Re-read Xiaohongshu from the perspective of "grass planting marketing"

Original by Shenxiang·Author｜Liu Yalan "planting grass" - "growing grass" - "pulling grass", consumers' spoken words have become an unavoidable keyword in the marketing industry. From the beginning, advertisers just planted grass and tried their luck, to a large number of new and dark horses that directly touched the minds of consumers through "grass planting" and quickly emerged, and then to big brands investing heavily and making grass planting a basic action. "Growing grass" is now Currently, its status in brand marketing and business operations is improving step by step. According to data from Miaozhen System's "2022 China Digital Marketing Trends", 54% of brand owners have become increasingly clear that the main goal of KOL marketing in 2022 will be "product planting", and 37% of brand owners believe that the main goal of planting grass is to bring goods. Transformation. Planting grass is an undoubted marketing trend, but "planting grass" itself still has too many uncertainties, ambiguities, and room for interpretation - what kind of grass should be planted? To whom should we plant grass? How to grow grass? What about after planting? When advertisers get too excited about the novelty of "grass planting", everything will return to the basic logic of marketing growth. "Grass planting" also requires an inevitable evolution from concept to method, from metaphysics to science. These questions were naturally raised to Xiaohongshu, the birthplace of “planting grass”. Starting from 2021, the Xiaohongshu "Dandelion" platform will be launched and the "IDEA Marketing Methodology" will be provided for the first time, and commercialization will be accelerated significantly. In 2022, the "Focus" platform will be launched and support the function of mounting jump links when posting business notes, trying to solve the closed-loop problem. Today, Xiaohongshu has more than 200 million monthly active users and 69 million content sharers. The average daily usage time per person has increased from 26.49 minutes in 2018 to 55.31 minutes. The average daily number of notes published on the platform exceeds 3 million. Its commercialization Value has also reached the stage of further systematic development. Focusing on its most core "product planting", Xiaohongshu CMO Zhiheng, Xiaohongshu COO Conan and "Shen Xiang" talked about their understanding and practice. Zhiheng said that the biggest difference between Xiaohongshu’s grass planting this year and previous years is “science”. "The most important thing is how to measure the effect of grass planting. We have been studying this direction, and now we can come up with an answer that we feel is appropriate at this stage. This is "scientific grass planting" and is our most important theme today. "At the same time, we also want to ask, can the core capability of "planting grass" support the continued commercialization of Xiaohongshu? Are advertisers still enthusiastic about this amidst the numerous marketing platforms and methods? Other platforms are actively deploying "planting" Can the "scientific planting" proposed by Xiaohongshu be directly equated with the efficiency of the weeding process? The Problem of Planting Grass As a marketing method, the benefits of planting grass to the brand are very clear - it not only directly shortens the distance with consumers, but also may bring about the miracle of leveraging small to win big. But the problem is actually gradually exposed: on the one hand, it is difficult to accurately identify the people who grow grass. I believe most people have had similar experiences: being unmarried and without children but being "planted" in milk powder and children's clothing; being married and having children but being "planted" in wedding photography. From the perspective of consumers, this is inaccurate and intrusive; conversely, from the perspective of brand marketing, this is asking the wrong person. Selling combs to monks and planting grass on stones will inevitably lead to a loss of grass planting budget. The conversion efficiency is low. Although advertising technologies such as "tagging" and "crowd packets" can target the target range to a certain extent, after all, people change, and they change very quickly. On the other hand, planting grass content is too embarrassing. We once wrote in "In the Uncertain Storm, What is the Ballast of "Grass Marketing"?" "The issue of marketing content was discussed in the article. For brands, if the marketing content is too hard, it will inevitably be resisted by consumers and deviate from the original intention of "planting grass". However, if the traces of planting grass are weakened, consumers will not be able to perceive it. to get accurate brand information? In the dilemma, what kind of grass planting content is appropriate? Can the high-quality grass-growing content that you have worked so hard to leverage drive traffic and be seen by more people? What kind of grass-growing content can be powerful and have lasting effects? There are no standard answers to these questions, so it’s no wonder that the industry always regards grass planting marketing as metaphysics. Planting grass is like archery. If the target (target group) is not clear and the arrow (content of planting grass) is not strong, how can we talk about the effect? But sales must always be there, and KPIs must be achieved, which makes grass-planting marketing move into a vicious cycle of trading volume for results. Xiaohongshu CMO Zhiheng also realized when visiting companies that many brands are facing various marketing problems such as increasingly high traffic costs, meager corporate profits, and sales when traffic stops. Not only Xiaohongshu, but also the entire industry has noticed the increasingly pragmatic demands of advertisers. Simply taking the accurate crowd as an example, Tencent Advertising provides target users with a 3S model of crowd asset breadth, crowd asset depth, and crowd asset health based on the 5R funnel; the massive engine combines the data capabilities of the massive cloud map to launch The O-5A brand crowd asset model divides users into six groups - O (opportunity crowd), A1 (understanding crowd), A2 (attraction crowd), A3 (grass planting crowd), A4 (buying crowd), A5 ( Repeat purchasers). Among them, the A3 grass-growing crowd is considered to be the key secret to the brand's efficient grass-growing. Turning metaphysics into science has become the mother proposition of the entire Internet advertising. In this regard, I think Xiaohongshu’s release this year can be summarized as answering the question from two aspects: the first is the theme of CMO Zhiheng’s speech, which focuses on “product planting” to make the goal of planting clearer; the second is The key release of COO Conan is to use digital tools to quantify fuzzy links.

