New Strategy | What content on Xiaohongshu can attract users to Taobao to shop at low cost and high efficiency?

If a brand wants to operate a good account on Xiaohongshu and achieve rapid growth, there are many ways to play. In addition to creating popular articles, you can also combine rankings to boost brand value. In this article, the author analyzes the gameplay with case studies. Let's take a look.

I have received some questions like these recently:

1. Is creating popular articles the only way to achieve success on Xiaohongshu?
2. Are there any other effective ways to create content besides viral articles?
3. How can we sell goods in a diverse and effective way?
4. What content can attract users to make purchases on Taobao?

In this issue, we have selected 3 brands that have recently achieved rapid growth on the Xiaohongshu platform through Xiaohongshu operations: skin care brand Zhidou, Donghe's hair care brand Zhiben Duobao, and Kalandu, which has been operating for a long time.

There are two different content delivery methods:

One is to focus on pain points to create popular articles;

The other is to use the ranking method, which blocks users’ active search needs and stimulates their purchasing intention for the product.

Although these three brands are not big brands in the traditional sense, or brands of brand operation type, by comparing the performance of Taobao and the placement of Xiaohongshu, it is found that their Taobao revenue has indeed achieved rapid growth due to Xiaohongshu , which also proves that there is more than one way to publish popular articles on Xiaohongshu. I hope this article can provide you with some reference and learning~

1. Zhidou mud mask

First, let's look at the first brand , Zhidou . Here we have selected the mud mask product that it has launched and operated since June 2022 based on its sales situation. This is also one of its main products recently.

So far, Zhidou mud mask has become the second best-selling product in Zhidou Taobao flagship store, with cumulative sales of 3.26 million.

(Taobao data source - Business Advisor Xiaohongshu data source - Huitun Data)

It can be seen that the core content of the notes of Zhidou Mud Mask has basically revolved around "product pain points + solutions" since September. Its two pain points are blackheads and acne. When sorting, we observed that from the launch to June 2023, the content of Zhidou's notes has always revolved around these two pain points, with basically no changes.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

This type of content has a very powerful point, that is, there will be 2-3 hot articles every month , and the ultimate hot articles can reach more than 50,000 likes. This is a universal feature of the pain point gameplay, whether it is Zhidou or other brands, basically this data model will appear.

Corresponding to this data, its instability will appear. We can see that in November and December, there were several popular articles, which were fed back to the sales level of Taobao and also had a corresponding increase.

But since March, the volume of Zhidou's viral articles has been gradually declining . This proves that this type of content actually has a life cycle, because too many brands have used it, and everyone can tell at a glance that it is an advertisement.

If you continue to use a set of popular article templates, its life cycle will decrease!

Corresponding to May and June, we can clearly see that the overall explosive article index is declining. Although the number of notes is increasing, the overall interaction volume is actually significantly decreasing, especially in April and June.

This is a problem that is more likely to occur with this type of content: if the brand no longer looks for new forms of content, sales growth can easily be limited.

After nearly a year of operation, we can clearly see that Zhidou has a continuous cumulative effect on user education on Xiaohongshu. In particular, from April to June, the conversion rate doubled compared to when it was first launched .

This is also the core value of branding and product market education. As the brand’s exposure continues to increase, users’ awareness of the brand and products increases.

With the same delivery volume, the conversion rate will logically continue to rise. As the delivery volume and duration increase, the delivery efficiency will also continue to increase.

Based on the impact of Zhidou's content operation model on product growth, we can get two insights.

1. Content formats that accurately identify pain points can drive product growth, but a single content format is easily imitated by the market and competing products.

When a single form of operation is affected by homogeneity, its volume will continue to decline. At this time, different content is needed to increase continuous popularity.

2. Don’t pay too much attention to the timeliness of the effect

During the delivery process, we can use timeliness as our 50% measurement factor, because as the delivery volume increases, the overall production efficiency will inevitably improve, so we can extend the entire accounting cycle to measure whether this matter is worth continued investment.

2. Plant-based multi-treasures

The second brand is Zhiben Duobao , which focuses on anti-hair loss care products. Its main shampoo products were launched in February, but the core operation time started in mid-March, and the core sales time is nearly 4 months.

In sorting out the data, we found that the cumulative sales of shampoo are about 2783 pieces, 410,000. The cumulative sales in the past 30 days are 1085 pieces, 200,000.

