After taking a look at the top ten consumer products in terms of the number of fans on Xiaohongshu, is this brand game worth focusing on?

Taking the top 10 Xiaohongshu consumer brands with the most fans as reference samples, we further analyze how brands can integrate into Xiaohongshu in a timely manner and grasp the needs of consumer groups. This article describes the relevant content and hopes it will be helpful to you.

For most content communities, 10 years is a process of moving from a niche to breaking out of the circle. The same is true for Xiaohongshu, which just celebrated its 10th anniversary.

During this period, Xiaohongshu's product form has undergone changes, from the earliest PDF shopping guide to the community APP for sharing overseas shopping information, and then to the commercial exploration of cross-border e-commerce and comprehensive e-commerce, and finally formed a UGC content community.

Although it has been labeled with different labels at different stages, the essence of Xiaohongshu has not changed. It continues to penetrate into the minds of users and has become a label recognized by the outside world.

According to public reports, Xiaohongshu's monthly active users exceeded 300 million at the beginning of 2023, and industry insiders recently revealed that its daily active users have exceeded 100 million, with young groups such as those born after 1990 accounting for 72%.

In the context of content seeding becoming the mainstream narrative on the Internet, Xiaohongshu has a large number of young users with potential purchasing power, which means that it has grasped the lifeline of brand marketing.

Mao Wenchao, the founder of Xiaohongshu, once stated that the core gameplay of Xiaohongshu is decentralized recommendation, which is an algorithm different from the centralized recommendation of Douyin. It allows more content from amateur creators to inspire community users to participate in sharing and discussion independently. The content of Xiaohongshu has also gradually expanded from the beauty and fashion category to many other fields such as food, travel, mother and baby, and even includes technology and digital products that male users prefer.

This diversified circle culture has helped Xiaohongshu accurately tap into the trend of the rise of new consumer brands in China. New consumer brands with a market value of tens of billions, such as Perfect Diary, Pop Mart, and Yuanqi Forest, have successively gained the most critical early traffic attention on Xiaohongshu.

In January 2020, Mao Wenchao said at the Tencent Investment IF Conference that there are already 30,000 brands gathered on Xiaohongshu , and the platform has also provided traffic support to creators and new consumer brands. Yiyuguancha used the top 10 Xiaohongshu consumer brand accounts with the most fans as reference specimens. They are the leaders who have adapted to Xiaohongshu's gameplay in a timely manner. Further analysis shows that if 30,000 brands want to harvest this group of young users with potential consumption power in a timely manner, what kind of secret gameplay should they use to pass the level?

1. “Becoming a popular brand” and “turning content into its own content”

The brand with the most fans is Perfect Diary, which is also the first brand to reap the brand marketing dividends of Xiaohongshu.

In 2017, Perfect Diary, which was recently established, began to publish its notes on Xiaohongshu, and increased the density of publication in 2018. Relying on the sharing and recommendation of a large number of KOLs, Perfect Diary quickly established its own brand image on Xiaohongshu: high cost performance, beautiful design, fast update speed, successful marketing power and the concept of big-name substitutes, Perfect Diary quickly won the hearts of Generation Z.

2018 was also a year of rapid growth in Xiaohongshu's traffic, with the first user growth reaching tens of millions. At that time, Xiaohongshu sponsored two popular variety shows, "Idol Producer" and "Produce 101", at the brand level.

Xiaohongshu sponsors "Produce 101"

For Perfect Diary, which took advantage of the explosive growth of Xiaohongshu users, 2018 also became a turning point in the brand development process. The search exposure related to Perfect Diary soared 12 times. After this effect spilled over to the e-commerce platform, it directly stimulated the sales growth of Perfect Diary. Official data showed that on Double 11 in 2018, Perfect Diary became the No. 1 domestic brand in Tmall beauty sales. In November 2020, Perfect Diary's parent company Yatsen E-Commerce successfully rang the bell of the New York Stock Exchange. The outside world also called it "the first stock of Xiaohongshu's new brand" , recognizing Xiaohongshu's ability to boost Perfect Diary.

But this wave of bonus period did not last long. Brands such as Huaxizi, Guyu, and Colorkey also copied Perfect Diary's marketing strategy and deployed seeding content through Xiaohongshu. Under similar marketing models, Perfect Diary no longer has its own uniqueness, which naturally makes consumers feel aesthetic fatigue.

