a particularly good example. With more than 200 new products launched each year, the traditional marketing methods are very scattered. However, it took advantage of the "partial renovation" trend of Xiaohongshu, which perfectly matches its own "partial intelligence" concept. For each segmented scene, it promotes the corresponding single product, and each product can give users wonderful instant feedback.

Xiaohongshu users are keen on renovating tiny home spaces, and "partial renovation" is popular

When he shouted that every square meter of the home can be smarter, and that Mijia smart home can bring you tiny miracles, his peers and he are no longer in the same competitive dimension.

On Xiaohongshu, what you sell is not goods, but a lifestyle.

3. Find the seed users who truly love you, rather than placing orders impulsively

With today's mature business path, inducing orders is not a difficult problem, but the data may look good for a while, but the return rate is alarmingly high, which becomes poison to the business.

Slow is fast, which has been repeatedly verified in the case of seed users. A user who truly loves you has more long-term brand significance than dozens of users who are indifferent to you.

Disassembly and execution is not complicated. Three steps can solve three problems:

Step 1: Where are the users? The answer is simple. In search, Xiaohongshu users love to do their homework. A part of brand words + a part of category words are enough to form the initial target customer group (make good use of tools such as Lingxi);

Step 2: How to make users fall in love with you? Focus on each type of search terms, develop differentiated content, pay attention to changes in user behavior after each launch, and accelerate purchase decisions in a targeted manner according to different stages;

Step 3: How to expand the scale? Searching for people is a cycle. The more people search, the more people love it, and the more people buy it. As long as the product reputation is good enough, the snowball will roll bigger and bigger spontaneously.

Obviously, the star brand lululemon has mastered this trick. When it launched a new winter down jacket, it effectively promoted it around precise search terms, quickly impressed the right people, and sold out that season. Many classic brands that were still following the old path could only marvel at the incredible news.

4. Real content inspires user decision-making, not personal packaging

Today's brand marketing seems to have fallen into a misunderstanding, trying to package itself as omnipotent, perfect, and high-end as much as possible, and is full of false propaganda and excessive packaging.

In non-Face to Face scenarios, people's emotionality will shrink and be replaced by utilitarianism, which, reflected in the marketing level, means "telling empty words", "treating users as fools" and "deliberate deception".

Xiaohongshu is a smart community, with 90% of its traffic going to UGC. Users are famous for doing their homework. When a group of smart users get together, a very discerning atmosphere is formed, and there are always experts in the comment area.

At the same time, Xiaohongshu is a decision-making community, and there are many ways to influence decision-making, including but not limited to practical information, popular science, search, comparison, evaluation, store visits, check-ins, sharing by experienced people, summary, good product recommendations, pitfall avoidance, product promotion, welfare, etc. The decision-making atmosphere is already strong, and decision-making attribution is also being improved.

If you transplant the so-called successful routines of other platforms to Xiaohongshu, there is a high probability that it will not adapt to the local environment and may even be severely criticized.

On the contrary, if you are true to yourself and fully display it (personality, aesthetics, talents, expertise, etc.), it will be easy to attract similar people, and the marketing effectiveness is ten or a hundred times that of everyday advertising.

5. Deeply co-create with consumers, rather than working in isolation

My personal favorite case is the "Persimmon Ruyi" glutinous rice balls launched by Si Nian.

It is also the most popular marketing product in the food industry in the past two years, with sales exceeding 100 million in three months and an NPS user favorability of 91.55, far exceeding the industry average of 68.2 during the same period.

How did we achieve this with a conventional food like glutinous rice balls? It all depends on understanding the “human touch” of consumers, turning the product into a warm food and creating an emotional connection.

Through platform data mining, Si Nian discovered that the concerns of this generation of young people are ranked as follows: good luck No. 1, appearance No. 2, health No. 3, so they concretized the "good luck wish" into a new product "Shi Shi Ru Yi" glutinous rice balls.

