Holding high the banner of store broadcast, Xiaohongshu breaks through 618

Why can Xiaohongshu hold high the banner of stores during the 618 shopping festival this year? This article will help you explore the reasons. At the same time, this article is recommended to provide some methods for those who want to do e-commerce live streaming on Xiaohongshu.

This year on June 18th, Xiaohongshu is determined to “do store live broadcasts on a large scale.”

On June 12, Xiaohongshu released a set of latest data at the 618 media conference: the order volume of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce live broadcast room during 618 was 5.4 times that of the same period last year, and the GMV of store broadcasts was 5 times that of the same period last year. In this regard, Yin Shi, the head of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce operations, said that store broadcasts have become a new growth engine for merchants during the 618 period .

However, store broadcasting is not a new thing in the e-commerce industry. What are the differences and unique features behind Xiaohongshu's high-profile move compared with other e-commerce platforms? Which store broadcasting merchants have performed outstandingly?

Based on this background, Xiaohongshu and Xinbang recently joined hands to create the "Focus 30 Xiaohongshu E-commerce Business Monthly List 618 Live Broadcast Season Special Edition", and selected a "Focus30 Store Broadcast List" from multiple dimensions such as note traffic, store broadcast conversion, and community sedimentation . Among them, 30 "Growth Breakthrough Store Broadcast Merchants" whose store broadcast performance leaped during the 618 period.

Among them, there are brand merchants who have been deeply engaged in a certain vertical field for many years and have a sound supply chain, and there are also business owners who are still exploring and growing because of their hobbies. Combining their store broadcast development stories on Xiaohongshu, we try to summarize the store broadcast methodology for reference, and further discuss the impact of store broadcast on Xiaohongshu's e-commerce ecosystem.

1. Sales volume increased nearly 9 times, and brands took advantage of store broadcasting to break out of the vicious circle of internal competition

The market is fiercely competitive and it is difficult for brands to stand out. This may be a common problem encountered by countless businesses when they are just starting out.

However, in the "Focus30 Store Broadcast List", there are many emerging brands that have been established for two or three years, such as Zhiwu Home Furnishing, which was established in the second half of 2021. This is an emerging designer brand that focuses on being close to nature and pursues natural and skin-friendly fabrics.

When the owner, Nie Ping, tried to establish cooperation with high-end fabric suppliers, she was often rejected because of "the scale is too small and we cannot lower the price". The low-price customer acquisition strategy of traditional e-commerce platforms also buried the design aesthetics and quality details of Zhiwu Home Furnishing.

Since it is difficult to be seen in the inherent mode, it is better to break the deadlock and open up a new battlefield.

In March last year, Nie Ping decided to open an official Xiaohongshu account for Zhiwu Home Furnishing at the invitation of a Xiaohongshu home furnishing buyer named "Yike KK". Soon after, Zhiwu Home Furnishing and "Yike KK" launched their first buyer live broadcast cooperation on Xiaohongshu. One of its Qiuchi sofas also became a hit product in this live broadcast, with sales of more than 1 million yuan per unit, far exceeding Nie Ping's expectations.

Not only that, as the first batch of users received Zhiwu Home Furnishing's products, some people began to share real feedback on Xiaohongshu and added their own home decoration ideas, increasing user co-created content based on the original products.

After a "snowball" accumulation of word-of-mouth and crowd fission, as well as subsequent cooperation with buyers in live broadcasts, Zhiwu Home Furnishing has gradually become popular on Xiaohongshu. At the same time, Zhiwu Home Furnishing also shares bedroom renovations, fan submissions and other home furnishing notes on Xiaohongshu, and the comment area often receives user feedback on the product. So far, Zhiwu Home Furnishing has accumulated 25,000 fans on Xiaohongshu.

"In the context of using notes to attract new customers, store live streaming can provide more comprehensive scene presentation and instant communication, which can more directly solve users' pain points and thus achieve more efficient transaction conversion," said Nie Ping.

During last year's Double 11, Zhiwu Home Furnishing began to test the waters in Xiaohongshu store broadcasts, filling the blank time period outside of buyer live broadcasts and forming a complementary synergistic effect.

Nie Ping first formed a professional live broadcast team, with soft furnishing stylists as anchors, introducing products to users while sharing home aesthetics knowledge. The live broadcast venue was also decorated to look like a home, with multiple different scenes such as living room, dining room, bedroom, etc., to interpret different styles of "ideal home".