Currently, Perfect Diary's Xiaohongshu brand account has 2.06 million followers, 7.71 million likes and favorites, and over 300,000 related notes. But it is worth mentioning that as early as November 2020, Perfect Diary's Xiaohongshu brand account had 1.94 million followers and nearly 300,000 related notes. In three years, Perfect Diary's marketing growth on Xiaohongshu has almost stagnated.

Screenshot of Xiaohongshu

After Perfect Diary’s successful launch in 2018, Xiaohongshu also tried to promote more “Perfect Diaries”, but it could not match its marketing success.

Ranked second on the Xiaohongshu brand fans list is the food account "日食记". Compared with Perfect Diary's strong marketing promotion, 日食记 is slightly more low-key. It currently has 1.93 million fans, 6.78 million likes and collections, and more than 70,000 related notes.

Although the outbreak has disrupted the marketing strategies of most brands, it has unexpectedly brought opportunities to Rishiji.

Jiang Laodao, the founder of Rishiji, once mentioned in an interview that "during the epidemic, many old friends called me and asked me if online sales were booming." He admitted that in those months, advertising revenue almost stopped, but online sales were booming, which was like heaven and hell. Today, Rishiji's monetization through e-commerce channels has far exceeded its advertising revenue.

During the epidemic, Xiaohongshu's food content ushered in a period of explosive growth. Public data shows that in February 2020, Xiaohongshu's food category consumption DAU once exceeded beauty and cosmetics, becoming the largest vertical category on the site.

Image source: Analysys

Users learned how to cook from Xiaohongshu. Compared with January 2020, the number of food-related notes posted on Xiaohongshu increased by more than 300% in November 2020.

In this context, the content advantages accumulated by Rishiji over a long period of time far outweigh the artificial exposure brought by marketing.

Brand accounts on Xiaohongshu are no longer limited to buying notes, but use their content advantages to drive users to search and share spontaneously. For example, "Mixue Ice City Snow King", which ranks third on the brand account list with 1.57 million followers, uses the form of "plot + animation" to create a personalized IP image of the Snow King, integrating into the student group that Mixue Ice City targets.

In addition, Mixue Bingcheng also operates another official account with the same name on Xiaohongshu, which mainly outputs official MVs, new product showcases and other brand dynamics. It has accumulated 790,000 fans and ranks 8th on the brand account list. Its positioning is also different from that of "Mixues Bingcheng Snow King".

2. There is no standard answer to building a brand

In addition to the above-mentioned Xiaohongshu brand accounts, the top ten list in terms of the number of fans also includes accounts of niche design vertical groups.

The official account of Motian Books, "Tietie's Bookshelf", has 930,000 followers. The account profile and note topics do not directly include the Motian Books label, weakening the traces of brand operation.

The account content mainly shares the books published by the company, and provides explanations and introductions for different books, which can tap into the group of Xiaohongshu novel fans. In addition, less well-known brands such as "Xiaoguli", "Class 2 Stationery for Grade 3", and "Xinmo" also appear on the list. Among them, "Xiaoguli" is a low-to-medium-priced clothing brand, "Class 2 Stationery for Grade 3" and "Xinmo" are stationery brands, which are also products frequently purchased by the younger generation of users.

Screenshot of Xiaohongshu

In addition to the top ten brands, brands such as Decathlon and Lao Xiang Ji also have active operations on Xiaohongshu.

The head of an MCN once told Yiyuguancha that under the background of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, the budgets of some brands for investing in Xiaohongshu are also gradually decreasing. Instead of communicating and cooperating with influencers, it is better to directly operate the official account, which also avoids the risks after the influencers and brands are untied.

After analyzing the above brand account cases, Yiyu Observation found that the increase or decrease of the brand account’s voice on Xiaohongshu is closely related to the industry background. Whether it is Perfect Diary, the first to reap the marketing dividend of domestic beauty products, or Rishiji, which accidentally gained a lot of attention due to the epidemic, the difference between the two lies in the control of the brand’s self-operated content. How to make users accept it in a softer form is the key for brands to please young people on Xiaohongshu.

Xiaohongshu CEO Seiya mentioned in an internal sharing session on the 10th anniversary that recommendation algorithms are often not as effective as editorial recommendations. However, Xiaohongshu has a core judgment that life is not a stage and there are no standard answers. For brands, there are also no standard answers in operating on Xiaohongshu. Whoever can perceive market trends faster can grasp the direction of the wind faster.

