It’s easy to see how Little Red Book has become such an important platform for brands. With over 100 million active monthly users and an incredibly product-friendly concept and design, businesses from all over the world have seen it as a fantastic way to either enter or expand their influence within the Chinese market. However, as with any platform, especially one that targets a country that many marketers are inexperienced in advertising towards, it can be difficult to know where to start. So, if you’re thinking of becoming a Xiaohongshu influencer, or have tried to break through and grow an audience without much success, then we’re here to help.
Today, we’re going to give a brief guide on Little Red Book marketing, how to grow your audience as a Xiaohongshu influencer, and what to do when setting out your strategies.
What is Little Red Book (Xiaohongshu)?
Whilst the Red social network in China’s 100 million active monthly users do lend themselves to a broad range of demographics, any that are unfamiliar with the app may be surprised just how dominant one single group is on the platform. That group would be young, female shoppers in large cities, who have been Xiaohongshu’s primary target audience since its inception in 2014.
It is important to note that, while 100 million monthly active users is a sizeable number, this does not make Little Red Book the biggest platform in China by any means. WeChat alone has well over 1.2 billion MAUs in comparison, and there are several other apps that also boast audiences in the hundreds of millions. However, there may be larger platforms, but Little Red Book is still uniquely suited to branding and marketing in ways that other apps and platforms aren’t.
As we mentioned earlier, the primary audience of the Xiaohongshu app is women in large cities. This means that Xiaohongshu’s audience has incredibly impressive buying power overall compared to the demographics of other platforms. Not only that, but with Little Red Book being a social e-commerce platform, you can be sure that practically anyone using the app is an online shopper who is interested in finding products. The Little Red Book app has an emphasis on more premium brands, and this means that well-known and highly-regarded international brands will often maintain high engagement year-round.
The Aesthetics of Xiaohongshu
It can be difficult to find direct comparisons in Western markets for something like Little Red Book. However, the app that Xiaohongshu gets related back to most would be Instagram, and it’s easy to see why. Little Red Book is an incredibly visual platform, allowing users to build a very visual-driven profile that favours aesthetics over more traditional blocks of text. Even the writing on the app tends to reflect this, with most posts being strewn with emojis which come together to form a mood or persona, rather than offering up dry, bulk text.
Little Red Book’s Purchasing Impact
So, now that we’ve delved a little into what Little Red Book is, it’s important to also consider the impact it has on brands. After all, it’s great to get engagement, but you need to know what your ROI is going to look like if you want to plan out a marketing campaign. Luckily, Little Red Book offers a wide variety of benefits for businesses and influencers wanting to leverage the platform, including:
Driving Interest:
As a well-known and highly-regarded platform for reviews, and a platform that offers a curated experience based on a user’s interests, there are multiple potential touchpoints that can be offered by Xiaohongshu. Little Red Book allows users to build desire for a product and can solidify that desire into purchasing intent as they look up reviews and find out more information about the specifics of the product in question.
Building Awareness:
Given that the Red app is, first and foremost, a social shopping platform, there are numerous ways for users to be made aware of a product. From reviews and discussions by trusted influencers to simply being fed products through the algorithm determining their interests, you have a lot of ways to get your products in front of the right people.
Creating Brand Loyalty:
Each app is going to have different strengths in this regard, and Little Red Book certainly fills a particular niche in the brand loyalty journey. As a Chinese app for social media specifically dedicated to discussing and promoting products, Little Red Book gives people a place to talk about your products and interact with them alongside others through comments and reviews.
What all this means is that, while you may not necessarily make a considerable number of sales directly through Little Red Book, that doesn’t mean it isn’t hugely impactful for your brand as a whole.
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As a Chinese social media company providing video creation for Red, we at CLIVE have dedicated ourselves to providing the highest possible quality and relevancy for those looking to succeed on Xiaohongshu. So, if you’re looking for Little Red Book (Xiaohongshu) marketing, or simply want to learn more about what we can do for you, contact CLIVE today.