6 steps to turn Xiaohongshu into an efficient new private domain

This article first briefly introduces Xiaohongshu's private domain pool, then analyzes and explains the private domain, and uses six actions to explain how Xiaohongshu can become an efficient new private domain. This article is suitable for those who are interested in Xiaohongshu.

Xiaohongshu is really a platform that makes people love and hate it.

In the past year and a half, the number of merchants selling on Xiaohongshu has increased 10 times, and the number of purchasing users has increased 12 times. Among Xiaohongshu's daily active users, the number of users who have the intention to buy every day is nearly 40 million, and there are still a large number of users whose purchasing needs have not been met.

The seemingly huge business potential has attracted many brands to join, but pain points such as low conversion rate and slow effect have really made many operators scratch their heads.

The Daofa Research Institute found that while many brands are still struggling with how to convert customers on Xiaohongshu, some brands have taken a unique approach by building private domains on Xiaohongshu and feeding back to omni-channel sales.

Everyone focuses on how to direct Xiaohongshu’s traffic to the private domain, but ignores the fact that Xiaohongshu itself is an efficient private domain pool.

After WeChat untied the corporate microblogs from live broadcast rooms and short videos, cutting off the channel connecting the private and public domains, this platform, which was once the most suitable for private domains, has become more and more public. Xiaohongshu is becoming a new private domain for many brands to tap into traffic.

We have summarized 6 key actions for Xiaohongshu’s private domain operations, hoping to provide you with new ideas for solving Xiaohongshu’s commercialization problems.

1. Private domain construction: product selection, scenarios, and crowds

Many brands are using Xiaohongshu mainly because of its demographic advantage. According to data released at the 2022 Xiaohongshu Business Ecosystem Conference, Xiaohongshu has 200 million monthly active users. 72% of them are born after 1990, more than 50% are from first- and second-tier cities, 70% are female users, and 70% of them have a college degree or above.

Young people, women, and highly educated users all have high consumption potential. Xiaohongshu is also an "encyclopedia of lifestyles," and many users make purchasing decisions after sharing their experiences with each other. Brands enter a certain circle through private domain construction, influence a specific group of people, and then spread through their word of mouth, breaking through the circle and feeding back to the public domain.

In this process, if you want to effectively influence a specific group of people, you cannot do without the three key actions of building Xiaohongshu’s private domain: product selection, scene segmentation, and crowd resonance.

Action 1: Carefully select products and prioritize potential

The premise for effective word-of-mouth communication is to find "high-potential people", that is, users with rich knowledge and experience and a certain voice in a specific circle. To impress this group of people, the requirements for products are higher. Therefore, Xiaohongshu's product selection cannot take the route of currency and use mechanisms to attract users, but must "prioritize potential."

What is "potential energy"? If your product meets these characteristics, it can be called a potential energy product:

• High efficacy: such as anti-aging skin care products with patented ingredients;
• High education cost: innovative products or technologies in a certain category;
• High quality: For example, the flagship products of the high-end line,
• Meet the needs of segmented upgrades: anti-aging + soothing, laundry detergent + fragrance.

This type of product has a certain threshold for ordinary users, but in the eyes of "high potential people", it is a good opportunity to discover new trends and enhance their voice. They are happy to try new things. If the product quality is good enough to meet their needs and bring a pleasant experience, they can become "fans" of the brand. When the "high potential people" gather to a certain number, a superposition of circles is formed.

Action 2: Use trends to segment scenarios

Currently, Xiaohongshu users account for 60% of daily searches, with an average daily search volume of nearly 300 million. The huge search volume will reveal trends and provide brands with insights that are one step ahead.

Writing notes = manual sowing, watching trends = sowing with the wind, using wind power to spread seeds is bound to be more efficient than manual sowing. The key to using trends is to find segmented scenarios.

In "When using Xiaohongshu, it is better to understand a trend than to write 100 notes", Daojie Doris mentioned that all the trends of Xiaohongshu are strongly related to life scenarios. This is a big difference between the trends of Xiaohongshu and other platforms.

The so-called scenario, broken down into "what kind of person, at what time, encountered what problem, and needed what solution", is to solve a specific life task. Just like everyone will experience dating, having children, working, and taking exams, they will also encounter various problems and need help and advice from others.

For example, anti-aging is a trend in the skin care industry. This trend can be divided into anti-aging + repair, anti-aging + whitening, anti-aging + hydration, etc., but this is not detailed enough. Going one step further, it can also be divided into a specific scene. For example, staying up late, changing seasons, and after medical aesthetics, different scenes are behind different groups of people. Even if it is the same product, the points that can impress them are different. For example, sunscreen may be backed by people who love hiking and camping, or ordinary office workers.

Trends essentially reveal users’ potential needs. The sooner a brand can gain insights from trends, the lower the cost of connecting with users, thereby building a stronger brand mindset.

Action 3: Crowd resonance, emotional energy

Building a private domain on Xiaohongshu relies more on the resonance of the crowd. The characteristics of the crowd on Xiaohongshu determine that its users are more likely to be attracted by emotional value rather than mechanism. Facing them, brands need to redefine cost-effectiveness.

Of course, it doesn’t mean that Xiaohongshu users don’t pay attention to cost-effectiveness. It’s just that the cost-effectiveness here also adds a layer of “emotional value”. If brands want to attract users to join Xiaohongshu, in addition to the price and quality of the product, they also need emotional energy.

From the official campus activities of the Xiaohongshu platform, we can see more clearly how to use "emotional value". Xiaohongshu has tailored a solgan at places frequented by college students, such as the takeaway counters in dormitory buildings, women's toilets, and stray cat dens. For example, this sentence on the takeaway counter: "Today we gather here to celebrate the takeaway thief who failed the final exam." This sentence combines the Internet hot memes familiar to college students, as well as the two major pain points of "takeaway thieves" and "failing the exam", which can be said to be full of emotional value. Students who see this sentence will find it hard not to be touched and can't help scanning the QR code to join the group.

