An inventory of Xiaohongshu's marketing methodologies over the years! Are these methods really useful?

This article reviews Xiaohongshu's marketing methodologies over the years, from H2H people-oriented marketing to IDEA methodology, and deeply analyzes their advantages and disadvantages and applicable scenarios. For brands, choosing the right methodology is crucial.

The first time I heard the word “methodology” was about 5 years ago. My boss at the time said, “A marketing company won’t go far without methodology.”

Methodology is a company's unique skill, and the company's marketing level can be judged from its methodology.

In recent years, marketing company methodologies have emerged in an endless stream, including "super symbols", "positioning", "conflict", "cutting" and so on, and the pursuit of methodology has also spread to the Internet platform.

Platforms such as Douyin, Tmall, Kuaishou, and Bilibili have also begun to release their own methodologies, and Xiaohongshu is no exception. > Today, I will review Xiaohongshu's marketing methodologies over the years, and I will also use colloquial language to express my understanding of them.

1. H2H People-Oriented Marketing

H2H marketing stands for Human2Human marketing (i.e. H2H marketing). The last time I heard this naming method was P2P.

Humanistic Marketing was developed in collaboration with Kotler China and includes three key aspects: “People-centered design thinking, service logic of co-creating value, and digitalization of diversity and connectivity.”

From the definition, although I know each word, I can't understand it when they are connected together! The annotation translation is "people-oriented, giving consumers the freedom to choose, and deeply understanding customer needs." I think it is most likely Huawei's "customer-centric" explanation.

Although I really want to understand what people-oriented marketing is and have carefully read the third paradigm of marketing, I really can’t understand it!

Even an experienced marketer can’t understand the H2H marketing theory. There is a 90% chance that businesses will never use it! Sometimes, it’s hard to keep things simple!

2. Crowd Anti-Funnel Model

The "reverse funnel model" is most likely a veiled criticism of the TikTok 5A model, which is a waste of money. From the definition, it means that the brand gradually breaks out of the circle along the path of "core population-interest population-general population". It is a small-step and fast-running delivery method to quickly spread word-of-mouth.

Figure: Crowd reverse funnel model

From the above picture, we can see that the SPU product is the core starting point, that is, to find the core group, the interest group and the general group around the product. The essence is to break through the circle layer by layer.

This is consistent with the positioning theory's emphasis on the original group of people with urgent needs. The most typical example of positioning theory is that Wanglaoji's core group is the Wenzhou wedding banquet market. After positioning, it then moved to the group of people who are afraid of getting a sore throat by drinking beverages, and finally to the general group of people in the gift-giving market.

Here we have to give some affirmation to Xiaohongshu. The traditional marketing theory has a vague and even exclusive definition of the crowd, and the essence is the lack of data.

Xiaohongshu's marketing backend defines the crowd and can segment various crowd packages. When a brand launches its campaign, it can proceed according to the customized crowd package and break through the crowd layer by layer.

Figure: Crowd reverse funnel model

From the perspective of mass media, Xiaohongshu is still a small part of the market, which is why people often say there are 100 million Xiaohongshu users, 300 million Fenzhong users, and 600 million Douyin users.

3. KFS Marketing Strategy

KFS means that Kol (expert blogger) publishes high-value seeding notes based on product characteristics to build a complete layout of brand/product content output;

Feeds (information flow advertising) accurately reaches the audience in a fast and low-cost way, seizes the user's mind in the most planned way, and completes the voice penetration of different groups; Search (search advertising) seizes the track through keyword search and directly guides user decision-making.

Figure: Xiaohongshu KFS delivery combination

In other words, by having influencers publish recommendations and notes, the information flow can be repeatedly used to reach out to users, break through the user circle layer by layer, and then intercept user needs through search, guide content and delivery strategies, and stimulate user purchasing intentions.

In my opinion, compared with H2H and crowd reverse funnel, KFS is more of a tool abbreviation, which is more in line with the brand's actual operation and marketing strategy.

4. IDEA Methodology

IDEA is a set of systematic marketing methodology officially summarized based on customer launch cases. It is mainly divided into four parts: insight, definition, expedition and advocate. They are closely linked and form a progressive relationship.