Direct search transactions accounted for 180,000 of them, which is a very typical case of Xiaohongshu driving the growth of the entire brand. Zhiben Duobao started to expose its products on Xiaohongshu in April 2023, and the number of notes continued to increase.

(Taobao data source - Business Advisor Xiaohongshu data source - Huitun Data)

Its content is also very typical. Since April, its list content has basically accounted for more than 90% of all content! Occasionally, there are some other types of notes.

Zhiben Duobao does not produce too much direct promotion content, nor does it produce direct grass-planting content. It is more about implanting its own products into the user's ranking logic .

So why do we look at the rankings?

Because users come to Xiaohongshu most likely to find solutions, but there are too many products now and users don’t know how to choose.

Therefore, Zhiben Duobao taps into the user's psychological need for someone to tell him what products to buy. It is the user behavior that determines the content format.

Secondly, the keywords of Zhiben Duobao are not only anti-hair loss and hair solidification, but the entire content layout also revolves around keywords such as oil control, bulking, and anti-dandruff and anti-itching.

After searching for anti-dandruff and anti-itching shampoo on our Xiaohongshu, we can clearly find that the ranking content on the page is in the TOP10. This proves that in the entire search field , Xiaohongshu's content exposure logic is biased towards this type of content.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

Users prefer to see comparisons between multiple brands, so creating ranking content in this field and highlighting your own products according to their most obvious advantages is a very effective way.

From the perspective of production, the cost of a note on Zhiben Duobao is not high, less than 200 yuan, so first of all, we don’t have such a high demand for its explosive rate. This is different from our previous understanding that Xiaohongshu must have explosive articles.

Secondly, we can clearly see that this type of notes is actually mass-produced. It is not a creator logic, but a typical distribution logic. Therefore, the production and production threshold of this type of content is relatively low, and the replicability is relatively high. A brand can achieve a distribution volume of nearly 500 articles in a month.

Finally, let's verify whether this type of note is really valuable for search.

(Data source: Dandelion)

Take blogger Ka Aixing Daitu as an example. A large number of her notes are ranking-type content. Her content is basically based on natural exposure, and she basically does not make notes on delivery. Next, let’s take a look at the traffic composition of these notes.

(Data source: Dandelion)

It is obvious that 95% of her note traffic comes from search, which also verifies what we just said: ranking content is not based on the logic of explosive articles, but is stuck on the logic of precise needs .

Based on the above situation of Zhiben Duobao, we can draw the following conclusions:

1) In the initial stage, you should determine whether the product has search value

The so-called search value is to judge the user's current usage scenario for your product, what it is like, and when will they have demand for the product.

If users need to search a lot of rankings and search to judge, and don't know how to buy, then this kind of ranking content is very suitable for hitting the mark. The above explains what kind of brands and products the ranking content is suitable for.

2) The significance of ranking content

First of all, in the entire content format of the rankings, we can meet users’ different search needs, divide them by keywords, and implant our own products as the focus.

Secondly, for emerging brands, rankings have the power to leverage momentum. For example, if a brand opens next to LV, customers will think that this brand and LV are together, which must be something special, thus increasing the brand's popularity. The same logic applies to rankings.

Finally, the creation threshold for ranking content is actually very low. It does not require too many experts to endorse it, nor does it require too strong account capabilities.

The core of it is that we just need to make the ranking list and then distribute it, which is an advantage of the ranking content. In terms of the same production efficiency, if there is a suitable product, we don’t have to pursue the extreme of hot articles, and we can also bring accurate search results.

3. Karandu

Next is the brand of Kalandu . Here I have selected two products, one is a primer that was just launched in December last year, and the other is a popular eye cream that the brand has been operating for a long time.

Taking these two products as examples, let’s analyze what kind of content format is more efficient and what changes have taken place in the actions behind the brands?

Let's first look at the eye cream product of Carandu. From the data we can trace back, it is actually a hot product that has been popular since December 21. As the time cycle increases, the brand now has two versions of eye cream.

From the sales perspective, we can clearly see that as of March 23, the brand has seen significant growth, not only in sales but also in terms of search results.

Let’s take a look at the changes that have taken place in Xiaohongshu’s data.

(Data source: Gray Dolphin)

As shown in the figure above, the first stage was from July to December 2022. Its content delivery format basically conforms to the characteristics of Xiaohongshu, with pain points introduced, good product recommendations, and some endorsement content. During this period, Kalandu actually operated with high-click-rate good-looking faces as the main content format.

(Data source: Gray Dolphin)

As shown in the above figure, ranking content began to appear in February and March of 2024 , entering the second stage.

