The cost of advertising on Xiaohongshu is getting higher and higher? How to manage traffic?

How to manage traffic has an important impact on expanding brand influence. This article introduces in detail from nine aspects how to manage traffic for new brands on Xiaohongshu. It is recommended for students who want to understand brand operations.

Last week, a consumer goods client I have known for a long time told me that he would no longer work on Xiaohongshu. The reason was that he found that the platform’s advertising costs were getting higher and higher. At that time, the ROI of the advertising was around 2, which was still sustainable. Now that the advertising costs are getting higher and higher, there is not much point in investing anymore. Let me talk about the client’s background. He switched from Taobao to Xiaohongshu and is also a paid player that the platform prefers. During the peak period, Xiaohongshu’s advertising costs 20,000 yuan per day, and the main investment is in corporate accounts to divert traffic to Taobao. There are many similar stories of merchants stopping investment. Why does this happen?

Essentially, there is no traffic management, and excessive reliance on platform advertising. With the increasing competition for advertising traffic, the cost of advertising is getting higher and higher, and companies have to withdraw. For new brands doing Xiaohongshu, how to manage traffic?

First of all, we need to understand the ways brands have to acquire traffic. In terms of traffic structure, referring to the "HUA & HUA Five-Year Brand Plan", there are mainly the following 9 aspects.

Figure 1: Healthy composite flow structure

1. Parent business flow

The parent business flow refers to the original intention of the brand, that is, to discover social problems, establish a business mission, and then implement it through strategic activities. Take Winona as an example. It has insight into the improper skin care methods and external stimuli of Chinese people, established a business theory to solve the common skin problems of Chinese people, and then solved user problems through various products. Thus, people with problematic skin go to Winona, which is a powerful parent flow.

2. Flow of mother words

The mother words include naming, advertising slogans, business theories, brand copywriting, etc. The core of users’ understanding and spreading of brands is the brand name. If your brand name is difficult to pronounce and remember, even if users purchase it once through paid traffic, it is difficult to spread it a second time, which is a waste of traffic. At the same time, many businesses operate on Xiaohongshu and adopt a multi-brand strategy, which also increases the difficulty of user identification and dissemination.

3. Product flow

The product itself brings traffic, that is, whether your product can truly solve user problems and create surprises for users.

4. Product structure flow

There can also be traffic associations between products. For example, after HBN launched the concept of retinol, facial masks, creams, and eye creams also contain this ingredient. After users recognize the concept of retinol, the decision-making cost of users when purchasing other HBN products will be the lowest. This is the traffic between product structures. Notice that even the product packaging design is surprisingly consistent in style, which enhances the traffic of the product structure.

Figure 3: HBN official website product image

My biggest experience with product structure is that when we read books by Mo Yan and Jia Pingwa, we will also see other novels by the author on the title page and in the novel. So when you see the novel in your hand, you are likely to buy other novels by the author. This is the role of product structure flow.

5. Metamedia Traffic

Metamedia refers to the traffic that the product itself has, such as product packaging and Xiaohongshu professional accounts, which are huge traffic. After users see your popular notes, they usually click on your professional account, and make full use of metamedia traffic in the introduction, moments, collections, tags, address locations and other functions to deepen users' understanding of brand differentiation.

6. Channel Traffic

The most common perception of channel traffic is catering stores, that is, the rent we pay, which is essentially buying past traffic. For Xiaohongshu, channel traffic can be understood as a matrix account. Setting different personal accounts and professional accounts is to intercept user demand traffic. Take the skin care brand AYAKO as an example. There are manager accounts, official accounts, and amateur accounts on Xiaohongshu. When we search for the keyword "skin care training", its notes appear in a high proportion, directly intercepting users.

Figure 4: Search results for skin care training

7. Retail terminal traffic

When a product is on the shelf, it enjoys the traffic of the retail terminal. At this time, the past traffic can be attracted through display and pile design, so in the supermarket, we see piles trying to jump out of the shelf. For Xiaohongshu, the retail terminal traffic is not information flow, but natural flow. How to keep the notes in a row of information flow, how to retain users through the cover, title, text, comment area, especially the cover. If your Xiaohongshu traffic conversion is not good, you can also find out the reason through the whole process of Xiaohongshu.

Figure 5: Panoramic view of Xiaohongshu reading

8. Advertising traffic

Advertising investment is to build a brand and keep traffic costs down. In the case of Xiaohongshu advertising, it is about whether you have established brand potential through influencer advertising, because every real influencer evaluation will increase user trust and decision-making, so whether you have healthy influencer traffic in the Xiaohongshu traffic structure.

9. Traffic Provider Channels

That is, the performance advertising placed by merchants on Xiaohongshu. The cost of entering the store, the cost of private messages, the cost of return searches, etc. are assessed here. Even if you are placing ads and have achieved sales, you should also think about how to build a brand. For example, in the comment area, naming, and after users purchase products, they know the differentiation of your brand, and then when recommending, they also know how to recommend you. The above is a relatively healthy traffic structure for a brand. If your delivery costs are getting higher and higher, you need to review it. Are you only considering the channels of traffic providers, and not considering other traffic channels enough? If you make timely adjustments, keep the traffic structure healthy and keep the delivery costs lower and lower.

Author: Jiang He

Source: WeChat public account: Jiangheliaoyingxiao (ID: jiangheliaoyingxiao)