Xiaohongshu buyers are in the limelight, and also a business opportunity for ordinary people and merchants!

In real life, what kind of buyers have you seen? Nowadays, buyers are personalized product recommendation officers. In the development wave of Xiaohongshu, individual e-commerce continues to rise, and more and more individual "buyers" have achieved rapid growth and commercial success with the help of the platform's influence. What business opportunities are there for ordinary people and merchants?

In real life, what do you understand as a buyer?

When I was on a business trip in Changsha before, I saw a lot of buyer stores, but the prices in these buyer stores were relatively high and their styles were unique, which were not something that everyone could afford. Before this, I thought that a buyer was a store that selected different brands of fashion, accessories, jewelry, handbags, shoes, cosmetics and other products and integrated them together.

Now, buyers are personalized product recommendation officers, who select products based on their real life and aesthetic tastes and introduce them to user groups with similar preferences.

With the development of Xiaohongshu, the rise of individual e-commerce has become a trend that cannot be ignored, and a new wave of opportunities for merchants to start their own businesses has arrived.

With the help of tens of billions of traffic, more and more individual "buyers" have achieved rapid growth and commercial success by leveraging the influence of the platform.

What does this emerging era mean for brands and individual entrepreneurs? How should they comply with official policies to increase brand exposure and product sales? Let’s explore it in depth.

1. Traditional factories transform into e-commerce, and Xiaohongshu buyers overtake others

I interviewed a member of the Content Villa CEO circle. They mainly deal in niche women's shoe brands and have been supplying cross-border e-commerce in the past. It was in 2020 that they moved from traditional factories to traditional e-commerce, and then to traditional Xiaohongshu. Xiaohongshu has become one of the bases for their successful transformation.

It is understood that their brand is now looking for more Xiaohongshu live broadcast experts to sell goods. Currently, they have paid for more than 700 orders through Xiaohongshu live broadcast, with nearly 300,000 sales. Xiaohongshu live broadcast can also be understood as "Xiaohongshu buyers"

During the interview, we can feel that she is full of confidence in Xiaohongshu's buyers and expert live broadcasts, and is also optimistic about the e-commerce development trend of Xiaohongshu.

In the live broadcast of Xiaohongshu's "Buyer Era", four outstanding buyers of Xiaohongshu introduced how they became buyers and what kind of people they have become in the buyer era.

According to what Azizi shared at the "Buyer Era" conference, she is now also a mother. After graduating from college abroad, like most people, she found a job in an office building, but this was not the life she wanted, so she quit and started Xiaohongshu. She went from not knowing how to edit videos to having 10,000 followers, to becoming pregnant and stopping updating.

She updated Xiaohongshu again six months after giving birth. The first live broadcast on Xiaohongshu sold 300,000, and now each live broadcast has sold over 1 million, which is an achievement she is proud of.

Zhang Xiaomou, a women's clothing manager in Guangzhou, first entered the creative field of Xiaohongshu in 2021. She quickly attracted widespread attention with the "30-Day Pear-Shaped Body Dressing Challenge" series of content, and gradually attracted the attention of users.

Faced with her own pear-shaped body problem, she deeply understood the difficulties and needs faced by women in similar situations when choosing bottoms. Therefore, she closely matched these needs and specially developed clothing styles suitable for this body type.

Then, in July 2022, Zhang Xiaomou had accumulated a considerable number of fans, so she decided to open a store on the Xiaohongshu platform to open up a new sales channel. As time went by, about half a year later, Zhang Xiaomou integrated into the wave of live streaming and began to broadcast product displays live.

Currently, about 60% of her brand’s sales come from the Xiaohongshu platform.

Many people may not understand what this buyer means. In layman's terms, it means differentiated influencers bringing products. So, what is its differentiation?

On Douyin, if you want to sell goods through live streaming, you need to negotiate with the merchant, accept the order, and the language used during the live streaming is to urge you to place an order, similar to:

• It took a long time to negotiate with the brand to get the price.
• This price is only available in my live studio
• Last 200 orders
• …

However, Xiaohongshu never plays by the rules. Buyers on Xiaohongshu express themselves in their own true personal way, mainly sharing the beauty of life, attracting potential customers through personal taste and aesthetics, and sincerely recommending products to fans.
It can also be said to be an upgraded version of the blogger

After users have seen too many straightforward content urging them to place orders, they will be more interested in the buyer's style and live broadcast room with atmosphere and personality. By attracting accurate users through the buyer's personal taste and aesthetics, to some extent, the buyer's live broadcast room has stronger user stickiness and more accurate circle positioning. For example, the buyer Zhang at the conference must have a pear-shaped body, and her circle of users is unfriendly to people with this body type buying bottoms. This group of people is quite accurate. When doing content marketing, grasp the pain points of this group of people, and users will pay for your content.

