Xiaohongshu is doing a reconstruction

Text |Dong 2000.

Edit |Yang Xuran.

In 2016, after the introduction of the "408" new policy (a new tax system for cross-border e-commerce retail imports and the "List of Cross-border E-commerce Retail Imports"), cross-border e-commerce as a whole fell silent.

At that time, Xiaohongshu, which was doing cross-border e-commerce, began to expand to more fields, including life, travel, food, etc., and its slogan also changed from "the world's good things" to "the world's good life". This has allowed Xiaohongshu to enter a larger market space since then.

The growth of the business value of an enterprise must go through such a process:From helping a small group of people solve a small part of a problem, to helping more people solve more problems.

Today, Xiaohongshu is enough to be called a community of shared lifestyles. This is fundamentally different from the simple "selection of imported goods" in the past.

A more intuitive representation is that it is difficult for us to see that an Internet product is still maintaining fresh growth, and Xiaohongshu, which has exceeded 100 million DAUs, is one of them.

It seems like a boring user growth process. But in fact, the growth of enterprise business value is the core and driving force of user growth. The two actually complement each other – when a company is able to provide more valuable information and goods to more users, its own market value naturally rises.

Nowadays rumors about the listing of Xiaohongshu appear from time to time, which means:Nowadays, the market's scrutiny of Xiaohongshu's corporate value has become quite obvious.

There is a high level of interest in this scarce, growing, and even seemingly no-frilled Internet company, hoping to understand what its corporate value is.

A person in charge of Xiaohongshu's community business once described that Xiaohongshu was initially "like a service station next to the airport that provides information content, unilaterally passing on overseas shopping tips to users".

After adjusting from the initial PGC mode to UGC, this service station not only sends users tips, but also guides returning users to take the initiative to share their real experiences. This means that the platform can have the latest first-hand shopping information at a very low cost, and this information is scarce enough on the Internet to attract more people to become users, and enough to attract more merchants to "get moving".

Xiaohongshu has formed a clear understanding of this link of content-dissemination-new users-new business value, as summarized by the above-mentioned community leader:

When more and more people come back from overseas and start sharing their real experiences, they form a huge network of external communication, thus generating more touchpoints.

Mao Wenchao's reaction was,"There must be a lot of this kind of problem on Xiaohongshu. For things closely related to life, Xiaohongshu must have the most complete answers in the world. ”

There is a typical case that the author once bought a bottle of mysterious disinfectant, and at that time, the lid could not be unscrewed, and I searched all over Weibo, Zhihu and other channels, and there was no answer. However, when searching in Xiaohongshu, I found that some users shared that "first twist it to the left, and then twist it to the right, and you can unscrew it", and it was successful after trying it.

Feedback from millions of users like this means that users who have used those products enjoy the joy of posting orders and sharing. And for other users, it means:They can raise awareness on Xiaohongshu about a product, whether it's a bottle of sanitizer, a luxury, a spot they've never visited, or a course they've never been to before, but they're interested in.

For merchants, such a scenario means that they have the opportunity to present themselves to consumers more comprehensively, introduce themselves, and then gain users. The accumulation of this scarce content and the consequent construction of business scenarios constitute the foundation of Xiaohongshu's business model, which is also the foundation of its commercial value.

Xiaohongshu CMO Zhiheng proposed,It comes from understanding and satisfying real, ever-changing user needs in order to achieve long-term, sustainable development of the brand.

However, under normal circumstances, users' demand for products and feedback on the use will not be (at least unwillingly) voluntarily and free of charge to other consumers and merchants. This creates a two-pronged problem:

On the consumer side, people can't get other people's real feelings about a certain product, and they urgently need to see these real feelings in some places;

On the merchant side, product managers and company bosses are eager to know whether their products meet the needs of consumers and what deficiencies need to be improved, but it is very difficult to hear the "sound of fire" on the front line.

Xiaohongshu platformA large number of real, full-category commodity sharing content is its core resource to meet the needs of these two types of market entities2.600 million monthly active users, 69 million sharers, an average of 3 million notes per day, and products covering 216 sub-categories.

A typical case is that the mother and baby brand Bebebus previously had an insight into the concerns of mothers in Xiaohongshu: children are prone to crooked necks in strollers, which is not good for spinal development.

Therefore, the company designed a stroller with a backrest that resembles "butterfly wings", before the product was launched, the brand, Xiaohongshu and 13 "mom bloggers" held a face-to-face "symposium" to calibrate the selling points and usage scenarios of the product from the user's perspective, and the new product was launched only 7 days ago, and bebebus "butterfly car" became the sales champion of the same category on the e-commerce platform.

