Can celebrities promote products on Xiaohongshu?

Recently, Dong Jie launched her first live streaming show on Xiaohongshu, which not only achieved relatively good sales results, but also received a lot of praise from passers-by. So for Xiaohongshu, can the form of live streaming by celebrities or experts help it overcome the obstacles on the road to the development of live streaming e-commerce? What problems still need to be solved on Xiaohongshu's road to live streaming e-commerce?

Recently, Zhang Dada is not the only star who has won the favor of netizens and reversed his reputation through live streaming.

In January this year, Dong Jie started her first live streaming sales show on Xiaohongshu, and ranked first on Xiaohongshu's daily sales list. The self-media "Daihuopai" estimated that its GMV exceeded 50 million, and it also received a lot of praise from passers-by.

Screenshot of Dong Jie's first live show on Xiaohongshu

Prior to this, Dong Jie had been plagued by negative public opinion due to her divorce from Pan Yueming. After the live broadcast, Dong Jie and Pan Yueming interacted on Weibo for the first time in many years, and the online comments changed from overwhelmingly supporting Pan Yueming and scolding Dong Jie to supporting the couple and playing "he loves her so much" literature.

After the change in the wind direction, Dong Jie continued to maintain a stable performance in Xiaohongshu's live broadcast room. On February 24, Dong Jie live-streamed goods on Xiaohongshu for the second time and topped the list again, with an estimated GMV of 30 million.

It is worth noting that before Dong Jie's live broadcast, Xiaohongshu's official account also released news about Dong Jie's sales, which was accompanied by considerable traffic resources. Dong Jie's live broadcast "went viral", and Xiaohongshu finally had a case that could be called a "benchmark for sales".

As you can imagine, Dong Jie is the celebrity anchor that Xiaohongshu is pushing now. So why is Xiaohongshu still pushing "celebrity live broadcasts" in 2023? Is inviting celebrities/artists to promote products "making a lot of money quietly" or "losing money to gain publicity"?

1. When celebrities sell goods on Xiaohongshu live broadcast

In June 2019, Xiaohongshu launched the internal testing of live streaming, allowing it to take on the important task of connecting e-commerce links and forming a closed community loop.

In 2020, Xiaohongshu began to vigorously promote its live streaming e-commerce business. Since then, celebrity anchors have become active in Xiaohongshu as important figures in expanding the territory and breaking the circle for the live streaming e-commerce business.

On the evening of July 25, 2020, Yang Tianzhen, CEO of One Heart Entertainment and founder of plus-size women's clothing brand Plusmall, completed her first livestreaming show on Xiaohongshu. Data shows that Yang Tianzhen's first livestreaming show attracted more than 480,000 viewers, with a peak online audience of 110,000, and sales of more than 7.36 million. Plusmall, a plus-size women's clothing brand released for the first time during the livestream, sold more than 3,000 items in pre-sale.

By 2022, there are still very few celebrities and big KOLs live streaming on Xiaohongshu. Among the celebrities, only Bao Wenjing is still live streaming on Xiaohongshu. Early top anchors such as Yang Tianzhen and Fu Peng no longer live stream goods. The latest news shows that on the evening of March 7, Yang Tianzhen started live streaming on Taobao Live and Diantao.

But in the past five months, celebrity live streaming on Xiaohongshu has shown signs of becoming popular again.

Since October last year, Xiaohongshu has invited celebrities such as Jiang Sida and Cindy to promote products. In terms of popularity, Jiang Sida's performance is acceptable. His live broadcast room mainly promotes high-priced products and niche designer brands, such as 20,000 yuan bicycles, 3,000 yuan Arc'teryx jackets, and 500 yuan aromatherapy. The official battle report shows that their sales are not low.

Screenshot of Jiang Sida's Xiaohongshu live broadcast

In 2023, Dong Jie became the most popular celebrity anchor on Xiaohongshu.

On January 13, Dong Jie started live streaming on Xiaohongshu and ranked first on the platform's daily sales list, with an estimated GMV of over 50 million.

On February 24, Dong Jie live-streamed her merchandise on Xiaohongshu for the second time. According to official data from Xiaohongshu, the live broadcast was watched by more than 2.2 million people, topping the popularity list for six consecutive hours, with a cumulative GMV of more than 30 million. In addition, Dong Jie's Xiaohongshu account gained 220,000 followers that week, ranking first on the platform's weekly follower growth list.

Screenshot of Dong Jie's second live broadcast

Judging from the product selection, many of the products sold in Dong Jie's live broadcast room are not cheap , such as a 5,000 yuan cardigan and a 4,000 yuan ballet shoe; of course, there are also relatively "affordable" products, such as retro handbags that cost around 100-400 yuan.