Therefore, each of us has the opportunity to make a name for ourselves on Xiaohongshu. Moms, white-collar workers, merchants, bloggers, etc. will all have the opportunity to start their own businesses.

In Xiaohongshu's natural grass-planting community, its consumption power and desire already exist, and the number of Xiaohongshu users continues to grow. The emergence of buyers just helps the platform cultivate users' standing consumption habits, which is also what the platform strongly supports.

2. What is Xiaohongshu’s intention in launching the buyer era?

Xiaohongshu launched the "Buyer Era" to further strengthen its e-commerce business. By emphasizing the importance of individual buyers on the platform and organically integrating them with community content, it aims to create a better shopping experience, increase user participation, and improve purchase conversion rates.

It helps merchants to better participate in Xiaohongshu's e-commerce ecosystem, establish deeper interactions with users, enhance brand influence, and thus achieve better sales performance.

The feeling of 1+1 is greater than 2. You are not selling products alone. With buyers, you can not only amplify the brand's exposure and increase sales, but also attract fans of the buyers.

The first is to thoroughly understand the value of buyers. Xiaohongshu launched the "Buyer Era" to further strengthen its e-commerce business. By emphasizing the importance of individual buyers on the platform and organically combining them with community content, it aims to create a better shopping experience, increase user participation, and improve purchase conversion rates.

Through the integration of buyers and e-commerce, a seamless shopping experience is created, combining autonomous shopping with rational shopping, increasing user participation and loyalty.

Users enjoy the quiet atmosphere of live broadcasting and the environment of rational thinking. Through the personalized recommendations of buyers, users can find more suitable products according to their own needs and interests. This customized recommendation can improve the efficiency of user discovery and purchase, and provide users with a more valuable shopping experience.

At this Xiaohongshu conference, merchants were encouraged to establish their own brand accounts on Xiaohongshu, rather than simply promoting themselves. This requires them not only to promote their products, but also to establish two-way interactions between brands and users through content creation. The content needs to be informative, but also reflect the buyer's attitude towards life and aesthetics of product selection.

Merchants can cooperate with buyers on Xiaohongshu to conduct live streaming to sell goods. This is not only a simple advertising promotion, but also an opportunity to interact directly with users.

Like the fashion brand manager @蓓蓓SAGE at the Xiaohongshu conference, the relationship with buyers is not just regarded as an employment relationship, but a partnership relationship. Together, they can show their style and achieve sales results in the clothing market. Merchants and buyers can prepare product introductions, warm-up content, as well as interactive and matching sessions during the live broadcast to attract users to participate and purchase products.

Since the government is supporting live streaming sales, opening a Xiaohongshu store is also a form of e-commerce. Opening a store on Xiaohongshu can further stabilize operations and conduct business in multiple fields.

Xiaohongshu promises to provide merchants with 50 billion exclusive traffic to support their development, which will help merchants achieve greater exposure and influence on Xiaohongshu, and bloggers will have more opportunities to start their own businesses and make money on Xiaohongshu.

The "buyer era" provides a win-win opportunity for both brands and bloggers. Brands can increase sales and awareness through buyers, while bloggers can gain revenue and influence through cooperation with brands. This cooperation model helps promote the development of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce ecosystem.

Of course, many Xiaohongshu users still don’t understand the era of buyers, and they may confuse it with ordinary sales experts.

In the era of buyers, buyers are no longer simply selling goods, they are more like brand communicators and connectors. Unlike ordinary sales experts, buyers in the era of buyers pay more attention to in-depth cooperation with brands, not only conveying product information, but also conveying the stories and values ​​behind the brands.

They have the ability to connect brand stories with user emotions, build more lasting user recognition and loyalty, and are similar to the intermediaries we know as being responsible for linking merchants and customers.

3. “Buyer Era”: The Next Opportunity for Xiaohongshu’s Light Entrepreneurship

1. Opportunities for merchants

Undoubtedly, the benefit is to expand new sales channels. Merchants can recommend products directly to users through the Xiaohongshu platform and achieve sales.

This provides merchants with a new sales channel, especially for brands with innovative products or targeting young users.

The second is to increase the precise audience group, which is directly related to the screening of buyers. Cooperation with buyers can not only drive the expansion of product sales, but also use the buyers' circle to carry out cross-circle communication.