The case of Bebebus also proves that once the brand understands the needs of users more deeply, the product functions will be closer to the user's life scene, and the better the sales feedback can be obtained. There is also such a consensus formed within Xiaohongshu:"One insight can live a product, and three insights can live a brand".

For enterprises, it is difficult to get a real and front-line user experience by investing countless traffic piles, finding N big Vs to tout products, or spending millions of dollars to hire professional business consulting agencies. But these real user feedbacks, which are of great significance to enterprises, can be seen for free on the Xiaohongshu platform.

Xiaohongshu CMO Zhiheng said that in the past, many companies had to participate in the "limited game" of chasing traffic, but now, the diverse and real needs of people have opened the door to "infinite games" for enterprises.

This judgment is equivalent to making a direct and crisp statement to Xiaohongshu's potential customers:It's not enough to just chase traffic. It is necessary to find a more real and accurate "human demand" through more real user feedback, so as to do a good job in marketing and products.

Philip Kotler, the father of modern marketing, proposed the marketing communication concept of "H2H" (Human to Human). He thinksIf marketing is emotionless and you can't feel the feelings of others, it is difficult to achieve the best results. Because "people are conscious, have real joys, sorrows, and sorrows, and add the understanding and feelings of real people, the connotation of marketing will become richer and more effective." ”

And the value of community is also emphasized by Xiaohongshu. Compared with entertainment-oriented content such as Douyin and Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu is more inclined to the community - the relationship between content producers and ** is an interactive relationship, rather than a relationship of active promotion and passive acceptance.

This means:A stronger emotional resonance between users, and with it, the transmission of trust, the virality (positive or negative) of the value of the goods involved.

It is not easy to form such a relationship of trust between users, and the root of it lies not in a few opinion leaders on the platform, but in the platform's efforts to be truly close to the user's life. Just like Little Red Book COO Conan once shared:

Every year, our team travels to a different city and reaches out to a different group of users. We are really trying to enter the user's life state, and really see, hear, and perceive. Through hands-on experience, we were able to gain a deeper understanding of our users, which led to many new discoveries. These discoveries sometimes make us slap in the face, and sometimes wake up.

For example, the Yan'an Fruit Industry Center has sold about 4 million tons of apples this year, but its online visibility is very low. So, the relevant person in charge asked the user for help on Xiaohongshu "what to do", and said that he would listen to the persuasion.

As a result, the four or five hundred comments below this note are all helping him with marketing, planning, and sales. Yan'an Fruit Industry Center printed a lot of suggestions and slogans given by users on its packaging box, sold them on Xiaohongshu, and also sent a thank you letter to users, so that users can continue to participate and build brand awareness together.

In addition to the advertising value, the value of e-commerce can also be fully exploited under the new model.

In August, Xiaohongshu proposed the concept of "buyer e-commerce" at the first e-commerce partner conference, and Conan said in his speech that "everyone who loves life can be a Xiaohongshu buyer", and emphasized that "individuals are the most dynamic e-commerce force in Xiaohongshu".

Different from the logic of "goods looking for people" in live broadcast e-commerce, the underlying logic of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce is more inclined to "people looking for goods". The buyer is the user first, and its core is to understand the user's needs, and then link the product according to these needs.

The origin is the user, and its core logic is:Understand the needs of users first, and then link products based on those needs. In contrast, the anchors of other platforms are more based on "goods" and use attractive ** to sell goods to users.

What's more, Xiaohongshu data shows that nearly 70% of monthly active users will search, and one-third of monthly active users open Xiaohongshu The first step is to go straight to search.

Behind the search means that most users have a clear purchase demand when using Xiaohongshu, and behind the buyer's e-commerce layout is Xiaohongshu's improvement of infrastructure, allowing users to complete the transaction link directly on the platform. And this is also where the larger market space lies, and it is also where the greater corporate value lies.

The community has its own originality and growth, and you must follow the direction of its native emergence in order to better meet its native needs. ”

Conan's statement seems a bit vague at first glance, but when she explains it through the actual situation of her own company, this passage becomes clear and true enough: "When Xiaohongshu first started to be commercialized in 2019, we found that there was a 'newgeneration' marketing method in the community ecology at that time. It is not to use a large number of ** to do brand advertising, but to use good real content to reach users and influence users. ”

The market has given this marketing method a more vivid name: planting grass.

Nowadays, defining the commercial value of "planting grass" is a somewhat difficult subject for investors, investment institutions and all those who care about Xiaohongshu. It's not realistic to figure out this conundrum in a short period of time, but at least we can frame its value by defining it more deeply. Eventually, we'll find outRather than a company or a community, it is a new productive relationship that is being quietly defined.