Because there are many high-priced products, Dong Jie always advises everyone to think carefully before buying during live broadcasts, and never make impulse purchases. "If you like it, you can also be patient in my live broadcast room, don't be anxious."

Dong Jie's live broadcast report released by Xiaohongshu platform

Kas believes that the reasons why Dong Jie has received such positive reviews include: unique live broadcast style, professional explanation ability, active participation in live broadcast, and high-quality supply chain and after-sales service capabilities.

Looking at the problems that arise when celebrities sell goods on live streaming, there are only two main minefields: first, the celebrity team does not select products carefully and directly hands them over to outsourcing companies, resulting in consumer dissatisfaction with product quality and after-sales service; second, the team knows that there are problems with the products they sell, but for the sake of high profits, they take risks and sell fake products.

Judging from the two live broadcasts so far, Dong Jie's team has obviously avoided these problems, and the lower frequency of selling goods has not yet overly consumed the enthusiasm of existing fans.

In addition, Dong Jie's team's efforts in content are also a highlight that distinguishes her from many celebrity anchors. Before live streaming, Dong Jie had updated the "Dong Life" series of videos on Xiaohongshu for two years, and began to lay the groundwork and warm up a month before the live broadcast, so that fans were mentally prepared and increased their sense of trust.

Even with the emergence of a new star like Dong Jie, overall, Xiaohongshu's celebrity live streaming has not achieved explosive growth, nor has it completed the task of educating users and guiding them to complete consumption on behalf of the platform.

In the past three years, the top anchors are still controlled by Taobao, Douyin, and Kuaishou. Support for store broadcasts has been gradually launched on other platforms, and major platforms have posted their live broadcast results, but Xiaohongshu has not disclosed the overall data on live broadcast sales.

Although it has become the norm for celebrities to livestream in livestreaming rooms, most celebrities do not livestream and sell goods on Xiaohongshu. For example, the celebrities with more than 3 million fans on Xiaohongshu include Zhao Lusi, Wu Xin, Lin Yun, and Xu Lu, none of whom livestream and sell goods on Xiaohongshu. The frequency of the "new queen" Dong Jie's livestreaming is not high either. The GMV of the two shows totaling 80 million is impressive enough, but it is not considered top-tier in the industry. In comparison, Luo Yonghao's first livestreaming show on Douyin in 2020 had a transaction volume of 120 million. Currently, the top-ranked celebrity anchors on Douyin easily have a single-show GMV of more than 10 million.

In addition, it is worth noting that Dong Jie’s Xiaohongshu page has updated the information of signing with the MCN "Haining One Plus One", which is a subsidiary of Yi Xin Entertainment founded by Yang Tianzhen.

In the video released on March 6, Dong Jie, Yang Tianzhen, and Taobao anchor Lieer Baby talked about the topic of relaxation, and the Taobao logo appeared in the upper left corner of the video. Some media speculated that Taobao Live has frequently "poached anchors" from Douyin and cooperated with TVB recently. Even Yang Tianzhen has gone to Taobao Live to sell goods. It is not impossible for Dong Jie to become the next target of the platform. This also makes us sweat for Xiaohongshu. Can it keep the "new queen"?

2. Xiaohongshu’s live streaming e-commerce journey is long

The tepid popularity of celebrity live broadcasts is only one aspect of Xiaohongshu’s live broadcast e-commerce. In fact, Xiaohongshu’s overall live broadcast e-commerce journey has not been smooth either.

In the second half of 2019, after the failure of its social e-commerce attempt, Xiaohongshu once again started trying live streaming e-commerce.

In 2021, Xiaohongshu's e-commerce business has undergone "tremendous changes" and strived to create an e-commerce closed loop. First, it cut off Taobao's external links and implemented the "account and store integration" strategy, claiming that it can "open a store with zero threshold" and provide brands with the opportunity to "connect directly to consumers". At the end of 2021, it further launched the "Home Opening Store Plan" to give brands that settle in Xiaohongshu a variety of rights and interests.

Xiaohongshu launches the "Go Home and Open a Store Plan"

At the beginning of 2022, Xiaohongshu made organizational adjustments to its e-commerce department. In addition, Xiaohongshu's "Community Business Convention" emphasized, "Please do not direct transactions outside the site in personal pages, comments, private messages, etc."

However, from 2019 to 2022, Xiaohongshu has never released overall data on the performance of live e-commerce. As a holy place for seeding, Xiaohongshu has never produced a top anchor with large traffic, and the live broadcast traffic of amateur anchors on Xiaohongshu is obviously insufficient.

