No. 1 in the category in 6 years! How does Pidan make Xiaohongshu placement in the hot pet supplies market?

How can pet product brands make a good brand marketing layout? This article uses the pet product brand pidan as an example to deeply analyze the rhythm and content strategy of pidan's advertising on Xiaohongshu. Combining the brand tone and its positioning in the market, this article analyzes the reasons for pidan's success in Xiaohongshu, which is worth referring to. It is recommended for friends who are interested in brand marketing.

In the past two months, I have been working with brands in various fields to finalize annual marketing plans, and I also had some thoughts during the communication process with everyone.

The difference between the annual plan and the monthly and quarterly plans is that the time span is longer.

This means that we should not only focus on the development of a single product at this stage, but also consider how the product life cycle continues during the year and even the role it plays in brand development.

As the number of macro-level factors increases, product selection, budget allocation for each product, target population, selling point selection, etc. will become more cautious, because each step may affect the positioning of the entire brand and the development of subsequent product lines.

Today, I will discuss with you a case that I think is quite classic in response to this demand and problem.

If your brand or the track you are on is facing these problems——

• Difficulty in innovation: Currently, it is still at the level of production technology and raw material application, with little room for development, and it is difficult for brands to achieve bottom-level innovation. Even if there is any, it is a side innovation relative to the industry, commonly known as involution, but it may not necessarily become a purchase decision point for users.
• Main effects: New brands lack strength and user base; old brands have market share but have lost their sense of security due to industry competition; and market dividends are fleeting. Compared with other blue ocean tracks, they have a more urgent desire to monetize .
• Tight funds: Regardless of the brand’s original marketing budget, profit margin, or cost recovery, many tracks are not as lucrative as they seem. It is difficult to implement a rich and three-dimensional marketing strategy at the same time. The decision-making error tolerance rate is extremely low, and limited ammunition must be used on targets with the highest value.

No matter what industry you are in, I believe this tweet will be helpful to you.

1. Development of pidan

Every time I analyze a brand placement case, I will sort out the brand's development path, so some friends asked me in the background whether I received advertising fees.

Indeed not.

Listing the development path is mainly to help everyone understand the current development stage of the brand and what it did at each important node. We can even infer the market environment at the time based on the nodes and analyze in more detail what they did right at the time, so as to draw inferences from one example and apply it to our own marketing.

I would like to talk about the development of pidan from the perspective of the expansion of its product line.

In 2015, we created Snow House Cat Litter

In 2018-2019, the company launched its first batch of dog products in an attempt to expand its user base, but the development was not good.

From 2019 to 2020, we will change our strategy and focus on cat products, launch our flagship product - mixed cat litter, and expand from cat users to food products.

In 2021, we will increase our marketing efforts, starting from March to reach the peak of marketing in June, and sprint to 618.

What does this timeline reflect? Let’s look back!

2. Product positioning of pidan

Although Pidan’s current hot-selling product is mixed cat litter, in the early stages of the brand’s development, a cat litter box called “Ice House” was Pidan’s flagship product for entering the pet supplies market.

As a cat litter box, the price of 365 yuan seems to be enough to weaken pidan's competitiveness in some aspects, but this is not the case.

When users choose a product, in addition to performance and need satisfaction, what they actually look at is not the price, but its value to the product.

Price is a quantitative standard. 59 must be cheaper than 99, and 9.9 must be cheaper than 29. It is difficult to say what price is truly "cost-effective" because people will never be satisfied with the idea of ​​"getting a bargain" .

If the only advantage of your product lies in price, then price war is your only possible way to win, there is no other way.

And what is value?

For example, the hamburger cat bed that McDonald’s released before.

In terms of research on cat beds and pet behavioral habits, etc., it is far inferior to professional pet brands. In terms of price, it does not have an advantage. In terms of usage feedback, it has received quite a lot of negative reviews.

From every angle, it is not competitive in the market.

It is still selling out, and stock is hard to come by, even scalpers have come out to buy it.

Why?

It is driven by user sense of value !