Secondly, Nie Ping started from the needs of Xiaohongshu users, referred to the real feedback of users in product design, and ensured that new products were launched every month. At present, the Xiaohongshu store broadcast of Zhiwu Home Furnishing maintains a fixed live broadcast frequency from 12 noon to 24:00 every night.

In Nie Ping's view, daily store broadcasts are designed to allow users to have an in-depth understanding of the products and slowly plant the seeds in the users' minds, so that during big promotional store broadcasts, limited-time welfare benefits can be combined to attract users to place orders and convert.

However, she emphasized that even for live broadcasts of major promotions, they would not use the hasty "countdown to 321" action to pressure orders. "Home products can easily cost thousands or even tens of thousands of yuan and are large in size. Users need time to think about how to arrange and display them after they get home. We will prioritize respecting user experience."

For the post-order phase, Nie Ping and her team established a Xiaohongshu community to further consolidate users into private domains for operations. Currently, the three soft furnishing exchange groups of Zhiwu Home have more than 1,000 members. Group members not only share their home furnishing experiences, but also participate in the interaction before the launch of new products of Zhiwu Home, such as voting for the new product style they want.

From using notes to attract new customers, to using store broadcasts to enhance conversions, to using social media to accumulate crowd assets, Zhiwu Home Furnishing has laid a solid foundation on Xiaohongshu through "vertical group linkage".

In the first broadcast on May 22, the sales of Zhiwu Home Furnishing's Xiaohongshu store broadcast exceeded 1.3 million, which was nearly 9 times the highest sales of 150,000 in a single live broadcast on Double 11 last year. Nie Ping was pleasantly surprised, and it also strengthened her confidence in deepening the store broadcast on Xiaohongshu. "The brand focus in the second half of this year is still Xiaohongshu."

During last year’s Double 11, a home furnishing practitioner also told the Xinbang editorial department that he had observed that many emerging home furnishing brands placed their first live broadcast on Xiaohongshu, “When it comes to quality and aesthetics, Xiaohongshu users are not stingy with their time.”

2. Deeply cultivating vertical fields, managers flock to the store live broadcast track

Xiaohongshu store broadcast not only helps brands break out of the fierce competition in traditional e-commerce platforms, but also provides a bigger stage for smaller, independent business owners.

In the "Focus30 Store Broadcast List", managers occupy half of the list, and their backgrounds are very diverse. Some left big companies to start their own businesses, some started out as beauty counter salesmen, and some have been focusing on agarwood research and collection for 19 years. Although their personal experiences are different, they have all been deeply involved in their respective vertical fields for a long time, and therefore have a group of solid fans.

"A Meatball" was once an Internet content operator. Because she was interested in cultural and artistic accessories, she often DIYed necklaces and beads, and shared the process in the form of pictures, texts or videos on Xiaohongshu. The highest number of likes for a single post exceeded 1,000. Gradually, many users followed and left messages asking "how to buy", which made her realize the business opportunity.

Compared with high-end jewelry bracelets such as pure gold and pure pearls, the purchase cost of cultural jewelry is relatively low, and "a meatball" can flexibly and freely control the cost range. In addition, the unique combination of cultural jewelry and materials such as gold, pearls, and turquoise can enable different users to obtain their own personalized jewelry experience, deepening their sense of participation.

After attracting users with notes, "A Meatball" started the road of store broadcasting. In her opinion, the key to the live broadcast room is the product. The first is the unique matching design, the second is the quality-price ratio, choosing the material that users prefer, and the last is the price advantage, which slowly increases the repurchase rate.

At present, "A Meatball" broadcasts on Xiaohongshu once or twice a week. On the one hand, it is affected by the product success rate. On the other hand, she also hopes to accumulate enough content through notes before doing live broadcasts. "Xiaohongshu users often do more homework before placing an order. They know what kind of brand corresponds to the price range, and the decision-making path is longer, but if trust is generated, it will be steadily deposited in the private domain."

Trust is an important bridge that connects Xiaohongshu managers and users, which requires long-term and sincere sharing from managers.

"Hangzhou Wang Zuxian" was originally a YSL salesperson with 16 years of experience in skin care. In 2020, he began to share skin care knowledge and techniques on Xiaohongshu, and has accumulated 90,000 followers so far. What he shares are all good things that he has used for many years, and he will explain them in combination with scientific skin care theories, emphasizing that everyone's skin quality is different and varies from person to person, rather than blindly following the trend of using popular products.