Product planting is a world view, and planting value is a methodology. Let’s look at “product planting” first. I think this formulation is more clever. The industry is always used to discussing product effectiveness, discussing the ebb and flow of budget allocations for brand advertising and performance advertising, and debating whether product effectiveness can really be integrated into one. But today, there is actually no need to separate brand and effect. They will all be integrated in the marketing of "products". The same is true for grass planting. Today, it is meaningless to distinguish whether the brand's budget or the effect budget should be used for grass planting marketing. Regardless of whether it is brand marketing or performance marketing, marketing that can sell products is good marketing. The term "product planting" circumvents the issue of whether planting is considered brand advertising or performance advertising, which helps Xiaohongshu leverage more budgets. In terms of specific implementation, Zhiheng cited some examples in her sharing, the most important of which was Proya, which she also mentioned when she proposed the IDEA marketing methodology in 2021. "In 2020, Proya took advantage of the trend of "Morning C and Late A" to launch a CP combination of two essences, "Morning C and Late A", dual anti-antibiotics and ruby ??essence. A" The first mind of associative memory. "Zhiheng said: "In 2021, it was discovered that in addition to "morning C and evening A", young people's sensitive skin has become a new pain point due to various reasons, and then differentiatedly launched repair and stability in the essence track. The essence of source power. 2021 will be about in-depth cultivation of the best tracks. "In 2022, along the minds of already owned users, we will break out of the circle from essences, move from "big single products" to "big single product matrix", and gradually cover the essence track to face creams, eye creams, and facial masks. "It is not difficult to find that she said a high-frequency word "own", which literally means to own, which is what the marketing industry often calls mind occupation and user assets. Zhiheng shared a set of data seen through the site's product insights - how many brand numbers are there in this subcategory? There are over 4,200 brands of facial essences. There are more than 300 brands of baby bottles and more than 1,400 brands of dairy drinks. In other words, there are too many brands. How do you make users remember you and "own" you? It also depends on the product. Xiaohongshu Business Conference on-site deep sound/photography product is 1, planting grass is 0. There seems to be a bit of logic here. If the product is good enough, grass can be grown anywhere; if the product is not good enough, isn’t growing grass just a part of the fun? "We want to define planting grass as communicating the value of the product with consumers, and using the reputation of the product to convey the value of the product. The design of the product itself and the quality of the product itself are the lifeline of the enterprise. We use the ability of planting grass with the product to Marketing’s ability to amplify it, accelerate it, and make the results more stable.” What Zhiheng may want to express is the two-fold meaning of “product planting”—helping good products that have already been formed to stand out, and helping those that have not yet been formed. Product iteration becomes a good product. Regarding how to make good products stand out, "Shenxiang" has communicated with many Xiaohongshu service providers. They all mentioned the "uniqueness of product words" in the process of planting grass, and use unique product words to highlight the selling points. Just like the data given by Zhiheng, there are too many brands in major categories, and "big words" such as facial cream and sunscreen have no marketing tension. One of the service providers told Shenxiang very confidently: “Nowadays, if you want to make products on Xiaohongshu, your product must be very unique, like baby shower gel. If you also talk about moisturizing and moisturizing, it will definitely fail. It cannot be sold; or it can be refined to the scene. For example, space locking or time locking, good night wine, drinking, saying good night, it has a sense of ritual. This makes the brand have a headache, what kind of words. Can the cover image directly touch the user's heart? Now Xiaohongshu wants to solve this problem. The example of lip mud created by Xiaohongshu and Colorkey is about the latter situation. Kelaqi does not follow the conventional process of "research and development first and then marketing", but puts marketing innovation and user insights first. It solves the pain points mentioned by Xiaohongshu users such as too dry lip mud and insufficient color saturation and integrates it into the product. Shancun Little Purple Bottle has a similar operation. "It is difficult for us to expect him (the brand) to invest a large budget in Xiaohongshu out of thin air without any particularly successful cases or attempts. Therefore, our cooperation with enterprises will start from a single product, and let them focus on the single product. Let’s try it and see what the back-link conversion efficiency is when Xiaohongshu is right.” Zhiheng said frankly that based on past cases, there are two types of situations: “First, he put in Xiaohongshu. There is a strong positive correlation between the planting value and other related data on the site and the post-search link conversion data outside the site. Especially when he only places the single product on Xiaohongshu, he will know better, and then he will. The budget will be enlarged. Secondly, the product is not suitable and the negative feedback from users is relatively large. At this time, the company should quickly stop launching it, or choose other products to try. It can also take this product back and modify it. It’s good to continue investing after that.” This also confirms the two meanings of the above-mentioned product planting. The former is more conventional, while the latter's product innovation sounds more capable of highlighting the value of the platform, but it is more difficult because it takes longer and requires the full cooperation of the R&D and marketing departments. Zhiheng also said in the interview that product innovation will not be Xiaohongshu’s top priority at present.