The "Visible Fan Value in 2020: KOL Fan Analysis Research Report on the Four Major Platforms" released by Clour shows that the number of fans of KOLs on Weibo and Douyin is concentrated between 1 million and 10 million; the number of fans of KOLs on Kuaishou is concentrated between 100,000 and 1 million; and on Xiaohongshu, 71% of KOLs have fans between 10,000 and 100,000, and the proportion of mid-level and tail bloggers is as high as more than 90%.

Compared with other content platforms, Xiaohongshu's mid-level and low-level bloggers are more favored by advertisers. According to the "2021 New Media Content Ecosystem Data Report", 57.6% of the low-level accounts on Xiaohongshu were advertised throughout the year, more than twice that of other platforms.

Source: "2021 New Media Content Ecosystem Data Report"

Without top anchors on Xiaohongshu, resource allocation may be more evenly distributed and the quality of the community may be higher, but the lack of the anchor’s personal appeal will greatly reduce the effectiveness of live streaming sales.

The irreconcilable contradiction between the need for mid-level bloggers to promote content and the need for top anchors to promote content seems destined to make Xiaohongshu's live streaming e-commerce unable to adapt to the community.

From the perspective of the supply of live-streaming products, Xiaohongshu's own mall, brand flagship stores and brand official websites are the main channels. In terms of product categories, the strategy of focusing on beauty products and leaning towards categories such as clothing and luggage continues. However, at this stage, live-streaming e-commerce still uses "low prices" as its main attraction. Xiaohongshu live-streaming rooms that do not take the "cost-effective" route seem to have a more difficult survival environment.

Of course, Xiaohongshu still has advantages in the live streaming e-commerce business.

Industry insiders pointed out that Xiaohongshu's advantages lie in high conversion rate, high customer unit price and high repurchase rate . Although its traffic scale cannot catch up with the top giants, Xiaohongshu wins in terms of stronger per capita consumption capacity and clearer and more accurate user portraits.

More importantly, it seems that Xiaohongshu still has high hopes for live streaming e-commerce this year and is willing to invest heavily.

For content communities, only by jumping out of the original niche circle and breaking through the user ceiling can they seek greater development space. However, Xiaohongshu's user growth rate is slowing down: from the end of 2019 to 2021, its MAU increased from 100 million to 200 million, with an annual compound growth rate of more than 40%; but according to third-party data, from the end of 2021 to the present, Xiaohongshu's MAU has increased to about 260 million, and the annual growth rate has fallen back to 30%.

Live streaming is Xiaohongshu's way of continuing to grow its customer acquisition and attract creators after pictures, texts and short videos. It also carries the important mission of accelerating Xiaohongshu's monetization and expanding its e-commerce business.

According to the technology media "LatePost", Xiaohongshu will upgrade its live broadcast business to an independent department to unify the management of live broadcast content and live broadcast e-commerce and other businesses. The head of the new department is Gintoki (nickname), who is also the head of the Xiaohongshu community ecology. Before this, Xiaohongshu's live broadcast business belonged to the business group of the second-level department under the community department.

LatePost mentioned that Xiaohongshu has always attached great importance to community governance. In the past, the community department has always been in charge of how much traffic the platform opens to e-commerce and advertising, which has led to a long-term game between several businesses. Xiaohongshu is also facing a situation where the three major businesses of advertising, e-commerce and community are incompatible. This personnel adjustment means that Xiaohongshu has finally decided to resolve the commercialization and community dispute that has troubled it for many years.

In addition, this year Xiaohongshu will focus on increasing the proportion of performance advertising, including attracting more brands to join Xiaohongshu e-commerce and conduct e-commerce live broadcasts, so that their advertising can be directly converted on Xiaohongshu.

On March 6, Xiaohongshu held the "E-commerce Live Streaming Fashion Partner Conference" in Shanghai and announced the launch of the "Fashion Spark Plan", which will provide 10 billion traffic support for fashion merchants and anchors, as well as support policies such as product selection, marketing tools, and platform services. Data shows that in 2022, the number of Xiaohongshu e-commerce live streamers increased by 337% year-on-year, and the number of live streams increased by 214% year-on-year. E-commerce live streaming has become an important field for Xiaohongshu's e-commerce.

Without top streamers, Xiaohongshu may not need top streamers that much. The more important question facing the platform is: what can support the live e-commerce business, rather than just relying on the halo of a single celebrity streamer?

Author: Lou Xingchui

Original title: Dong Jie is good at promoting products, but cannot promote Xiaohongshu

Source: Caas Data (ID: caasdata6), data empowers short video content creation, operation, marketing and e-commerce sales.