Looking back at this year’s 618 battle: Is there any other way out besides hitting low prices?

This article mainly discusses the 618 e-commerce war in 2024, especially the performance and characteristics of Xiaohongshu e-commerce, and puts forward its unique business model and future prospects.

This year's 618 has just ended. During the promotion period, some e-commerce platforms have been fully prepared to meet the challenge. On the contrary, Taobao and JD.com, which have always been the leaders, have publicly announced that they have cancelled the 618 pre-sale system this year. In the past 20 years of Internet e-commerce, 618 and Double 11 have taken turns to appear every year. The "low price war" has intensified, and platforms, merchants and users have all felt exhausted. Platforms compete with each other in terms of discount strength, merchants promote themselves, and users lose their original intention in "buying, buying, buying".

Growth Black Box observed that among many platforms, Xiaohongshu e-commerce seems to be unique. It participated in 618 but did not hold high the banner of "promotion".

1. Can you still sell good products without raising prices?

So, in the “low-price siege” war, what kind of results did Xiaohongshu e-commerce achieve without competing on prices?

During the 618 shopping festival this year, the number of orders from Xiaohongshu’s live streaming rooms was 5.4 times that of last year, and the number of live streaming rooms launched was 4.3 times that of last year.

The number of users who purchased products in the live broadcast room was 5.2 times that of last year. On the first day of the opening, the transaction amount of top buyers such as Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui exceeded 100 million yuan again, and many buyers rushed to help merchants break the 1 million mark on the first day.

Xiaohongshu's performance is better than we thought, and it is quite unexpected. In the midst of price wars, Xiaohongshu e-commerce has found its own way by focusing on products, content and design. It is a rare signal that it can "sell good products" without "selling them".

In 2023, Xiaohongshu officially announced in Link e-commerce partner week that "the buyer era has arrived", and Xiaohongshu buyers such as Dong Jie and Yike KK entered the public eye. This year's 618, store live broadcasting has become Xiaohongshu's key focus.

During the 618 period, some media reported that Xiaohongshu adjusted its organizational structure, merging the buyer operation and merchant operation businesses to form an e-commerce operation department. The unified operation will achieve the unification of "people" and "goods" and improve efficiency.

In order to create an ecosystem where "buyer live streaming and store live streaming" develop in parallel, Xiaohongshu e-commerce has also formulated four major support policies for merchants, including store live streaming support, note support, platform billion-level subsidies, and brand day resource aggregation. In addition, there are policies such as matching merchant buyers, store live streaming incentives, and IP operations to help merchants at different stages accumulate sales and voice and retain users.

At this point, many brands will certainly have questions: When Xiaohongshu began to emphasize store live broadcasts, did it mean that the era of buyers was over? Is it still necessary to do buyer live broadcasts now?

Merchants who have not yet entered the store live broadcast market may also be wondering: when "buyer live broadcast" can already achieve large sales, should they still spend energy and build a team to do store live broadcast again?

2. Ordinary buyers can also sell goods, and store broadcasting is still a blue ocean

We believe that compared with other leading live streaming platforms, Xiaohongshu’s price-performance ratio is still very high.

We analyzed the development trends of buyer live streaming and store live streaming on Xiaohongshu respectively, and found that both buyer live streaming and store live streaming are still in a stage of rapid growth on Xiaohongshu.

1. Low-fan buyers can also sell high GMV and help brands find accurate users

It has only been over a year since Xiaohongshu developed from a community platform to e-commerce live streaming. Although some top buyers have risen rapidly, many bloggers are still taking a wait-and-see attitude.

It should be clear that Xiaohongshu’s sales do not only rely on top buyers, such as Gigi Leung, whose single-day live broadcast transaction amount exceeded 100 million yuan.

During the 618 shopping event, the number of buyers whose GMV exceeded one million in a single event on Xiaohongshu was three times that of the same period last year. Through the 618 live broadcast season special edition of the "Focus 30 Buyers List" launched by Xiaohongshu e-commerce, we found that the buyers who achieved growth breakthroughs during the 618 shopping event this year have a very rich and diverse profile.

There are benchmark buyers who have deeply cultivated vertical categories, big Vs on external sites who have achieved growth on Xiaohongshu, and amateur buyers who have been successful through hard work, covering categories such as clothing, beauty, fashion, food, mother and baby, sports, books, etc. For example, @姜思达, a well-known sports buyer, @夕熙妈咪, an amateur buyer who broadcasts while taking care of her baby, and @小小, a grassroots food buyer who started broadcasting with 0 fans and increased her fans to 76,000 in half a year.