With the skin care and beauty brand resources accumulated in his early years, "Hangzhou Wang Zuxian" has obtained multiple brand authorizations, and his identity has also changed from a simple blogger to a more diversified manager. Usually, he will start broadcasting at around 6 pm every day, treating the store broadcast as a "niche high-end skin care chat room" to chat about skin care experiences with users with similar needs.

In the Xiaohongshu store broadcast on June 1, the sales of "Hangzhou Wang Zuxian" exceeded one million, and the average customer spending exceeded 3,000 yuan. It is worth mentioning that his live broadcast room maintains a lower return rate than its peers, "because users have listened to my popular science sharing before placing an order, and know what products are suitable for their skin type, which reduces the cost of trial and error."

By observing the "Focus30 Store Live Broadcast List", it was found that the managers' Xiaohongshu accounts have fans ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. Although the scale is not large, they have strong stickiness. This is the scale effect formed by their strong personal style. They are not only enthusiasts of sharing good things and recording vlogs, but also organizers of store live broadcasts who can rely on their own resources.

Behind this is the community gene of sincere sharing that Xiaohongshu has emphasized from the beginning to the end, allowing managers to continue to deepen their development based on their personal characteristics, and ultimately find effective sources of goods through their own advantages and find a broader space for development.

3. What is Xiaohongshu’s core competitiveness in store live streaming?

As live streaming e-commerce enters the second half, store broadcasts are gradually taking center stage.

According to iResearch Consulting's research report, the scale of live e-commerce will reach 4.9 trillion yuan in 2023. Among them, the market size of brand store live broadcasts accounts for 51.8%, and the development trend has gradually become significant.

Admittedly, Xiaohongshu is not the first to try the store live broadcast track, but compared to the "customer service-type store live broadcast", Xiaohongshu has stronger content attributes and can better convey brand stories and the ideas of the managers.

Nie Ping said that in the live broadcast room of Zhiwu Home Furnishing, what is sold is not only high-priced home furnishing products, but also the pursuit of the emotional value of natural comfort, which is completely different from the live broadcast of hawking. During the 618 shopping festival this year, Zhiwu Home Furnishing published a note titled "About the live broadcast room, the official response is here...", advocating that live broadcast rooms without hawking can also sell good products.

This is consistent with the "618 Live Streaming Season Simple Live Streaming Initiative" released by Xiaohongshu, which emphasizes "sincerely helping customers make choices and not encouraging impulse consumption."

Also released at the same time was the "Xiaohong Bookstore Broadcast 3+3" business method, which refers to 3 live broadcast traffic entrances + 3 live broadcast room practical skills, including improving note quality, live broadcast card optimization, group chat operation and other frequent broadcast methods.

It can be seen from this that even if the content attributes can empower Xiaohong Bookstore Live, it still depends on the brand and managers' persistent broadcast frequency and operation strategy. This also indirectly explains where the core competitiveness of Xiaohong Bookstore Live comes from.

At the same time, Xiaohongshu's e-commerce ecosystem has become richer and more diverse, and more brands and managers that match it have found room for development, making store broadcasts a window for them to display themselves to the outside world, and allowing users to experience the fun of visiting stores.

Overall, the biggest feature of Xiaohongshu store broadcasts is the content sharing concept that brands and managers have always adhered to, as well as their strong confidence in their own products. Therefore, in the field of store broadcasts, content and products are the real boosters. The relaxed and pleasant consumption atmosphere of Xiaohongshu's live broadcast room has also attracted many consumers who were originally deterred by "niche design" and "manager brands". Store broadcasts have built a solid bridge for consumers.

We also observed that the highest sales of some stores in the "Focus30 Store Live Broadcast List" were around one million. Although there is a certain gap compared to the explosive sales of tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of Xiaohongshu's top buyers in a single broadcast, if the store broadcast battle line is extended to a month or even a year, what we can observe is a store's continuous and stable long-term sales performance.

Building a brand means making friends with time and users, and the same goes for store broadcasts.

Since the live e-commerce industry was launched in 2018, brands have experienced the craze of the big anchor era and witnessed the dazzling battle reports of tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of dollars in a single game. At this stage, when many brands talk about their core demands, they cannot do without the word "stability". Xiaohongshu's decentralized differentiation logic and the snowball-like word-of-mouth long-tail effect are closely linked to "stability".

Perhaps in the near future, there will be a group of "red brands" exclusive to Xiaohongshu that will grow and develop on the site, making Xiaohongshu a fresh soil for the growth of more brands.

Author: Xiao Ba; Editor: Zhang Jie

Source: WeChat public account: Newrank (ID: newrankcn)