The cost of advertising on Xiaohongshu is getting higher and higher. How to grow in a muscle-like way?

1. What is muscle growth?

Positioning expert Deng Delong mentioned in "Positioning in the New Era" that there are three types of corporate growth: muscle growth, fat growth and tumor growth .

Entrepreneurs must distinguish between these three types of growth and not assume that all growth is a good thing.

The first type of users are those who come for brand positioning. They are truly strategic users. This is called muscle-type growth. With this type of growth, as more and more brands are put into use, the cost of acquiring customers will gradually decrease, and the efficiency of positioning will be greatly improved.

The second type is deviation from the positioning, which will hold you back and make you move forward with a heavy burden. Your resources are not designed for this part of users. This is called fat meat growth.

The third type is to destroy your positioning and lose the reason for users to choose you, and the user's choice deviates from the main business.

All these have led to lower and lower investment by brands on Xiaohongshu and higher and higher customer acquisition costs, which indirectly shows that the growth is not muscular growth. Users buy your products not because of your positioning or the problems you can solve, but more because of promotions and prices.

How to achieve muscle growth?

It essentially relies on brand mind, that is, by conveying positioning, users can think of your brand when purchasing related categories, thus achieving mental pre-sale. In order to better understand the muscle type, let's borrow Teacher Feiyang's user cognition model.

Figure 1: User perception in the era of Feiyang teacher’s algorithm

On Xiaohongshu, when users come into contact with merchants, the core is content, which is mainly content from experts or professional accounts.

To the left is the process of saving money, through the promotion of content by experts and professionals, so that users can recognize the brand and understand brand differentiation;

To the right is the action of making money, that is, monetizing traffic through information flow, live broadcast, and shopping mall. Currently, more than 90% of the content of merchants is concentrated on the right side. Everyone wants to convert quickly, leading to homogeneous competition.

How can Xiaohongshu merchants implement a muscle-building growth plan? There are two approaches: private domain and e-commerce.

2. Private Domain Merchants: Improving Trust

The core of private domain merchants is customer capital, which leads to a situation where customer capital is the only concern. That is, they don’t care whether they build a brand or not, but only care whether they have customer capital.

This simple and crude method will only make the cost higher and higher, because it does not let users know about the brand. It is very likely that after the user makes a purchase, when they want to spread the word about your product, they will not even be able to say your name. Private domain merchants can achieve muscle growth by following the steps below.

1. All actions focus on the brand name

Brand is the brand of the product. Brand is the brand name and symbol. The name is the most important brand asset of the brand.

Any note, label, or comment from a private domain merchant must include the brand name, and secondly, the IP image, so that when users see the note, they at least know who you are and what services you can provide.

In this case, your brand name must be easy to read and able to spread on its own. Avoid a name that is too stiff and difficult to read.

The brand name comes first. Next, you need to tell users what makes you different from others through your account profile, cover photo, business topics, moments, etc. You can also write a note introducing your brand so that users can get to know you better.

Take Deshu Home Furnishing , a company that provides whole-house customization, for example. The brand name is written in the corporate account, top notes, service procedures, and main text. Every contact with users is a brand connection.

Figure 2: Deshu Home Furnishing Case

2. Matrix Operations

The final destination of a brand is equivalent to its category. The higher the proportion of the category, the more user needs it intercepts.

For private domain merchants, once an account is running smoothly, they need to operate in a matrix manner. The matrix gameplay on the market mostly intercepts demand through different names.

The core of operating a matrix account is to occupy categories, that is, when users search for a certain word, the account can get more display opportunities and occupy a higher category in the entire category.

Because our goal is to build a brand, operating three accounts at the same time will make the voice louder. Operating under the same brand name and reaching out frequently will also increase user trust.

Figure 3: Example of a matrix professional number

3. Planting seeds and sending private messages are equally important

Private domain customers mostly use professional accounts + performance advertising. This method is purely for sales harvesting. I think we can appropriately increase the content of grass-planting. Grass-planting is the dissemination of content by amateurs or experts. When users see related notes, they will have more trust in the brand.

Taking skin beauty training as an example, AYOKO increases the authenticity of training and store experience through expert store visits and expert training. Combined with professional account content, the brand's image on Xiaohongshu will be more three-dimensional. The same approach can be used for wedding photography and decoration.

Figure 4: Xiaohongshu skin care training

At the same time, you can also launch an official brand area to lock in brand words, so that users can see the brand first when searching for products. Examples include private domain merchants such as DMK, Quanyou Furniture, and Mangzhu Imaging.

Figure 5: Xiaohongshu brand zone

For private domain merchants, our purpose of branding is to establish brand trust so that users can see the brand when they have relevant needs and then choose the brand with confidence.

3. E-commerce merchants: systematic delivery

The second category is e-commerce merchant investment, which can be carried out according to our summary of brand investment methodology, from the aspects of category insights, crowds, scenarios, traffic amplification, etc.

Figure 6: Yishi Xiaohongshu brand placement methodology

The underlying logic of this picture is that the H&H super symbol is super creative. Why do I use it as the underlying layer of the Xiaohongshu brand?

Because the essence of communication is semiotics, a brand is a set of symbol systems, and Xiaohongshu note communication is a set of stimulus-reflex system. What kind of symbol has the greatest stimulus principle? It must be a symbol that everyone has seen, is guided by, and can't help clicking on.

Take the following popular articles as an example. Each note carries a lot of information. Some of the information is novel, and some is familiar red envelopes. These are all a set of information stimulation systems. The stronger the information energy, the faster the user acts and the easier it is to self-propagate.

Figure 7: Popular notes on Xiaohongshu

Based on the super symbol, there are four steps: determine positioning - endorse category - expand category - become a national brand . As a new brand, the first step is to determine its own positioning and differentiation, and then endorse category.

That is, when people think of the category, they think of your name, which will then expand the category, expand the market capacity, and eventually become a brand that the nation cannot do without.

Of course, this series of steps requires not only Xiaohongshu, but also more mass media. Looking at the entire pyramid again, the top is category insight.

Before building a brand, first look at the entire category stage: is it at the 0-1 stage; the 1-10 stage; the 10-100 stage; then look at the category demand and category structure.

Based on this, determine your own differentiated selling points, subdivide the selling points into primary selling points and secondary selling points, then think about your consumer groups, competitive products, categories and scene groups, and implant our products into them;

Next, determine the content type. Xiaohongshu’s content includes hot content, shopping guide content and attractive content. The selected content will be different at different stages.

Hot content is more about hot news and situational dramas to gain more traffic exposure; attractive content promotes products through horizontal reviews, Vlogs, sharing of good things, etc.

Shopping guide content, through tutorials, experience and single product reviews, forms a good product experience sharing; attractive content is suitable for attracting users in the early stage, and shopping guide content is used as a basis for later decision-making.

Figure 8: Xiaohongshu crowd structure & combined diagram

Finally, we will match the core influencers, including core influencers/interest influencers and related influencers. For example, for a beauty brand, in the early stage we will choose bloggers who conduct beauty reviews and share beauty products, and in the later stage we will expand to bloggers of comics, lifestyle, fashion, etc., and gradually break the circle.

Figure 9: Taking camping as an example, the population gradually breaks through the circle

Finally, by amplifying the traffic, we first build up our own professional accounts and accumulate content, and then use French fries, performance advertising or brand advertising to let more people see the notes. Through this series of actions, we will eventually achieve our positioning on Xiaohongshu, that is, determine the product category, expand the product category, and become a national brand trusted by users.