In terms of price, it is indeed not worth it, but owning it allows you to post on social media and take photos, which will make your friends envious. It shows that you are a very interesting and tasteful person, and such a person also has a cute cat!

Who wouldn’t want to take a photo like this? Who wouldn’t want to show off?

This emotional and social value has become the reason that drives users to buy it.

Therefore, when we are launching our products, we need to think about how to communicate with consumers and make them become our consumer users. We can also think about how to make them change their purchasing needs from simple functional needs to purchasing for emotional value.

In this way, the brand’s premium ability will be greatly improved!

Unfortunately, the popularity of the igloo did not last long, and soon, imitations with almost identical appearance appeared on the market.

We have to admit that the market competition barriers for most original products (non-core technology type), especially original products in appearance, are not solid because the domestic manufacturing industry’s “copying” ability is too strong.

But in an age where plagiarism is rampant, exploration and originality themselves are worthy of respect.

After opening up the market with its igloo cat litter box, Pidan turned its attention to cat litter.

This was a completely unexpected but reasonable choice.

From the perspective of product and marketing, cat litter has much more advantages than cat litter boxes!

1. Awkward positioning, unable to solve the problem of user stickiness

From the perspective of the market, although the pricing of Snow House belongs to the first echelon, the profit is always limited. It is impossible to make a single order for 10 years like luxury goods, and it is impossible to achieve repeat purchases by the same user. No pet-raising family will buy a cat litter box regularly. If regular repurchase is required, it is highly likely that the original brand will not be chosen because the quality is not up to standard.

This situation causes the brand to be in a state of continuous expansion, and the same user cannot achieve brand compounding.

Cat litter is just the opposite.

A single-cat household consumes an average of one pack of cat litter every 20-30 days. Although it is a low-priced product, it can stimulate repeated purchases and revitalize the brand with minimal cash flow.

2. Low upgrade cost and wide coverage of the population

Pidan's brand price has always been on the light luxury route, but for different categories, light luxury can expand the coverage of different groups of people! For example, cat litter boxes have prices ranging from 20 to 400, and the differences between products are not great. Unless the original consumption concept is for mid-to-high-end products, the Snow House cat litter box needs to have a certain product and brand persuasiveness for ordinary users to achieve conversion.

But for cat litter, the price difference between consumption upgrades is only around 10 yuan, which makes it very easy to achieve conversion and persuasion.

3. Low trust cost, advantages are easy to visualize

The trust barrier of cat food is high and fragile, and a failure is enough to wipe out the brand's industry credit. Therefore, those brands that choose cat food or cat snacks from the beginning are very courageous.

But this problem does not exist for cat litter.

Moreover, it is very easy to vividly present the selling points of cat litter such as clumping and melting water through pictures and videos, which is something that cat litter boxes, cat food and cat snacks do not have.

Unlike the growth of Igloo, the cat litter of Pidan can be said to be jumping at a steady yet amazing speed.

It only took them three years to increase their monthly sales from 50,000 to 1.5 million.

Among all pet products, cat litter is a category with very low gross profit margins, limited by industry unit prices, and high logistics costs and rush pressure. However, its circulation is fast enough, and its cash flow and users are continuously active.

This is very necessary for current brand development.

Therefore, when discussing main products with brands, I always tend to recommend fast-moving consumer goods products with high replacement frequency and high usage frequency . This will ensure repeated consumption stimulation for the same user, thereby binding our brand.

If the product itself does not have such attributes, then we need to explore multiple usage scenarios in terms of content so that it can be seen everywhere in life, rather than just appearing at certain times.

Let users know that our products can be used in many scenarios, so that they will subconsciously increase the frequency of use, while also providing more use value for new users.

After Snow House, Pidan also tried its hand at pet food, while continuing to add to the pet market and expand its product line.

In just one year, Pidan expanded its SKUs from 80 to 300, with an average of 30+ launched each month.

This expansion speed seems to indicate a prosperous development, and the brand's overall sales have indeed increased, but this simple addition definitely brings more harm than good to the brand.