The glutinous rice balls created by Si Nian x Xiao Hong Shu make festive food a part of daily life

The good news is that it sold out instantly, but the bad news is that it failed miserably, with many users getting the wrong color and shape. Under normal circumstances, most companies would choose to remain silent and downplay the issue, but Si Nian bravely stood with consumers, produced standard strategies, initiated topic challenges, turned the crisis into co-creation, and won the reputation of consumers.

Later, under the push of netizens, the company continued to launch glutinous rice balls with persimmon filling and peanut filling (deepening the meaning of good persimmons and peanuts). A hot product boosted the potential of the entire brand and also drove the sales of more than 50 SKUs.

The brand owner said something very touching, "What I am most proud of this marketing campaign is not how many products were sold, but that it truly opened up communication between people."

If rice dumplings can be a medium to express family, love and friendship, then all products can be.

6. Focus on full-domain and full-cycle user value rather than short-term ROI

I can understand how much pressure merchants are under right now, and they are indeed overly concerned about ROI. However, there are many companies that know how to calculate small accounts, but few that know how to calculate big accounts. There are two levels of understanding here:

First, from a horizontal perspective, the promotion of products on the Xiaohongshu platform not only affects the conversion of the platform itself, but also spills over to the entire network, driving sales growth for the entire platform;

Second, looking at it vertically, the life cycle of a popular note on Xiaohongshu may be several times longer than that of a hard advertisement on other platforms, and it has extremely strong long-tail value.

This is also a very important factor in Xiaohongshu becoming a marketing standard. Once a product is popularized, it can spread to the entire network and be reused for a long time.

7. Use crowds to reverse the funnel to acquire customers, rather than flooding the flow

It is an undeniable fact that the cost of the traffic funnel model of the entire network is getting higher and higher.

On Xiaohongshu, it is the opposite. It is no longer a one-time big deal as in the past. Instead, the company first finds the core group at the tip of the funnel, starts with small steps, simultaneously calibrates the products and selling points, and then breaks through the circle layer by layer. The initial return ratio is very high.

This is very friendly to new brands, as it means that you have a brand asset stored here and can withdraw it at a low cost. At the same time, the community also emphasizes word-of-mouth and sharing after consumption, driving more consumer trust and achieving fission and growth.

8. Summary: The core of people-oriented marketing

The so-called people-oriented is actually based on human nature, including the humanity of users, the humanity of merchants, and the humanity of platforms; the so-called people-oriented marketing takes users as the starting point, understands their scenarios and needs, and stimulates and satisfies their yearning for a better life.

This requires breaking many inertial ways of thinking, returning to the simplest demand scenarios, requiring healthy profit margins and business strategies, restraining the desire for short-term scale, and communicating in a "ordinary people to ordinary people" manner, ultimately returning marketing to "people" and returning products to "serving users."

Many businesses may feel that Xiaohongshu is "a little different" or even "out of place" in the early days of entering it. This is actually right, because it is a very unique, real and warm community.

My friends at Atour Planet said that perhaps only Xiaohongshu can grow a true Chinese lifestyle brand, and I think there is some truth to that.

Good soil, good seeds, good spring.

IX. Special mention

In the past two or three years, Xiaohongshu's business insight has increased rapidly, especially the systematic summary and induction of the top 20 lifestyle groups, which has formed a unique labeling system. Some brands have already enjoyed the dividends in advance.

This is also a small step forward in the implementation of the "people-oriented marketing" theory.

10. Postscript

Everyone says that Xiaohongshu is a blue ocean, but in fact, when you take a closer look, it is not an ocean, but a group of value depressions composed of countless ponds.

Behind every keyword, there are many thriving brands. No matter whether they are big brands or small brands, Xiaohongshu treats them sincerely.

The restraint of the Xiaohongshu platform is a rare commodity in this era. As one thing grows while the other declines, perhaps we still underestimate Xiaohongshu in five years.

Chief Writer: Jia Jia Article Architect: Poet Wang Fei