90% of brands don’t know about this new Xiaohongshu platform that can contribute 1/5 of GMV!

More and more brands are setting up group chats on Xiaohongshu. In this article, we will discuss in detail why Xiaohongshu’s private domain is worth doing and how to do it.

The Knife Skills Research Institute found that more and more brands have begun to set up group chats on Xiaohongshu.

While many traders are still struggling to figure out how to achieve high conversion rates, brands such as Shidajia, Ermutou, and LINHUANYING have already established private domain positions by operating Xiaohongshu group chats and achieved considerable conversion results.

The old operational idea was to plant grass on Xiaohongshu, and then find ways to sediment the traffic to the private domain outside the site. However, this idea actually ignored the fact that Xiaohongshu itself is an efficient private domain pool.

As a centralized platform, Xiaohongshu group chat is becoming a breakthrough for brands to improve conversion efficiency. On the decentralized platform of Xiaohongshu, merchants finally have a platform to achieve the goal of managing users and improving LTV.

In this article, we will discuss in detail why Xiaohongshu's private domain is worth doing? What are its differentiated values? How can we release the energy of Xiaohongshu's private domain and speed up the process from seeding to conversion?

1. With the superposition of grass-planting genes, why is Xiaohongshu’s group chat different?

You may ask, the group chat function is available on almost all platforms, so why is Xiaohongshu so special?

In the view of the Daofa Research Institute, Xiaohongshu’s group chat grew out of "human needs" and is superimposed with the grass-planting gene.

Exchanging information is one of the basic needs of human beings. However, in the era of information explosion, due to limited energy, people need some mechanism to control the amount of information entering and efficiently filter out truly valuable information. On Xiaohongshu, there are three typical forms of information exchange.

The first, most frequent and most active one is the exchange of information between users about life and various products.

As a community where ordinary people help ordinary people, Xiaohongshu has now become an "encyclopedia" for users. From concert makeup, travel destination guides to how to change a light bulb, when users encounter various problems or want to find inspiration in life, they will open Xiaohongshu to find answers.

The friendly discussion atmosphere releases the communication needs between users. Users not only like to read notes, but also like to continue discussions in the comment area. The large increase in information has become a feature of the comment area of ​​Xiaohongshu, and even developed into "listen to advice" type notes. Travel guides, styling transformation, product selection... When encountering unsure questions, many users now choose to post a "listen to advice" note on Xiaohongshu, asking everyone to give advice and help in the comment area.

Secondly, there is the need for communication between Xiaohongshu bloggers and users.

Unlike traditional live-streaming hosts, the growth path of most Xiaohongshu bloggers is to manage their accounts and accumulate fans by publishing notes, and then reach users by selecting products through live broadcasts and completing conversions within the live broadcast room.

Traditional live streamers’ origin is “products”, and price is the most important competitive advantage of the live stream. However, the origin of Xiaohongshu bloggers’ product selection is “user demand”, and aesthetics, taste and sincerity are the key.

Such genes will inevitably make bloggers have a more urgent need for crowd operations. They need to build a platform on Xiaohongshu to better understand and serve user needs.

The third type is the communication needs between brand merchants and users.

In the past year, Xiaohongshu has made important breakthroughs in its exploration of self-enclosed loops. With the help of a healthy marketing environment and upgraded and optimized commercial products, more and more brand merchants have achieved the integration of "marketing + sales" on Xiaohongshu, and the need to accumulate brand assets and operate the crowd has become more and more urgent.

Understanding user needs to improve products and services, operating users in layers to better realize the flow of people, extending the user life cycle... These very practical needs require a venue to achieve long-term operations for users in order to increase repurchases and accumulate user assets.

However, since Xiaohongshu is a decentralized platform, the communication and discussion needs of users, buyers and merchants could only be met through notes and comment areas in the past. With the launch of the group chat function, Xiaohongshu finally has a centralized venue for everyone to communicate, which adds a lot of certainty.

2. How to make good use of Xiaohongshu group chat to make those who love you love you more?

The Knife Skills Research Institute observed that Xiaohongshu provides a variety of entrances for group chats, such as notes, live broadcasts, and homepages, which greatly avoids the loss of traffic when it is converted to private domains. These private domain traffic with the gene of planting grass is undoubtedly a fertile ground worth operating for brand merchants.

Next, we will combine the practices of Shidajia, Ermutou, and LINHUANYING, which are at different stages of development and different tracks, to discuss how to maximize the value of Xiaohongshu group chat.

For small and medium-sized enterprises, especially start-up brands, the cold start phase is crucial. It is very difficult for a small team to find the first customers and even convert them into paying customers when they have no performance, no customer base, and relatively scarce resources.

Founded in 2023, Shidajia achieved a monthly sales volume of one million on Xiaohongshu in just one year. By operating the Xiaohongshu group chat, it successfully passed the cold start-up stage and created explosive products.

Shi Dajia told Daofa that the product was posted on Xiaohongshu in the draft stage, which aroused the interest of users. The team actively listened to the suggestions of users, grasped the popular "DIY" trend of Xiaohongshu, added DIY elements to the design, and created a high-value, large-capacity water cup that Xiaohongshu users like.

Before the product was launched, Shidajia gathered a large number of "cloud shareholders" through group chat. After the product was launched, Shidajia created a "VIP exclusive" experience for them, which not only allowed them to buy it first, but also got a 50% discount on new products.