Difficulty in fully controlling quality, inventory pressure, tight cash flow, scattered user attention, marketing diversion...

Each one brings more consumption to the brand than growth.

Therefore, in the later period, pidan focused on the cat litter subcategory and specialized in it.

At present, pidan's product line has covered pet supplies, food, toys, consumables, home furnishings, etc., and it seems that it has been expanding its categories horizontally. However, its flagship product with strong marketing is still mixed cat litter.

Most others adopt the strategy of putting products on the shelves without promoting them, otherwise the brand's marketing will be dispersed, resulting in each product being neither new nor popular in the market.

This is a typical example of using a big single product to drive brand sales across different categories.

We can see that pidan’s product development journey has not been smooth.

What I originally wanted to do was started but could not be continued. The subsequent products I planned to develop did not receive good market feedback so I stopped the loss in time. But what ultimately allowed the brand to achieve long-term and efficient profitability was the cat litter that no one had expected at the beginning.

After going through the process of explosive product development - decline - adding product lines - failure - adjustment - persistence , the brand finally exploded again in a vertical category, establishing its position in the pet supplies market.

Therefore, product and brand development is never a single-option plan.

Now that market demand is approaching saturation and brand barriers are gradually weakening, the success of every brand or hot product is the result of countless attempts in different directions, and is built on countless insignificant small successes and small failures. No brand has hit the jackpot and continues to soar in dividends.

The market is never certain, and the same is true for brand development.

Be cautious about every decision, but don't have all-in expectations for a single result. This is the mentality we should have when building brands and creating explosive products at this stage.

At the same time, in the development of product lines and marketing layout, we must think clearly about what is the most competitive product of our brand, stick to it and continue to promote it, rather than thinking about making every product the best in the category.

Because even P&G and Unilever cannot make every single product the best in its category.

All we can do is to make appropriate attempts at the current stage, constantly practice and review, and reduce the cost of trial and error.

Rather than expecting a definitive answer from verbal conversation.

2. Pidan Xiaohongshu’s delivery rhythm

It is said that the brand was named Pidan because the founder's cat was named Pidan.

This also happens to be confirmed in search associations.

When searching for pidan on Xiaohongshu, the strong associations are all related to the ingredient preserved egg.

Including in the Qiangua backend, most of the related brand words are vaguely related to the delicious production of preserved eggs.

Therefore, we are unable to collect relatively accurate and reliable information on the number of articles published in the recent period.

However, judging from sales feedback and daily observations, pidan's delivery rhythm is strongly tied to the marketing activities of e-commerce platforms.

I have always said that maternal and infant products and pet products have high similarities in consumer behavior. One manifestation of this is that they both have a strong sense of stockpiling and "group buying."

Therefore, their consumption behavior is very node-specific and is almost always concentrated in the S-level promotion stage, while daily sales are mostly based on temporary replenishment when users’ inventory is running out.

Pidan's sales trend also proves this.

So whether it is maternal and child products or pet products, our daily promotion plays more of an influencing role, that is, occupying a place in the consumer's shopping cart, while the harvest is presented explosively during the big promotion.

This also requires us not to slack off in our daily grass planting, otherwise the subsequent harvest will be very weak.

When it comes to the selection of influencers, they are also tied to the S-level promotion.

In daily advertising, amateur KOCs and tail bloggers are the majority, while around 2 months before the marketing node, the proportion of advertising by mid- and lower-level bloggers will increase.

3. Content Strategy of Pidan Xiaohongshu

Pidan's content layout is relatively simple. Compared with other brands in the same field, its subject coverage is not wide, but it can be said that almost every category is for precise harvesting.

Precise harvesting is what every brand hopes for, but I don’t recommend pidan’s relatively vertical content layout for brands that are 0-1 or whose market position is not yet stable enough.

The reason why they dare to do this is precisely because Pidan has sufficient market share and users in cat litter and cat litter boxes, as well as sufficient brand influence and popularity.

