In today’s marketing era where word of mouth is king, Xiaohongshu, as the largest global shopping community, uses its natural advantages to perfectly combine the shopping sharing community and the cross-border e-commerce section – Xiaohongshu Welfare Club, to open a new C2B (Customer to Business) consumption model for users. Xiaohongshu Welfare Club aims to help users shorten the path from discovering to purchasing foreign goods, allowing Chinese consumers to enjoy a high-quality life faster and no longer worry about buying fakes.
Information dissemination based on sharing communities
In 2017, Chinese tourists traveled abroad 131 million times, and the average overseas expenditure of Chinese tourists reached US$5,565. This shows that Xiaohongshu’s sharing note platform faces a huge outbound population market. Whether from the perspective of segmented market positioning, structured data content or diversified application platforms, Xiaohongshu’s advantages in sharing communities are reflected.
(1) Segmented positioning
Xiaohongshu CEO said that at present, the users of Xiaohongshu are mostly aged between 18 and 30, mostly students and white-collar workers, and 70% to 80% of the users are women. Such data analysis allows Xiaohongshu to clarify its product positioning and user positioning. Of course, Xiaohongshu’s segmented positioning is constantly updated as the user group expands. Xiaohongshu’s initial positioning was to provide a communication platform for outbound tourists to share shopping experiences or for tourists about to go abroad to obtain shopping guides. However, with the prevalence of Internet shopping and the eagerness of the younger generation to try out foreign products, loyal fans of Xiaohongshu have also emerged in China. They may not plan to go abroad, but want to learn more about foreign products.
(2) Structuring of content
In the era of big data, Xiaohongshu uses data to concentrate scattered user experiences into similar topics and structure information. When users share their shopping experiences, they can not only write long texts, but also upload high-resolution photos, edit product names, photos, prices and shopping locations. There are also product tags under the photos. Most importantly, users can interact with the publisher through comments. In the search bar, enter a product name to get three types of information: related notes, products and users. Xiaohongshu’s primary success in sharing communities is that it has made shopping notes a vertical field.
(3) Platform diversification
Currently, Xiaohongshu has added 9 shopping destinations: the United States, South Korea, Japan, France, Thailand, Singapore, Germany, and Hong Kong and Taiwan. Users can download the client of a destination to share information and purchase products. In addition to the PC terminal, Xiaohongshu has also developed apps for Apple and Android mobile terminals, and has social platforms such as Weibo and WeChat for word-of-mouth communication to meet users’ sharing and knowledge-seeking needs. Unlike some professional cross-border e-commerce import shopping platforms such as Amazon, NetEase Kaola, and Tmall Global, Xiaohongshu uses the Internet to truly connect community users through experience sharing.
Xiaohongshu’s advantages in social marketing
Xiaohongshu attaches great importance to every aspect of user experience, which is an important reason why it is deeply loved by users. The advantages of its success can be summarized as follows. First, refine the target users. Xiaohongshu’s users are people who have overseas shopping experience or are interested in overseas shopping products. It uses relational word-of-mouth communication to exchange product information, so that there is no resistance between users and no worries about “sales promotion”. Secondly, provide users with an equal communication platform. Here, everyone can speak up, share their shopping experience or consult the information they want to get, and there is no conflict of interest. Finally, tap into user data and promote marketable products. Xiaohongshu updates personalized products in a timely manner based on user comments, likes and wish lists, which can also cater to the diverse needs of users.