3. Concerns and key points for choosing Xiaohongshu

Just as "there is no standard answer to building a brand", some consumer goods that are considered by the market to be for the purpose of harvesting young people have not paid special attention to the operation of Xiaohongshu. For example, consumer brands favored by young people such as Pop Mart and Yuanqi Forest did not appear in the top ten of the list. At present, Pop Mart's Xiaohongshu brand account has 570,000 fans, while its Douyin brand account has 19.43 million fans.

Tik Tok screenshot

The answer to the huge gap in the number of fans between the two platforms was given in the first quarter 2023 financial report released by Pop Mart. The report showed that in the first quarter of this year, the Douyin flagship store grew by 305%-310% year-on-year, while the Tmall flagship store declined by 40%-45% year-on-year.

Pop Mart executives said that the entire online traffic structure has shifted from some platform e-commerce to live-streaming e-commerce, and the growth rate of the Douyin channel is still quite fast.

During this year's New Year, Pop Mart also cooperated with Douyin to launch a New Year's short film for the Year of the Rabbit, and distributed New Year benefits to users to attract users to follow the official account.

In the list of popular blind boxes on the Douyin platform, IP blind boxes under Pop Mart often occupy the top positions. In the Douyin flagship store of Pop Mart, the highest sales volume of a single blind box reached 12,000, while on Xiaohongshu, the highest sales volume of a single blind box was only 200.

For brands at this stage, content platforms are not just a platform for marketing promotion, it is more important to drive sales conversions. However, Xiaohongshu is still a weak point in this regard.

In February this year, Xiaohongshu mentioned at a business conference that the platform will launch a grass-planting value function to make grass-planting marketing measurable and optimizable, thereby improving transaction conversion efficiency.

However, according to Yiyu's observation , some brands are still only partially aware of the use of Xiaohongshu's seeding value, and seeding conversion is still a "metaphysics". In the sales-oriented e-commerce sector, although Xiaohongshu has seen the emergence of celebrity live broadcasts such as Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui this year, it still cannot be compared with mature content e-commerce platforms such as Douyin in terms of brand self-broadcasting. The strong sales data of live broadcasting is also inconsistent with the tone of Xiaohongshu's seeding sharing.

Nowadays, most of the merchants willing to join Xiaohongshu and engage in self-broadcasting are emerging brands and small and medium-sized sellers. However, these merchants also have the problem of lack of professional capabilities . There are even many merchants that are e-commerce companies without source of goods. After users place an order on Xiaohongshu, they receive goods shipped by Pinduoduo.

Although e-commerce is Xiaohongshu's weak point, there are also e-commerce live broadcast rooms that strengthen their content operations on Xiaohongshu. For example, Dongfang Zhenxuan, which has 720,000 fans, mostly shares live broadcast room clips or previews on its homepage, with a cumulative number of likes reaching 3.99 million. However, Dongfang Zhenxuan removed the official Xiaohongshu store from the shelves in June this year and announced that it would stop operating. Judging from this action, Dongfang Zhenxuan has obviously given up on Xiaohongshu as one of its sales channels. Compared with Douyin, which has deployed multiple matrix live broadcast rooms for bringing goods, Xiaohongshu's ability to drive brand sales is still a shortcoming.

For consumer brands, how to build brands on content communities has long become an important discipline. However, most brand operations are unable to fully customize content exclusively for their own user groups. The most direct and effective way for brands is to distribute the same content through multiple channels, because they know that young people’s main choice is not just Xiaohongshu.

The ultimate factor that determines whether the brand can maintain its presence on a certain platform is the strength of the platform's support, the speed at which the brand accumulates fans, and most importantly, the success rate of sales conversion . After all, the current environment is forcing brands to make quick decisions to tilt their marketing efforts.

Although more and more consumer brands are aware of the importance of Xiaohongshu, Xiaohongshu still needs to understand how to build a good relationship between the platform, brand, and bloggers. It not only needs to see "top-tier" bloggers born from Xiaohongshu and successful "red brands" hovering in the market again, but also needs to see a mature internal sales conversion mechanism recognized by multiple experiments.

As the benefits of live streaming by anchors gradually spread to brand-run live streaming, with Xiaohongshu's current commercialization speed, for brands on the verge of "profit and loss", how attractive is it to join and operate on it? Is it worth giving it a try? They still need to think clearly about whether they should pursue the accumulation of influence on potential consumer groups or direct profit conversion at this stage.

Author: Thick Code

Source: Yiyuguancha (ID: yiyuguancha), the telescope and sonar of the pan-entertainment industry.