Cooperate with buyers or bloggers to expand product exposure and promotion through their influence and fan base.

The last step is to strengthen the brand wall building. By creating content and sharing brand stories on Xiaohongshu, merchants can strengthen their brand image and user awareness and achieve long-term brand building.

The government is vigorously supporting the "buyer era", and existing merchants can follow the trend. What else do they need to consider for a business that is sure to make a profit? Don't you want to have a share of the 5 million traffic pool?

Merchant development path: three steps and six actions.

For merchants, Xiaohongshu provides a clear development path: create an account, post notes, find buyers, do live broadcasts, open stores, and stabilize operations. Merchants need to focus on the following key points in these steps:

• Content interaction: The content created should be able to interact and interact with users, and establish connections between fans and users.
• Buyer cooperation: Choose suitable buyers to cooperate with and find buyers who truly recognize the brand and are willing to share.
• Live broadcast warm-up: Promote and warm up the products before the live broadcast to create user interest and expectations for the products.
• Personalized account: The merchant’s account should be personalized to establish real interactions with users and resonate with users.

Xiaohongshu users are mainly post-90s, from first- and second-tier cities, with high disposable income and willingness to buy. This provides e-commerce with abundant consumption potential. At the same time, Xiaohongshu emphasizes the sincerity and quality of content, integrates product introduction with brand value, and creates long-term user value.

2. Opportunities for bloggers and individual entrepreneurs

Not to mention the opportunities for tens of millions of bloggers on Xiaohongshu, which almost provides an entrepreneurial opportunity with a relatively low threshold. Individuals can build their own personal brand and realize their entrepreneurial dreams by sharing their interests, experiences or skills.

In Azizi's words: Everyone has a "dream of opening a store". When you sleep at night, your store is still making money, and you can truly make money while lying down.

Not only that, individuals can build their own personal brand and become brand managers, shine in the fields they like and are good at, accumulate fans and influence, and expand business cooperation opportunities in other fields.

In the e-commerce era of Xiaohongshu, while doing business on Xiaohongshu, we also need to comply with the platform's e-commerce ecological layout.

3. E-commerce ecosystem layout: content, product selection, live streaming and fans

Xiaohongshu professional account is not just a simple promotion. The account should be business-oriented, focus on two-way communication with users, and establish relationships between people, rather than simply transmission between brands and users.

When creating content, we need to have both substantive content and focus on life elements so that users can resonate with the brand and follow the brand’s lifestyle.

Brands should focus on building a comprehensive e-commerce ecosystem. This includes several key elements:

• Content creation: Content creation on Xiaohongshu is key. It is necessary to create high-quality and valuable content based on the interests, needs and pain points of the target audience. This can include how to use brand products correctly, solve common problems, provide usage experience and tips, etc. The content should balance practical knowledge and life fun to attract more users' attention and interaction.
• Product selection strategy: Choose products that match the brand positioning and target audience, and arouse users' purchasing interest through reasonable product selection and promotion. In the era of buyers, you also need to add products that match the buyer's personality, preferably some products that you have used for a long time. By describing your feelings during use, you can attract users more. Zhang Xiaohui is a good example.
• Live streaming sales: Brands can cooperate with buyers to showcase product features and usage methods in live streaming, interact with users in real time, and enhance confidence in purchasing decisions. The buyer era will be more inclined towards real life.
• Fan interaction: Brands should actively interact with fans, respond to their questions and feedback in the comment section, and build good user relationships.

What does this mean? We use Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui for analysis. They both performed very well in the live broadcasts in 2023. In addition to their own star attributes, their inherent elegance and gentleness, as well as their product selection and product introduction have become one of the reasons why users remember them, are willing to trust them, and buy the products they recommend.

Users will be more willing to watch if you recommend something from the perspective of their real life.

Self-confidence is a skill, and trust is an ability.

IV. Conclusion

The advent of the "buyer era" on Xiaohongshu has brought new development opportunities for brands and merchants. Through active content creation, appropriate buyer cooperation, careful product selection strategies, and the establishment of personalized brand accounts, brands can quickly increase exposure and sales on Xiaohongshu.

At the same time, the conference also provides merchants with a clear development path and policy support, encouraging them to achieve success as individual e-commerce merchants on the platform. Brands and merchants can closely integrate with the community characteristics of Xiaohongshu to create a unique purchasing experience.

Author: Zhuang Jun, WeChat public account: Zhuang Jun