In the second half of live e-commerce, Xiaohongshu is indispensable

With the continuous evolution of the live streaming e-commerce industry, the market has entered the second half of the competition. In the context of the low price advantage of the top anchors no longer being available, brand self-streaming becoming the mainstream, and consumer shopping behavior becoming more rational, Xiaohongshu, with its unique "buyer live streaming" model, has provided the industry with new ideas and solutions. This model not only meets consumers' pursuit of quality life, but also brings new development opportunities for brands and creators.

With a series of changes such as the loss of low-price advantage of top anchors, store broadcasts taking over the mainstream, and consumers returning to rational shopping, live streaming e-commerce has entered a new stage.

Who can provide new solutions for live streaming e-commerce in the new stage?

Xiaohongshu provides an answer: buyer live streaming.

1. New trends in live streaming e-commerce

In the past two years, live streaming e-commerce does not seem to be as popular as in previous years.

The most obvious thing is that the top anchors have collectively "retired". Hosts like Li Jiaqi, Simba, and Xiao Yangge have gradually reduced the number of live broadcasts to sell goods and faded out of the live broadcast room.

A very important reason for this is that the top anchors have lost their most powerful weapon, “low price”.

Li Jiaqi once admitted in the early days that the reason why he was able to get the "lowest price on the entire network" was because merchants wanted to quickly increase sales and gain platform promotion, so they chose to use advertising fees to subsidize prices.

But this sales promotion method is doomed to be unsustainable.

Moreover, as all major e-commerce platforms have been offering low prices in the past two years, price has become a core element in platform traffic distribution, and the lowest price has gradually returned to the platforms.

At the same time, in order to control pricing power and brand power, brands have also launched store live broadcasts. Currently, the market size of store live broadcasts has exceeded 50%, surpassing live broadcasts (live broadcasts by internet celebrities, stars, KOLs, etc.).

These are changes on the supply side. From the demand side, consumers have become accustomed to various "123 links" and hypermarket-like live broadcasts in recent years. They have gradually become sophisticated and picky, and have become quite rational about live shopping.

In the past, live broadcasts oriented towards low prices and promotions often led to impulse buying by consumers, resulting in high return rates, low repurchase rates and low customer unit prices. The return rate of women's clothing live broadcasts can reach 80%; low-priced products make it even more difficult for consumers to have a deeper understanding of the product value and to generate repurchases; low-unit-price products are all the same, so they can only be sold at low prices, and companies can make no profit, or even lose money.

At present, with a series of changes taking place, such as the loss of low-price advantage of top anchors, the mainstreaming of store broadcasts that focus on enhancing brand power, and the return of consumers to rational shopping, live streaming e-commerce has entered a new stage.

Last year, there was a widely circulated judgment in the e-commerce circle: "The two e-commerce platforms most worth investing in in 2024 are Video Account and Xiaohongshu."

Among them, Xiaohongshu has provided a new variable to the transitional live streaming e-commerce industry: buyers.

In late August last year, Xiaohongshu proposed the concept of "buyer e-commerce" at its first e-commerce partner conference.

Xiaohongshu began exploring e-commerce business as early as 2014, and has tried various e-commerce formats such as self-operation, live streaming, and note-based sales. After finding new ideas, Xiaohongshu reinvested in e-commerce business.

At a time when live streaming e-commerce has become a red ocean and the growth rate has slowed down, Xiaohongshu has delivered amazing results in the past year. What is the secret?

2. The secret of Xiaohongshu’s rise against the trend

What is a buyer? In Xiaohongshu’s words, it is someone who connects “goods” and “users” on Xiaohongshu and creates a purchasing scenario. They select and organize goods based on their taste and aesthetics and share them with their fans.

Buyer is not a new term, and it is timely for Xiaohongshu to regard it as a key link in the e-commerce ecosystem.

Buyers were initially popular in European and American fashion circles. They traveled around the world looking for clothing, shoes, hats, jewelry and other goods, gained insight into consumer preferences, grasped popular trends, and met the needs of different consumers.

Xiaohongshu buyers have the same core as them: they are all professionals in the industry, they all pay attention to taste and aesthetics, and they all have a group of loyal fans.

No matter what era, the key to becoming a buyer is the continued trust of fans.

This is precisely the unique advantage of Xiaohongshu compared to many e-commerce platforms. Xiaohongshu is a lifestyle sharing community with over 100 million daily active users. "Community" is a more humane concept, where some people show off their lifestyles and attitudes, their unique aesthetics and tastes, and others have a stronger sense of identity and trust in it.

The buyer ecosystem also grew naturally in the community atmosphere of Xiaohongshu.

Home buyer @杏杏 has over 760,000 followers on Xiaohongshu. He initially discovered during the operation of Xiaohongshu that his fans were very interested in the home products he used daily and would actively request purchase links.

