6 recent experiences in operating Xiaohongshu, what is grass-planting? How can restaurants operate Xiaohongshu?

Recently, while operating Xiaohongshu, I found some good information and summarized some operating experience. I hope it will be helpful to you in operating Xiaohongshu.

1. Relationship between brands, influencers and consumers

How do stakeholders in the platforms survive? Figure 1 is more meaningful for reference.

Brands publish content through notes, live broadcasts, and products. They use natural and paid traffic to reach users with content, and influence consumers through notes published by influencers.

Based on this, Xiaohongshu users can discover good content and good products on the platform.

Figure 1: Relationships between participants on the Xiaohongshu platform

Figure 2 shows users going to Xiaohongshu to look for interesting life references and consumption decisions.

Although it is an official report for 2021, I think its reference is still very meaningful. Many reports do not have to be the latest, and strong logic is the key.

Figure 2: User-to-platform requirements

At present, there are more and more merchants and creators on Xiaohongshu, and more and more content is produced, but the incremental user dividend is decreasing.

This has led to widespread feedback that content traffic is getting worse and worse. In reality, users are becoming more and more picky, and the competition in content quality is the focus of the account in the next stage.

2. Top 10 brands reported on Xiaohongshu

Third-party data: Gray Pig April data.

Among the top 10 brands reported by Xiaohongshu, 1/3 are Internet platforms, with Pinduoduo ranking first. 1/3 are white-label beauty brands, such as Haiyan Zhizun, which ranks second in terms of total number of influencers. The rest are established consumer brands, such as Mengniu and Midea.

Figure 3: Number of people who registered with Dandelion in April

Why these 3 brands?

Internet platforms are frantically stealing traffic from Xiaohongshu. They are not only concerned with single conversion transactions, but more importantly, they are trying to get users to develop shopping habits on the platform and pay attention to the lifetime value of customers. It is difficult to estimate the profits that an adult can contribute to Taobao throughout their lifetime.

The core of white-label beauty product investment is to increase sales and seize search traffic, while at the same time directing traffic to Taobao. The content material is of good quality, so you can invest with your eyes closed.

Currently, for entertainment bloggers with thousands of fans, the cost is about 50 yuan after deducting the rebate. If one post generates 50 interactions, the average interaction cost is only 1 yuan, which is cheaper than information flow advertising.

Compared with the traditional big brands’ sponsorship of variety shows, this budget is too small. They are more focused on node placement, such as 618 and Double Eleven, to increase sales in conjunction with nodes.

3. How to understand grass planting?

My understanding of planting grass is that one person asks another person in the elevator, what brand of perfume are you wearing today?

The essence of "planting grass" is not to be deliberately said, but it can stimulate users' desire to buy. Planting grass is to plant desire;

Every note on Xiaohongshu now says "I'm great, come buy me!" The essence of the message is dissemination, and the information disseminated is relatively hard, and users are more defensive, which also leads users to think that Xiaohongshu is full of advertisements.

When a brand is promoting advertising, it should not only have hard advertising, but also soft advertising content. From this perspective, promoting advertising = soft advertising;

For example, baby bottles can be recommended as single products, or as a collection, or as a complete list of newborn products, and soft articles will have better effects;

Figure 5: Notes on newborn supplies

4. How to do catering on Xiaohongshu?

It is recommended that every catering business should join Xiaohongshu and the platform should open up local life group purchasing.

Through the background, you can recruit talents, provide them with free meals, have them check in and send notes, and key notes can be posted for group purchase, truly killing two birds with one stone, as both promoting products and group purchasing can be done at the same time.

Figure 6: Xiaohongshu local life settled in

How to monitor delivery data?

After 3 months of recruiting influencers in the background, see whether the number of users on the site has increased, whether anyone has come through Xiaohongshu, and the group buying sales promoted by the influencers. If so, keep doing it, there will definitely be results!

5. Review of Xiaohongshu’s private domain advertising data

When placing private ads on Xiaohongshu, we focus on three data: the V rate, the cost of opening a private message, and the transaction conversion rate.

Insufficient V-adding rate: WeChat number/private message number. If it is less than 40%, it means that users are unwilling to add WeChat. Targeted investigation of the crowd and the speech skills are required.

Private message: It costs money for users to speak actively, and those who speak actively are potential customers

Low transaction conversion rate: Is the customer service response timely? Does the sales pitch need to be adjusted again? Does the product need to be adjusted again? 6. Amateurs are the lowest testing cost

Whether it is a private domain or e-commerce customer, you can choose to test it with amateurs if you don’t have a budget. Xiaohongshu is a community with equal traffic and pays more attention to ordinary people and amateurs. As more and more experts and businesses enter the community, the real content of amateurs becomes particularly important.

Imagine a community that advocates authenticity. How terrible it would be if there were no real people. If you have just registered on Xiaohongshu, you will get some traffic coupons. The platform encourages ordinary people to post content.

This is why everyone generally feels that the traffic of new registered accounts is very good;

Figure 7: Example of earphone placement for amateurs

How to use amateurs to acquire customers or convert them?

1. Find amateur cases: Search industry keywords to filter amateur notes in the past month and see which notes have comments asking how to contact or buy notes;

2. Pixel-level imitation: After registering an account and completing the account maintenance process, post notes similar to those of ordinary people to see the overall customer acquisition performance of the notes. When it comes to traffic diversion, do not send WeChat directly when replying to users to avoid being restricted;

3. Batch matrix: When one amateur account is successful, batch matrix operation is carried out, and amateur fee accounts are registered more accounts.