From the list, we can also see that in the past year, the development of Xiaohongshou’s buyers has shown two major trends:

First, big Vs from all over the internet are flocking to Xiaohongshu to become buyers.

With the development of live streaming e-commerce, platforms and top anchors have been baptized by the low-price war and have long been exhausted. However, Xiaohongshu, which does not emphasize "low price", provides a possibility of "breaking the circle". During the 618 shopping festival when the top anchors on major platforms are all sluggish, Xiaohongshu provides a relatively more friendly business environment, giving everyone a chance to grow. As a result, more and more Internet celebrities choose to come to Xiaohongshu as buyers, and with their past content accumulation and experience in bringing goods, they soon achieved a GMV of tens of millions per game.

For example, fashion buyer @合合噠, a native of Kunming, likes to share her daily outfit inspiration in the Xiaohongshu live broadcast room. @合合噠 has been sharing good things for 8 years, and first shared content on Xiaohongshu and Bilibili. In September 2023, she moved the good things from the video to the Xiaohongshu live broadcast room, and quickly grew into a buyer with tens of millions of fans. The sales of the sixth live broadcast on Xiaohongshu exceeded 13 million.

There is also fashion buyer @绒耳儿, who has a sweet girlish style and mainly shares urban vacation style outfits on Xiaohongshu. Her more refined content has earned her 800,000 followers. In the sixth month of being a buyer on Xiaohongshu, her GMV for a single sale increased by 3 times, reaching 24 million in a single sale, and she sold 10,000 dresses in one sale.

On e-commerce platforms, compared to pure sales, low return rate is a very important indicator for live streaming sales.

Whether it is @合合噠 or @绒耳儿, their content is more vertically refined. Compared with the high return rate brought about by dumping-style live broadcasts, their sharing can form a two-way match with real users, allowing users to buy the products they really like and achieve a low return rate.

Second, more and more ordinary buyers have achieved good results through diligent broadcasting.

The previous practice of platforms relying on top anchors to bring goods is also changing. With more accurate and vertical recommendations, a large number of ordinary buyers are standing out. For example, a buyer with 35,000 fans can even leverage a monthly GMV of 3 million.

For example, mother and baby buyers @四娃组合生活 are two mothers of two from Hangzhou. They first shared life content such as raising children on Xiaohongshu. When they had 1,000 fans, they started to broadcast as buyers. In the process of raising children, they have accumulated rich professional knowledge of children's shoes, clothing and toys. Through live broadcasts every Wednesday and Thursday, they share their real experience with fans and quickly and accurately attract a large number of people to consume. Their live broadcast room has only 60,000 fans, but they have achieved monthly sales of 5 million in four months, which is 10 times the previous monthly sales GMV.

The power of ordinary buyers should not be underestimated. Ordinary buyers can even give new sales vitality to products through their own personality and scene recommendations. In the cooperation with the clothing brand made of sense, @合合噠 used his own clever ideas to match a pair of brown shorts in the live broadcast room, which led to a surge in sales and sold 700,000 in a single session.

"They are committed to using good products, good services and good prices to accurately solve user needs, and provide a learning direction for more potential buyers who want to grow." Gintoki, the person in charge of Xiaohongshu, also said that Xiaohongshu buyers not only bring products to the market, but also pass on professional knowledge and aesthetics to users through live broadcasts based on their own understanding of products and lifestyles.

Buyers with different styles, specialties and advantages can provide more value to users and more choices to merchants.

2. Store broadcasting brings dominance and accumulates private domain traffic faster

In addition to buyers, store live streaming is also becoming a new growth engine for merchants.

During the 618 period, the number of orders from Xiaohongshu stores increased by 9.4 times year-on-year, and the cumulative number of live broadcasts by merchants increased by 4.5 times year-on-year.

In the "Focus30 Store Broadcast List" released by Xiaohongshu, we observed that these 30 store broadcasts on the list include both well-known large brands and small and beautiful brands. The common point is that their product tracks are more vertically refined, more personalized and professional, and are committed to meeting user needs and enhancing user communication, thereby attracting truly sticky target users who belong to them.