Even after the last step is completed, you can transition to the data insights section. Let’s focus on explaining each part below.

Figure: Xiaohongshu IDEA methodology

I still believe that the IDEA method is more operational than the first three methodologies. People-oriented marketing is more of a form and talk, the crowd funnel is the soul and accounts for 50% of the methodology, KFS is a framework, it is valuable and executable, and the IDEA method is truly valuable and can be implemented.

Why is IDEA methodology less and less popular? > There is a high probability that there are problems with the understanding and transmission of the methodology. When I was in a marketing planning company, many methodologies were more limited to the bosses, because planners and copywriters could not explain or understand them. Without rote memorization, the methodology was really difficult to master.

Let's explain the IDEA methodology in detail:

1. Insight: Identify product pain points

The essence of marketing is to understand demand, and Insight is also insight. Users leave a lot of behavioral data in the community. Insight is to use the official tools of Xiaohongshu to help customers diagnose real marketing problems. The core is to locate product pain points and find marketing opportunities.

Figure: Data Insights: Real Problems with Multi-dimensional Diagnostic Products

When diagnosing product pain points, we start from four aspects: industry, category, brand and product.

But the specific angles are from crowd insights (user portrait + crowd reach), content insights (hot topics + note publishing trends + high-frequency mentioned words in notes), search trends (search related connections, search trends and search penetration) and sentiment insights (positive and negative word clouds and note comment detection).

In terms of tools, you can use Xiaohongshu's monthly business report, keyword planning tools and topic tools, drop-down word boxes, creative notes and other tools, or users' current unrealized points about brands or industries.

Customers with certain advertising volumes can also use the internal business tool Lingxi to gain insights.

2. Define the product: determine the marketing strategy

The core of this stage is to determine the marketing strategy. In the past, the marketing strategy was based on the brand/product, and then choose products with good performance on other platforms. In terms of content, whatever is popular is written, and there is no way to carry out systematic delivery. The delivery of influencers is a one-time deal.

Now, when defining products, the marketing strategy is linked together through product selection, selling points, content and bloggers.

Figure: Xiaohongshu defines products: confirming marketing strategies based on problems

• Product selection: select products that are popular in the market and are liked by users, and then select potential hot-selling products for launch. Hot-selling products on different platforms are different.
• Selling point: From the perspective of product function and emotion, it is necessary to solve customer problems; the second is the nickname. If the brand name is relatively long, it is recommended to spread it with a nickname. In addition, we should also pay attention to user feedback and continuously optimize product selling points.
• Content: After the selling point is determined, you should also refine 2-3 small selling points, find different scenarios, implant the selling points into the scenarios, solve user pain points, and make breakthroughs in content creation from the title, first picture, pictures and texts, and videos.

Figure: Xiaohongshu brand content products

Bloggers: In terms of blogger selection, there are vertical experts or some non-vertical scenario experts. According to the stage of the brand, choose the corresponding expert to talk about the specific communication scenario, that is, raise the problem and propose a solution;

3. Expand to seize the track: Break through the track mentality

At this stage, the official explanation is that Xiaohongshu's information flow and search tools, that is, KFS tools, will gradually break through the layers of product words, categories, scenarios and crowds, and ultimately allow the brand to occupy the mind.

In my opinion, advertising products can be operated simultaneously with influencer delivery. At this stage, three major assets, namely crowd, word-of-mouth and content, will be formed. These three assets will also feed back into data delivery in the later stage.

Figure: Xiaohongshu seizes the track and gradually penetrates different tracks

4. Advocate the brand: gather brand awareness

The core of the first three stages is to get users to buy, and the core of this stage is to get users to follow us, interact more with users, generate secondary sharing, and allow the brand to accumulate content.

During this stage, the official mostly relies on brand advertising, such as commercial topics, splash screen ads, flame topics, etc., to allow users and brands to interact more.

Figure : Advocate supports the brand and gathers brand awareness

The above is an inventory of Xiaohongshu’s marketing methodology over the years. With the increase in marketing cases, there will definitely be new terms in the methodology.

Author: Jiang He, WeChat public account: Jiang He Talks Marketing