When applied to brand private domain construction, it is a question of how to find the emotional pain points of users. Now many cleaning and care brands are promoting "bathroom aesthetics" on Xiaohongshu. Instead of talking about how good the product's efficacy is, they use videos and graphic content to create a refined and comfortable bathroom atmosphere, which makes people yearn for it. In fact, it hits the anxiety of contemporary young people's lives and sees that many people regard the bathroom as an emotional haven.

2. Transfer between public and private domains: The key lies in breaking the circle

Action 4: Use word of mouth to break through the circle

Xiaohongshu's private domain is based on hobbies and scenarios. The so-called breaking circle is to break through from one scenario to another. Although each scenario corresponds to a specific niche group of people, when you penetrate 10 scenarios, the total amount is a considerable magnitude.

A key point is to learn to treat users as specific people. Scenarios are not imagined out of thin air, but occur naturally based on life experience. A person may have many hobbies. He may like camping, raising cats, and being a foodie. Only by finding the correlation between scenarios and breaking down a product into different scenarios can it quickly break through the circle.

It is worth noting that Xiaohongshu’s private domain is more “open” than WeChat’s, because Xiaohongshu has both interest-based groups and an open interactive public domain, and the two can be seamlessly connected.

Brands can use private domains to cultivate the depth of the crowd, and then use public domains to expand the breadth of the crowd. The core methodology of the circulation between public and private domains is to make good use of the "word-of-mouth effect".

Xiaohongshu itself is a community that thrives on word of mouth, and word of mouth among users shapes the community ecosystem. From the initial beauty and makeup to today's fashion, trends, sports, and technology, as the ecosystem gradually enriches, the ripples generated by the word-of-mouth effect are also gradually expanding.

So what brands need to think about is, how can my content inspire users' positive word-of-mouth and desire to spread? To achieve this, in addition to finding high-potential people and products, segmenting scenarios, and playing with emotional value, it is also very important to treat Xiaohongshu as an after-sales channel and adjust the content direction and marketing ideas based on user feedback.

Once the reputation is established and word of mouth spreads, the number of notes on Xiaohongshu will increase, which will in turn affect the search weight and create a "hot product" atmosphere. User notes will provide more feedback to the brand. These feedbacks serve as a content library to make brand content more accurate. The circulation of public and private domains thus enters a positive cycle and continues to expand.

For example, when Schwarzkopf promoted hair masks on Xiaohongshu, it first found people who frequently permed and dyed their hair. In order to address the pain point of "frequent perming and dyeing damages hair", it emphasized the care effect of the product in the content. After planting "word of mouth" in the hearts of this core group of people with rigid needs, it then covered the general perm and dye population through interaction between people.

Conversely, brands can also direct traffic from the public domain to the private domain based on user interest tags. Use groups with interests and hobbies as glue to build and consolidate word-of-mouth. For example, Schwarzkopf, after locking in the tag of frequent perming and dyeing, reached the second dimension crowd and established a private domain community based on this.

3. Private Domain Conversion: Take it Slow, It Will Be Faster

Action 5: Traffic harvesting, slow is fast

Many traders feel that Xiaohongshu has low conversion efficiency and are anxious to see results. In fact, to solve this problem, we must first correct our psychological expectations of results and goals.

Each platform has its own mission. If you want to achieve immediate conversion, Douyin is a better choice. Xiaohongshu is more suitable for slow and steady work: cultivating brand awareness and favorability, and most importantly, maintaining the price system.

Building up word-of-mouth is a slow process, but the advantage is high customer spending and brand loyalty. When it comes to harvesting traffic on Xiaohongshu, slow is fast.

Therefore, we do not recommend using the common hot selling method on Xiaohongshu. The value of Xiaohongshu lies in allowing hot selling to break away from the promotion cycle and allowing traffic to accumulate, settle, and become sustainable, becoming a "brand asset."

Especially for mature brands that are building brand power and high added value, brand equity is an important factor in maintaining the price system. Xiaohongshu provides a possibility other than "lowering prices for traffic".

Action 6: Make good use of social media to feed back offline

According to the Daofa Research Institute, some brands have already found a way to use Xiaohongshu’s private domain to feed back to offline stores. Xiaohongshu’s private domain has boosted the sales of offline stores, especially in the apparel industry.

A typical case is Longchamp, where almost every shopping guide in its offline stores has opened a Xiaohongshu account. Another clothing brand, during the period when its offline stores were closed, built and operated a private domain through Xiaohongshu to retain and expand its customers.

The spontaneous actions of these brands have forced Xiaohongshu to launch the KOS (Key Opinion Sales) ecosystem. After being officially certified by Xiaohongshu, store guides can publish content as KOS, interact with users, and gain traffic, thereby amplifying the influence of high-quality content. At the same time, KOS can communicate with users one-on-one through the community and directly link to the store.

To some extent, the Xiaohongshu KOS ecosystem is like a corporate WeChat with humanistic care. KOS connects with users through personalized accounts, divides groups according to interests and circles, attracts potential users, and paves the way for the first offline meeting between brands and users. For example, some customized clothing and jewelry businesses are difficult to complete the transaction loop online, so they can make initial communication in the private domain of Xiaohongshu and then attract customers to the store.

In general, the commercialization of Xiaohongshu is indeed not mature enough. But precisely because of this, there are more hidden opportunities. On this platform where public and private traffic coexist, tapping the potential of the private domain may be a breakthrough for brands to find incremental growth.

Author: Dao Fa Xing Yan WeChat Official Account: Dao Fa Research Institute