(Data source: Gray Dolphin)

As shown in the figure above, in May , the list content accounted for about 70% of the content and officially entered its third stage.

(Taobao data source - Business Advisor Xiaohongshu data source - Huitun Data)

Although the popularity of the ranking is not high, its overall note volume is continuing to rise. Although there are no extreme explosive posts, the total number of notes and total interactions of the brand are increasing.

By April 2023, there were a lot of ranking content, basically more than 50% of the notes were ranking, and there were no particularly extreme hot articles this month. In May, the proportion of rankings was even higher, basically accounting for 70% of the entire content.

Most of the content in June was also ranked among the rankings. Although there were no extremely popular articles, the entire content format had undergone earth-shaking changes.

Corresponding to its total interaction volume, with the increase in the number of notes and the change in content format, its total interaction volume shows a downward trend.

While its total engagement is down, its search volume and conversion rate are continuing to grow!

The Difference Seen from Carandu Eye Cream:

The content form of pain points + methodology mentioned earlier actually needs to have a hot article foundation in order to achieve a better effect. However, the content form of rankings does not have a particularly high hot article rate, but it can still bring a relatively good promotion effect, and Taobao data has increased instead of decreased.

The second Karandu product we are going to look at is its new primer this year. Let’s also take a look at the changes in its content.

(Taobao data source - Business Advisor Xiaohongshu data source - Huitun Data)

It can be seen that in January 2023, 80% of its content was good product promotion, and only 20% was ranking content. By March, the content began to change. The proportion of rankings increased, and at the same time, some makeup check-ins were made through Beauty Yearning, and some pain point displays were made.

It will tend to be more like the initial stage of eye cream.

As shown in the figure below, by April, the content had changed as a whole. We can clearly see that the content of the entire ranking basically accounted for 50%. It was also listed in the top 5 of the Xiaohongshu search page.

(Data source: Gray Dolphin)

In May, the entire ranking accounted for more than 75% of the total content, and in June 2023, the ranking content still maintained a high proportion. Beauty and makeup sharing content has become negligible.

With the changes in content format in May and June, the cumulative sales of Kalandu Isolation is currently about 210,000. The search volume has also increased significantly, and the conversion rate has increased by almost 4 percentage points.

This actually proves once again that no matter whether it is promoting new products or old products, as long as users have precise search needs, the content is actually suitable for ranking.

Whether it is eye cream or isolation, there are many related search terms. Brands can make rankings based on the core needs of users and their own advantages.

Whether it is Kalandu, which changes its content, or Zhiben Duobao, which has always focused on rankings, they have given us a clear idea: that is to start from the needs of users.

So what is the uniqueness of our brand?

This is a false concept that many brands have when communicating.

But in fact, most users don’t care about the uniqueness of the brand at the beginning. Uniqueness is the reason why users repurchase your product after using it for a long time, not the reason why users directly filter you.

In most scenarios, users are irrational and don’t have much time to think. They just need a clear list and checklist. If you tell me what to do, I will do it. If you tell me this will solve my problem, I will copy your homework.

This is the core reason why rankings have always occupied a relatively high position in searches.

As long as your product has a recommendation demand in the search field, we can make a ranking. The output benefit behind it is that it can attract the brand's mind .

For example, Zhiben Duobao, which has only been in operation for three months, became a recommended word and option when users searched for pain point recommendation words such as shampoo to prevent hair loss and promote hair growth.

Another advantage of this type of gameplay is that the content format is easy to copy and the cost is low.

The ranking method does not pursue popular articles. As long as there is a position, it has value. This greatly reduces the threshold and budget for brands to advertise on Xiaohongshu.

IV. Conclusion

The gameplay of the three brands introduced to you today can be divided into two categories.

Zhidou focuses on pain points to create popular articles, but its efficiency is continuously decreasing. Therefore, for brands that are not good at creating content, the continuous mining of templates for popular articles is a difficult point.

However, the ranking logic of Zhiben Duobao and Kalandu has given us some new ideas. You can judge whether your products have obvious demand for recommendation in the search field?

You can also try the ranking method, which is low-cost, fast, and can boost our brand value.

This is all I want to share with you in this issue: the differences in value and delivery efficiency that different content formats on Xiaohongshu bring to brands.

At the same time, this issue also brings us a different content logic and thinking from the past: Is it necessary to have a hit article? Zhiben Duobao and Kalandu gave us the answer: Even if there is no hit article, the ranking method can still bring good results.