Big brands, such as Salomon, a French brand that focuses on providing high-quality outdoor sports equipment and clothing, provide a variety of product choices and professional product recommendations for different outdoor scenes in the store live broadcast room. At the same time, it organizes fan welfare special sessions with the launch of new products and the sale of top products as live broadcast rights. During the 618 period, the store live broadcast exceeded one million.

New brands, such as Yujian, a stress-relieving body care brand specifically developed for oriental women, started broadcasting in April for trial. In May, the second month of broadcasting, the store broadcast venue exceeded one million GMV, achieving exponential growth in stable self-operated business.

Xiaohongshu's store live broadcast room provides a more realistic online shopping scene for both merchants and users. Merchants can use online live broadcasts to more fully and comprehensively display products, and can also directly answer user questions in a more detailed manner, and even accept suggestions and improve products, thereby achieving effective communication with users. To some extent, effective store broadcasts can more conveniently display brand image and retain customer groups than buyer live broadcasts.

According to Sang Pu, an operator of the home furnishing category of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce, merchants can take over the in-site traffic through store broadcasts. Store broadcasts are equivalent to buyer live broadcasts, which give merchants more autonomy and can better accumulate their own private traffic pool. This is also the main force of live streaming sales at present.

3. How to get started quickly and sell goods using Xiaohongshu’s live broadcast room?

Before doing live streaming, many businesses will have a preconceived idea that it is difficult. In an era where traffic is king, most live streaming platforms have already reached traffic saturation, and there seems to be less and less room for latecomers.

However, Xiaohongshu, which started out as a content-based platform, is different from other platforms in that store broadcasts have just started. We have also figured out some rules for how to do store broadcasts well from existing successful cases.

We found that merchants on Xiaohongshu’s e-commerce platform have two types of store broadcasting paths: one type is those who have previously cooperated with buyers and have stabilized their operations through store broadcasting; the other type is those who operate notes, live broadcasts, and group chats in multiple venues to achieve “vertical group” linkage.

1. Zhiwu Home Furnishing: Buyers + store broadcasting, first expand the volume and then take over

Zhiwu Home Furnishing is a fast-growing home furnishing brand on Xiaohongshu.

As a brand that grew up during the pandemic, Zhiwu Home Furnishing had a humble starting point. When other companies were laying off employees and people were staying at home, brand owner Nie Ping started her own business, thinking about how to better combine the two contradictions of "going out" and "staying at home".

She sensitively grasped people's need for nature, and decided to use the curves, colors, and wisdom of nature as the source of inspiration for home furnishing creations. She selected natural materials to create a healthy, environmentally friendly, comfortable and natural home lifestyle, and founded a natural aesthetic home with the brand concept of "taking from nature and using it in moderation."

Making good products is the foundation. In a fast-paced society, Nie Ping and her post-90s team spent three months selecting a fabric, visiting each processing factory, studying ingredients and craftsmanship, and firmly believed that only by using good materials and making good products can a good business be achieved.

Before Xiaohongshu officially announced the arrival of the buyer era, Nie Ping had seized the opportunity and quickly entered the Xiaohongshu buyer live broadcast.

Step 1: Cooperate with buyers to achieve a cold start for the brand.

In March 2023, the anchor "Yike KK", who has maintained in-depth cooperation with Zhiwu Home Furnishing, invited Zhiwu to open a brand store on Xiaohongshu.

In April, Zhiwu Home Furnishing and Yike KK jointly developed a four-season soft bed, and sold more than 100 beds in one night in the Yike KK live broadcast room. Then, Zhiwu entered the 618 last year, and had its first good start on May 24 last year, with sales of 2.25 million in a single session.

Designer large furniture products are generally not as expensive as branded ones, but Zhiwu has achieved rapid sales on Xiaohongshu.

After that, with the promotion of the Xiaohongshu platform and the gradual maturity of the entire ecosystem, more and more buyers and brands entered the home furnishing track, buyer live broadcasts were unstoppable, and Zhiwu also connected with more partners and buyers.

By cooperating with buyers with different aesthetic styles, Zhiwu gradually increased the brand's presence on Xiaohongshu and collected more real and timely feedback from users through buyers, including suggestions for product development and iteration. At the same time, Zhiwu also attaches great importance to buyers' suggestions on products, and develops linked products and makes exclusive color samples based on targeted needs.