After exploring successful operational experience, Shidajia has copied this gameplay to the release of each new product. "Cloud Shareholders" has become a feature in the launch of products such as Group Chat Squatting. At present, 37 group chats with 500 people have been established.

Image from the brand

For a brand like Ermutou that has already reached a certain scale, the greater value of Xiaohongshu group chat lies in clearly identifying the life cycle value of Xiaohongshu users and helping brands better optimize Xiaohongshu's gameplay and strategies.

On the business level, the challenge that Ermutou faces is that the unit price of makeup puffs and face towels is not high, and the product differentiation is not obvious. Launching co-branded products is one of the ways to break through.

In May this year, Ermutao and the Korean fashion brand Wiggle Wiggle created a joint series, which was sold through the Xiaohongshu live broadcast channel. Before, during and after the live broadcast, Ermutao deeply operated the Xiaohongshu group chat and achieved the three goals of water storage, conversion and repeat purchase.

Before the store premiere, Ermutou added group chat entrances in 5+ pre-launch notes, using notes/merchant homepages and other channels to attract users to join the group with benefits. A week before the live broadcast, it successfully attracted more than 300 seeding users to join the group chat. According to Ermutou's feedback, many group users who are familiar with the brand will take the initiative to help answer questions in the group chat, and the discussion atmosphere is friendly.

During the interaction, Ermutao learned about users' needs and optimized the live broadcast merchandise based on user feedback. In addition to the family bucket of powder puffs, it also added co-branded face towels.

Users were fully encouraged to make reservations by sharing reservation notes in the group and announcing live broadcast reservations in group announcements. After the broadcast started, as many as 74% of group members watched the live broadcast.

On the first day of the broadcast, the GMV of the live broadcast room exceeded 200,000. Group chat users watched the live broadcast room for more than 13 minutes, and ultimately contributed nearly 20% of the GMV.

In addition to asking about the benefits of the live ordering mechanism and discussing products, Ermutou noticed that users also like to share new products bought in the live broadcast room in group chats. For example, they would take co-branded new products and gift suitcases for outings and take beautiful pictures and send them to group chats. Therefore, after the live broadcast, Ermutou stimulated the spread of word-of-mouth by stimulating the purchase of orders in the group of users who have purchased, further driving new customers to place orders and old customers to repurchase.

The picture is from the screenshot of Xiaohongshu

Xiaohongshu group chats can also make users who love you love you even more. Old customers of the women's clothing brand LINHUANYING even volunteered to be brand spokespersons, sharing their dressing experience and wearing experience in group chats to help promote the brand.

LINHUANYING is an independent designer new Chinese style brand founded in 2020, interpreting oriental aesthetics from a modern perspective. Although the new Chinese style is popular, the new Chinese style expressed by LINHUANYING is a kind of oriental beauty with beauty in bones, not skin, and a temperament of poetry and books.

In the crowded new Chinese market, how can we find people who share the same aesthetics and resonance with our brand and achieve conversion? LINHUANYING found the solution on Xiaohongshu.

LINHUANYING's strategy is to take advantage of the rising trend of new Chinese style and enter the market with the help of search popularity. Through research, the brand found two user needs: 1. Classic is not enough for daily use 2. The material/craftsmanship is not advanced enough.

Based on user needs, three content directions are sorted out: 1. Suitable for daily classical wear to meet consumers' daily demands for new Chinese style wear; 2. Fine craftsmanship + high-end materials, highlighting the high-end/luxury/quality new Chinese style; 3. Cultural concept + self-pleasing lifestyle, emphasizing the brand's core of delivering a beautiful new Chinese style life.

Through the laying of notes and the operation of live broadcasts, LINHUANYING found a group of users who love themselves and settled them in group chats. These old customers with the same taste and aesthetics will spontaneously share products in group chats, interact deeply with brands and new customers, and greatly improve the stickiness of group chat users.

LINHUANYING will also release new product notes and live broadcast activities in group chats in a timely manner to attract old customers to repurchase. At the same time, designers will also respond to product evaluation opinions raised by group chat users in a timely manner and effectively adopt them, creating good products with users and deepening the connection between each other.

Judging from the results, group chat contributed 20% of the overall store GMV, greatly improving brand conversion efficiency.

Image from Knife Drawing

Summarizing these successful cases, there are several replicable experiences for brand merchants to refer to:

1. Believe in "people matters" and fully mobilize the subjective initiative of users. Every group chat user can be a KOC, releasing the energy of "ordinary people planting seeds for ordinary people";

2. Group chat is both an operation and conversion platform, which improves the efficiency of seeding to conversion. We believe in the long-term value brought by operating the crowd and increasing LTV. The healthy relationship between merchants and users will bring a super high repurchase rate.

3. Everything is connected. Public and private domain traffic are not separated and opposed. The public domain can divert traffic to the private domain, and the private domain reputation can feed back to the public domain’s brand voice. By organically unifying and closing the loop, business will be more efficient and more certain.

3. Analyst Comments

In recent years, we have seen that Xiaohongshu has been helping brands build a bridge of communication with users. On the basis of respecting users, it has developed more efficient tools to gain insight into user ideas and market trends, find a better "field", and help brands connect "people" and "goods" with content, thus improving the efficiency of seeding and conversion. This is why we have been paying attention to Xiaohongshu and encouraging brands to reinvent themselves on Xiaohongshu.