Xiaohongshu CMO Zhiheng explains that the role of "product planting" in marketing is relatively scientific. So, what is Xiaohongshu's first priority at present? When asked about the plans and goals for commercialization in 2023, Zhiheng replied that one is to fully realize the "grass planting value", and the other is to serve the customers already served more fully. Again, product cultivation is a worldview, and value cultivation is a methodology. It is understood that, unlike the traditional number of likes, collections, and comments, the “grass planting value” involves 11 types of in-depth reading and in-depth interactive user behaviors, including but not limited to in-depth reading (reading with a longer dwell time) , forward & purchase comments, save pictures, share, search product terms, etc. Xiaohongshu COO Conan told "Shenxiang" that the reason why Xiaohongshu mentioned "scientific grass planting" is that on the one hand, the industry is changing, and on the other hand, its own capabilities are upgrading. “I do think we have the ability to better quantify Xiaohongshu’s unique user planting behavior and content. We are involved in defining such a data indicator, the TrueInterest planting value, to give everyone The grass planting content on Xiaohongshu provides a real-time grass planting value. In this way, everyone can evaluate its effect in real time, whether it is the author or blogger who participated in the grass planting content, or the merchants and brands behind it. Optimization, this is the biggest change today.” Xiaohongshu COO Conan released “TrueInterest” The purpose of Xiaohongshu’s launch of “TrueInterest” is to solve the “attribution” problem. After all, the novelty of grass planting marketing among brands has long passed, and grass planting marketing has become a unique and important action. But if the attribution cannot be determined for a long time, then the brand will be betting on luck when investing in planting grass. The effect is difficult to measure, which directly affects the tuning of movements, and can easily turn "planting grass" into a metaphysics. Business requires a closed loop of logic. If there is no clear positive feedback of reaping what you sow or even reaping what you sow, in an environment that increasingly emphasizes cost reduction and efficiency improvement, it may be difficult for brands to continue investing. Once the brand "rolls" to the short-term cultivation of traffic buying and selling, everyone will fall into the entropy increase of ROI, the bidding volume will become narrower and narrower, and the bidding will cease to be effective, making it more difficult to establish long-term brand value. And in Xiaohongshu’s own commercialization process, things like grass planting value that anchor “certainty” have also reached a stage that needs to be put on the table. Including the KFS delivery method promoted by Xiaohongshu last year, it is actually a delivery method that allows the brand to amplify at any time when it is good and stop at any time when it is bad, so as to increase the certainty of successful planting. But I’m afraid that the “certainty” that Xiaohongshu can currently provide is here for the time being. After all, the absence of Xiaohongshu’s e-commerce segment makes it difficult for it to complete a self-closed loop in the domain. In the eyes of the brand, Xiaohongshu is defined more in the "marketing" link than in "operation" - to give two examples, in Xiaohongshu, YSL has not opened a store, and the content of the notes is only a simple product promotion; Estee Lauder has an official account on Xiaohongshu, which will update content and hold topical activities, but its store is just a sample trial center, and the brand has not done any live broadcasts. This is very different from the "global operation" that other platforms aspire to. In fact, DouKuai’s data has proven the value of e-commerce in driving the overall commercialization of the platform. Kuaishou CEO Cheng Yixiao even bluntly stated that e-commerce is one of the important engines for the company’s future growth and is also the center of the entire Kuaishou commercialization ecosystem. But Xiaohongshu still chooses to focus on the grass planting process - which is quite surprising. We greatly admire and cherish the few persistence of feelings on the Internet, but at the same time we are worried that if the transaction link is not opened up, no matter how clear the data link is, it may only be "relatively scientific". The completely closed-loop byte ecosystem can directly GTA (GMV to 5A), that is, through GMV sales, reversely calculate the crowd demand on each link of the brand's 5A (understanding, attract, grow, first purchase and repeat purchase) to ultimately To reflect and tune from the beginning. In contrast, the weakness of Xiaohongshu’s trading links is not only a matter of growth space, it will also affect the competitiveness of its existing business. "Being under pressure" has been the "biggest awareness" of Internet advertising over the past year. However, amidst the mourning, we can still see some changes and hope: the huge engine continues to promote the integration of marketing and operations; Tencent, which is actively adjusting, has inexhaustible gold mines in the private sector, and several "benchmarks" of the video account Case" leaves plenty of room for imagination for commercialization; in the financial report, Pinduoduo and Kuaishou, whose advertising revenue segment continues to grow, make it clear to the industry that e-commerce business has a stable and driving effect on advertising revenue. The changes in the advertising market are forcing the Internet at the forefront Enterprises adjust and iterate, adjust their ideas, complete product tools, and rethink the interest relationship between their own platforms and ecological participants. For Xiaohongshu, which is still in the early stages of commercialization, it is not easy to achieve today's word-of-mouth and industry recognition. No matter what, it's always good to take a brave step. And perhaps looking at a longer timeline, today's focus and restraint will be another smooth path besides the mainstream furious style of play.