Before launching new products, Zhiwu invited buyers to conduct internal testing, and gradually formed a product promotion mechanism that was oriented towards Xiaohongshu users, with top buyers taking the lead in initiating sales, and then users and bloggers promoting products in both directions. Under this mechanism, Yaoshi sofa, Qiuchi sofa, and Amber chair were launched one by one, and all of them produced very good sales results.

Step 2: Start store live broadcast and drive it together with buyer live broadcast.

After the live broadcast in cooperation with buyers became stable, Zhiwu decided to start the store live broadcast experiment on Double Eleven last year.

With her confidence and intuition about Xiaohongshu, Nie Ping felt that store broadcasts would become a fast channel for Zhiwu to open up traffic, allowing her to hear users' voices more directly and solve their pain points.

Nie Ping recalled the first day of live broadcast. The host didn’t know how to broadcast live, didn’t know conversational skills, and didn’t know how to force orders. But Nie Ping felt that these were not important. She asked the host to communicate sincerely, just like recommending something to a friend.

Last year on Double 11, Zhiwu specially planned a large-scale store live broadcast, combined with marketing efforts and scene presentation and optimization to convert seeding users, and that broadcast sold more than 150,000.

After that, Zhiwu quickly formed a complete Xiaohongshu team and started daily broadcasts. The team constantly screened and trained anchors to ensure that the anchors' words, temperament, and professionalism were consistent with the habits of Xiaohongshu users and Zhiwu's brand temperament. In the store broadcast room, Zhiwu also pays attention to the clarity and light presentation according to the scenes and styles that users like to watch, to create a comfortable home atmosphere.

During the 618 event this year, Zhiwu held a large live broadcast, and combined it with the launch of new products and live broadcast gameplay. In the end, the GMV of a single event exceeded 1.3 million, the number of reservations exceeded 10,000, and it was watched by more than 46,000 people.

An analysis of Zhiwu Home’s millions of live broadcast rooms reveals the following four key steps:

1. Live streaming 2 weeks in advance: Attract users through notes, cooperate with buyers to help the brand expand its voice, publish more than 40 preview notes, attract more than 10,000 users to make reservations, and 15% of the initial traffic of the live broadcast comes from users who made reservations. Accurate user feedback is obtained, which drives the distribution of traffic for the entire live broadcast;
2. Do a good job in group chat operations: guide people to join the group and continue to emphasize live broadcast benefits, product inventory, flash sales mechanism, etc. in the group, so that fans in the group can deepen their memory of the live broadcast and mobilize the enthusiasm of fans in the group. The proportion of active fans in the account is as high as 90%+, and the conversion rate of fans placing orders in the live broadcast room is 78.5%;
3. Configure exclusive products: The product price is the same as that of the buyer's live broadcast room, and the flash sale products are used to drive the transaction data every minute. In addition, exclusive benefits are set in the live broadcast room, such as large coupons, free orders, gifts, etc., to prolong the interaction in the live broadcast room and improve the conversion rate of the live broadcast room;
4. Participate in platform activities: closely follow the 618 official store live broadcast activities, extend the broadcast time from 8 hours to 15 hours, throughout the platform's prime time, rush to the top of the store list during the 618 period, and bring an additional 39,000 people into the live broadcast room.

Today, the Zhiwu Home Furnishing store broadcast team has at least 5 anchors, as well as 1 live broadcast operator and 2 new media operators.

Nie Ping, the manager of Zhiwu, said that on Xiaohongshu, brands can sell good products even in live broadcast rooms without hawking, and stay away from low-price involution. They not only achieved sales growth, but also achieved two-way communication with users. "We are seen, and more importantly, we have found an ecosystem that suits us. Xiaohongshu e-commerce has turned the involution price into a comprehensive orientation of product, design, and content, so that we who work hard on design and products can be seen by more people."

2. Yujian: vertical group linkage, more accurate users and higher conversion

Yujian is a stress-relieving body care brand specially developed for oriental women. It has been established for 9 years. Its products range from bath oils to fruit acid body oils, scrub ointments and other body care products that use oil to nourish the skin.

In February 2023, Yujian entered Xiaohongshu's e-commerce. In more than a year, the Yujian team has followed every rhythm of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce and completed the leap of "notes + live broadcast + community" in Xiaohongshu's overall operations.