Over time, he simply became a buyer, adding more associations related to real-life scenarios to the shared content, carrying the user's precise needs and directly converting them.

The picture shows @杏的 live broadcast warm-up video

Like Xingren, many Xiaohongshu creators initially matched with a large number of like-minded people in the process of sharing their lives and areas of passion. They "followed and bought" one after another, allowing the creators to see their own value, so they transformed themselves into buyers.

The creation of a business ecosystem requires three elements: trust, value, and exchange. Xiaohongshu buyers have the trust of fans and can discover and share valuable products with fans, but they still need a more complete exchange link to achieve a closed loop. This is why Xiaohongshu has made efforts to build a live streaming link and buyer live streaming system in recent years.

Through buyer live broadcasts, Xiaohongshu buyers can complete the entire chain from simple recommendation to "planting and pulling in one", the form of cooperation for business orders has become more in-depth, and the commercial value has been greatly improved.

Currently, major brands are facing problems such as extensive traffic purchases, high costs, and unstable customer acquisition quality during online marketing. However, if they can find buyers on Xiaohongshu that match their brand values, it means they have connected to the precise consumers behind the buyers, and may be able to achieve a "leverage" effect on Xiaohongshu.

Xiaohongshu food buyer @文森特别饿 once saw fans frequently asking him to recommend cast iron pans in his notes. The most popular brands have high unit prices ranging from 1,000 to 7,000 yuan. But fans trust 文森特别饿 and buy from him without hesitation.

Five years ago, Vincent, who loves food, shared his first note on making paella on Xiaohongshu, starting his journey as a Xiaohongshu blogger. After that, he quit his job and went to the French Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Institute, a professional training school for western cuisine and pastry talents, to learn professional cooking knowledge.

During this period, he continued to update Xiaohongshu and share the fresh dishes he learned. After successfully graduating from the culinary academy, he became a food buyer and moved his kitchen to the live broadcast room. The second broadcast had a GMV of 1.48 million.

The picture shows a screenshot of @文森特别饿's Xiaohongshu homepage

His background as a chef makes it easier for him to feel and accurately describe the characteristics of various ingredients and kitchen utensils to his fans. Through buyer live broadcasts, fans can also see the usage of these products from 360 degrees. More and more brands have invited him to live broadcasts.

If the user group is more rational and has a strong demand for a product, they will pay more attention to factors that reflect the product's value, such as design, craftsmanship and brand, rather than just competing on price. This will result in "three highs and one low", namely high conversion rate, repurchase rate and average order value, as well as low return rate.

Before joining Xiaohongshu, Xingren had been deeply involved in the home furnishing industry for many years. Before that, he only promoted products on Xiaohongshu and cooperated with merchants on some notes.

In January this year, at the strong call of fans, Xingren entered the Xiaohongshu live broadcast room for the first time and achieved a good result of over 3 million GMV in a single game.

He does not want the live broadcast to be separated from his daily content. Most of the products in the live broadcast room are small kitchen appliances that he has recommended in his past notes, such as multi-function pots, health pots, wall breakers, etc., all of which have been personally tested by him. He believes that "today's brands are more concerned with the integration of product and effect. The future trend of brands must be in-depth cooperation, and pure product promotion will definitely decrease."

There are many buyers like Vincent is particularly hungry and Xingren on Xiaohongshu. They tend to be more professional and personalized. They no longer promote products at low prices like stall owners in hypermarkets, but share quality products like shop owners in boutiques to help consumers perceive the value of products.

The closed loop of the exchange link not only completes the process of "planting grass-pulling grass" for commodities, but also an exchange of value and interaction of trust. Value and trust also have fluidity, thus making the business ecology more dynamic and creative.

We can also see that the existence of buyers has actually reconstructed the "people-goods-place" in e-commerce, allowing Xiaohongshu to find its own differences in the e-commerce field surrounded by experts.

The "people" of Xiaohongshu are consumers who pursue quality life, as well as buyers. They prefer personalized, high-quality goods and services, and trust real sharing and recommendations between people.

The “goods” are also carefully selected by buyers to match their respective lifestyles. Many of them are “intermediate products” that are different from low-priced promotional products and hot-selling products. They have a good sense of design and product strength, and their value needs to be discovered;

The "field" is a platform for buyers to showcase their own lifestyles, with notes to promote purchases and live broadcasts to promote purchases and generate conversions.

This has allowed Xiaohongshu's business ecosystem to continue to prosper, and has also made Xiaohongshu buyers a new profession that is a win-win for buyers, brand merchants, and users.

3. Buyer becomes a new profession

At present, more and more creators are flocking to Xiaohongshu to become buyers, intending to seize this wave of dividends in live streaming e-commerce.

Generally speaking, if you want to become a live-streaming e-commerce blogger, there are three big obstacles in front of you. First, it is difficult to make money; second, the industry is too competitive; and third, the entry threshold is too high.