So what they need to do now is to carry out targeted exposure to users. Combined with the accumulation of content on relevant search terms in the early stage, the return search conversion rate will be considerable.

1. Discount information & tips for getting discounts

As mentioned before, pet owners have a strong sense of stockpiling, so how to stockpile at a more affordable price is something they are very concerned about.

In addition to the discounts of the S-class promotion, there are also daily strategies for following cars and groups to get the best deals. These have stimulated old users to repurchase for Pidan and also played a role in driving new users to try it for the first time.

If you are on this track, you must not miss the relevant content!

2. (Newbie) Share pet raising experience/life/good stuff

Similar to raising a baby, raising a pet is also an experience-based event. In addition to continuous accumulation on your own, another important channel is to learn from other experienced pet owners.

Among the contents in this dimension, sharing of good things accounts for a relatively high proportion, providing pet owners with a one-stop solution for "copying homework".

From what to eat, drink, use to what to play, while also leveraging the search popularity of other brands to drive exposure.

Because even today, there are still new users in the cat litter market that are worth attracting for pidan.

This category of content is further subdivided into two categories.

(1) Exquisite pet care

The idea that "people can be rough but pets can't" makes many pet owners pursue a quality life for their pets. Taking this demand as the starting point, you can quickly narrow the distance with your fans.

In this type of content, the scene presentation is generally based on a stylish home environment, which enhances the fans' sense of immersion and identity.

(2) Low-cost pet raising

This may seem contrary to the meticulous practice of raising a pet, but it is not.

Although pet owners pursue exquisite pet raising, they also want to "buy the right one, not the expensive one." The low-cost pet raising mentioned here does not mean simply competing on price, but pays attention to cost-effectiveness and extreme simplicity.

Simply put, don’t buy those that are not useful, don’t buy those that you can’t use, and for the rest, choose the ones with the best quality at the same price, and the ones with the best quality at the lowest price.

And pidan cat litter just happened to take advantage of this opportunity.

As I mentioned earlier, among all pet products, cat litter is one of the categories with the smallest price range in consumption upgrading.

The difference between good cat litter and poor quality cat litter is only ten dollars.

This is the category that is most likely to drive low-cost pet owners to achieve consumption upgrades.

3. Cat litter review

Evaluation and use of shareable content are things that brands in any track will not ignore when launching campaigns.

(At the same time, I would like to remind everyone that when learning brand placement, there is no need to limit yourself to your own vertical track. Cross-track learning will give us more inspiration~)

IV. Others

In the past year, I helped brands implement Xiaohongshu campaigns and found that in addition to paying more attention to the implementation effects, brands have also increased their attention to brand concepts.

We can also find inspiration from pidan in this regard.

Cross-border IP collaboration and offline pop-up theme stores are one of the methods they use most frequently.

For example, the cat scratching board and cat claw cup co-branded with HEYTEA, the cat clothes and toys co-branded with the mobile game Honor of Kings, etc.

This method simply and quickly increases the brand's recognition beyond the circle, and also borrows the characteristics and influence of other brands to enrich its own product style and shorten the entire brand building cycle.

Unlike previous CP collaborations, there have been more and more cross-border collaborations in recent years.

Although it seems far-fetched, the co-branded brands are actually intrinsically connected.

For example, the main target users of pidan’s products are young people who pursue beauty and quality of life, which coincides with HEYTEA.

This is the only way to ensure that the collaboration brings not only instant traffic exposure to the brand, but also guides users who are in sync with the brand’s needs, thereby turning other people’s traffic into its own loyal users.

At the same time, it also extends and conveys the brand concept and brand impression.

In addition to joint brands, the value transmission of product activities itself is also a very important channel for spreading brand concepts.

Think about what this product means to the brand and what its positioning is.

Let go of the “have-it-all” mentality, even if it’s understandable.

The market cannot be controlled, but we must constantly change to adapt to and fit in with the market. This is the way for long-term development of a brand.

Author: Bobo Marketing Circle, Official Account: Bobo Marketing