Through the linkage of note seeding, live broadcasting, and social networking, Yujian has achieved a leap from a monthly GMV of 300,000 or even less to a GMV of 5 million during the 618 period this year. Li Li, the manager of Yujian, said, "The content system of Xiaohongshu, including the e-commerce system, has driven the development of the entire Yujian e-commerce system."

「Pen」: First of all, it is for sharing high-quality note content.

Before 2023, Yujian had been promoting products through Xiaohongshu notes.

High-quality content keeps Yujian popular on the Xiaohongshu platform. Yujian's notes focus on "winning with quality and altruism", and tend to teach users how to better take care of their bodies, such as women's stress-relieving bathing process and specific steps to make skin smoother.

Since June last year, considering the needs of different user groups, Yujian has also specially planned a series of high-energy content based on specific KOLs and in cooperation with different types of bloggers. For example, it cooperated with model Hou Mengdie to explain how to take care of the body as a supermodel, and incorporated Yujian's fruit acid body oil and other products in the process. After the transaction of notes exceeded one million, Yujian continued to invest and heat up.

In addition to supermodels, Yumi also cooperated with bloggers with specific skin colors - yellow and black skin types - to target oriental women and produced a series of content with the theme of "How to make oriental women's skin look smoother and more confident."

"Direct": After accumulating a certain number of users through content, Yujian established the Xiaohongshu live broadcast team in August last year.

At the beginning, Yujian also cooperated with buyers for live broadcasts, but only chose to cooperate with a few lifestyle buyers who "match Yujian's tone and will actually use Yujian products."

On March 28 this year, Yujian launched its first live broadcast by a manager. Before the live broadcast, the team did a lot of rehearsals, from designing specific product combinations and gifts for the live broadcast room, to the visual design and content design of the live broadcast room, to the speed of speaking to tell the story behind the brand and products.

In the end, this live broadcast sold more than 300,000 copies, with the average customer spending reaching more than 400 yuan, and users stayed in the live broadcast room much longer than on other platforms.

This live broadcast not only gave Li Li confidence in sales, but also allowed them to find the type of live broadcast that Xiaohongshu users like: a leisurely speaking pace, refined language, no emphasis on price mechanism, emphasis on the selling points of the product itself, and the story of product development, etc. There is even a reminder board in their live broadcast room that says "Speak slowly."

When selecting anchors, Yujian will also specifically choose people who have actually used the products. "We don't call anchors anchors, we call them 'brand recommendation officers'."

Daily store broadcasts were launched and continued in this way, from the initial 4 hours a day to the current 14 hours. In addition, Yujian has a live broadcast by the host once a month to directly answer users' questions in the live broadcast room.

"Group": After taking notes and live streaming, Yujian also began to try social sharing, allowing users to enter the live streaming room through the community.

The Yujian team found that the conversion rate of fans who joined the community in the live broadcast room was much higher than that of new users, sometimes as high as 12%-15%. In addition, Yujian also encourages users to share their orders in the group, and to put sets and samples for trial in the live broadcast room.

From note sharing to live broadcast, and then to social sharing, Yujian is now making progress in three areas: making good products, good content, and careful interaction. This is also an important dimension for Yujian to achieve a leap forward in Xiaohongshu's e-commerce.

IV. Conclusion

At a time when e-commerce sales are becoming increasingly price-competitive, the content-based Xiaohongshu e-commerce can help more merchants explain the advantages of their products, communicate directly with users and obtain feedback, and avoid price and traffic competition.

Through our observation of Xiaohongshu’s e-commerce 618, we have made the following findings:

1. Content and users are the core of Xiaohongshu e-commerce. Whether it is notes or live broadcasts, merchants need to produce corresponding content for different users and different scenarios.
2. There is still a lot of room for development for Xiaohongshu buyers. In addition to the top buyers, different levels of buyers have also grown in various vertical categories, providing merchants with more choices.
3. Following buyers, store broadcasts have become an important field for Xiaohongshu's e-commerce. Xiaohongshu's store broadcasts pay more attention to clearly and completely describing product details and actively interacting with users.

Brands should seize the opportunity and make full use of the platform's traffic support and strategic advantages under the premise of Xiaohongshu's current "buyer live broadcast and store live broadcast" and make good use of the two live broadcast paths: one is to drive store live broadcast by buyer live broadcast, and the two are carried out in parallel; the other is for merchants to accumulate users through the linkage of three fields: notes, live broadcast and group chat.

Source: WeChat official account: "Growthbox (ID: growthbox2)"