But on Xiaohongshu, as long as you can use your professional knowledge to continuously provide valuable content, have a certain aesthetic and taste, and find a field and fan group that truly suits you, you may become a pretty good buyer, and even make it a new career.

Xiaohongshu’s mother and baby buyer @西红柿罐头ChloMato previously had 1 million followers on Weibo, but still faced difficulties in monetizing, and often had to “generate electricity with love”.

The content she shared on Xiaohongshu during her pregnancy received enthusiastic feedback from the sophisticated mothers and scientific parenting groups, and she has since switched to the maternal and infant track. When she decided to live broadcast, she only had 50,000 fans. Before the broadcast, she predicted that "I would be thankful if the sales could exceed 100,000."

ChloMato has shared a lot of good maternal and child products in the community, and has gained the trust of fans through long-term promotion. The first broadcast was sold to millions. One of the overseas safety seat brands was sold as a hot product, contributing 300,000 yuan in sales to the brand. Now, ChloMato has become a buyer with tens of millions of fans, and the number of fans has nearly tripled.

Image source: @Tomato Can’s Xiaohongshu homepage

She admitted that when selecting products, she had to ensure that all the products had been used personally and were recommended to her, and not just for the sake of selling products; she also had to ensure that every product that entered the live broadcast room had good user reputation and reviews.

Now the traffic of various platforms is becoming increasingly saturated, and the cost of purchasing traffic is becoming more and more expensive, but Xiaohongshu has not yet formed an absolute top blogger, and its "decentralized" traffic distribution mechanism can give small and medium-sized bloggers more exposure opportunities.

Some small and medium-sized bloggers can accumulate a fan base with high stickiness and high repurchase rate in the vertical track by relying on their own aesthetics and product selection. Even amateur buyers with low fans can leverage high sales through live broadcasts and reap the benefits.

For example, the maternal and infant buyer @第四娃组合生活 is a group of two mothers from Hangzhou who work together to raise their children. They currently have only 69,000 followers.

When they had accumulated 1,000 fans, they started broadcasting as buyers. Through three to four live broadcasts a week, they used the rich professional knowledge about children's shoes, clothing, and toys that they had accumulated in the process of raising their children, and recommended the brand's products with empathy.

The picture shows the live warm-up video of @四娃组合生活

When they only had 50,000 fans, their monthly GMV had reached 5 million, 10 times the monthly GMV three months ago. Even the husband of one of the mothers quit his job to join their buyer team.

Even if you don't join an MCN team or a big anchor team, you can still bring good results by relying on yourself or a small team of two or three people.

In addition, unlike the current live broadcast rooms that compete on low prices, increase GMV, and pursue daily broadcasts, Xiaohongshu's live broadcast style is unique, with buyers telling their stories in a leisurely manner, giving people a feeling of "don't be in a hurry, just watch it and then place an order." Consumers can take their time to watch and make rational decisions after careful consideration.

Many buyers on Xiaohongshu also believe that they do not change their speaking habits and language habits during live broadcasts, which is consistent with their usual personal style. Being able to be yourself is also an important factor that attracts many buyers to Xiaohongshu.

Many bloggers from other sites have also come to Xiaohongshu to find a live broadcast style and fan base that suits them better. Some small and medium-sized bloggers who originally worked on Taobao, Weibo, Bilibili, Douyin and Kuaishou no longer need to emphasize low prices or deliberately increase the frequency and words of live broadcasts after coming to Xiaohongshu. They can still achieve a single GMV of one million or even more than ten million, and even make many niche brands popular.

As Xiaohongshu's win-win buyer ecosystem continues to evolve, buyers within the site are also continuously unleashing their potential and achieving career advancement; potential buyers are also constantly being discovered.

China's live streaming e-commerce was born in 2016. Today, it has developed into an industry with a market size of nearly 5 trillion yuan. After forming a red ocean, the growth rate has gradually slowed down compared with before.

Xiaohongshu uses "buyers + e-commerce" to provide a differentiated new solution for live streaming e-commerce, which has reached a turning point, creating new dividends and providing more new opportunities for brands and creators.

The rise of Xiaohongshu against the trend also indicates that live streaming e-commerce has entered an era centered on "people". Consumers stand at the center of the stage and become the protagonists. They are no longer individuals to be analyzed and dissected, nor are they objects outside the scene for retailers to compare with statistical figures. Instead, they are living participants, expressing their preferences and pursuits.

Traditional live streaming e-commerce mainly focuses on static products, such as how to lower prices and increase sales, which can be analyzed and measured in detail. However, in the post-live streaming era, which is centered on "people", people are changing and flowing, and cannot be cut and broken down by any scale. At this time, whoever can find and meet the personalized needs of consumers through better consumption guidance and interaction, and let trust, value and exchange flow more freely, will be more likely to stand out.

From this perspective, Xiaohongshu's lifestyle e-commerce is a "latecomer but early winner".

Text | Li Daju