How to use Little Red Book: 6 Lessons from Chinese Beauty brands
Beauty brands from all over the world want to know, how to win in China.
And why wouldn’t they? In 2020 China’s beauty market was valued at USD 6.34 billion with an average growth rate of 12%.
Behind this unstoppable growth is China’s sophisticated social commerce machine, the driving force of sales, especially post-pandemic. Social media platforms like WeChat and Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book), and live-streaming ecommerce apps like Tmall/Taobao allow for a seamless, sales-driven customer journey brands could only fantasize about using in the West (until very recently).
Competition is fierce. After loosening regulations on animal testing more brands have flooded the market. Domestic brands flush with investment, better supply chain access and near-outrageous marketing budgets are giving foreign brands a run for their money.
So how can beauty brands make it in China? A nuanced understanding of how to leverage the most popular digital platforms is crucial.
"RED is a crucial platform for product and brand discovery. For Beauty brands it is the best place to seed product to both KOLs and KOCs as it is essential to increase your awareness. Young female urban customers use RED to search for your products before they buy. It gives both influencer and peer validation. It’s a must channel beauty brands in China."
Keep reading for the freshest insights on how Chinese beauty brands are using Xiaohongshu to their advantage and how your brand can put these tactics into action.
*We'll use RED to refer to Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) throughout the article
The Diamond-shaped Seeding Method
Many beauty brands on RED follow the tried-and-true “Diamond-shaped Seeding” method to grow awareness and attract active followers. This means dividing up collaborations among different levels of KOL/KOC*. The bulk of collaborations, around 70 percent go towards medium level KOLs who have between 10K-100K followers. Around 20 percent is allocated towards collaborations with KOC who have less than 10K followers and the rest is allocated towards high-level KOL or celebrities with more than 100K followers.
Distribution of influencers who published the business cooperation notes on RED from Jan. to July, 2021 ©️2021.9 艺恩 ENDATA Inc.
The reason behind this allocation: High-level KOL or celebrities are used mainly for brand awareness, while the mid-to-lower tier KOL/KOC typically have better conversation rates. Think of it as drawing people into the funnel, nurturing the leads, and finally converting to customers.
This method not only conforms to the spectrum of influencers in the beauty industry on RED, but also maximizes the optimal allocation of a brand’s budget.
*KOL = Key Opinion Leader (influencers)
*KOC = Key Opinion Customer (micro-influencers)
Do not underestimate the role of male influencers
Although most beauty influencers on RED are female male beauty influencers have a great advantage and often have the highest rate of engagement.
Male beauty influencers are seen as providing a more "objective analysis” which can make them persuasive when talking about ingredients and efficacy of beauty products.
Consider the success of one of the most famous live-streamers, Austin Li, known as ‘The Lipstick King.’ Austin built his multi-million following doing live-stream shows trying on thousands of lipsticks, dissecting in detail the color, wear, ingredients etc.
But it’s not just famous male beauty influencers — mid-to-lower tier KOL/KOC male beauty influencers can be incredibly impactful to work with as well. Take @厦门刘昊然, a male beauty influencer on RED with 11k followers. @厦门刘昊然 covers domestic beauty brand recommendations, tips on product use and multi-brand comparisons of hero-product ingredient lists. Most of his content is in the form of short videos highlighting application of different products and how he feels after using them for a while. By observing his familiarity with the formulation and efficacy of various products and the advantages vs. disadvantages of different brands, followers trust his role as a beauty expert.
*A post in collaboration with Chinese brand PROYA has achieved 4.4k likes and 2.5k collects, and a high engagement rate in the comment section.
Focus on ingredients and routine
It is reported by Tmall that at present, 40 percent of an average Chinese Gen Z consumer’s beauty collection is made up of domestic brands. They are paying less attention to well-known international brands and focusing more on the efficacy of ingredients and product performance vs. cost and packaging. Some Chinese brands even boast that their “obviously cheaper” packaging material is proof they dedicated the bulk of their investment towards high quality ingredients - people love it!
Popular Chinese beauty brand, PROYA’s key communication points on RED are “早c晚a” (apply Vitamin C in the morning and Retinol at night) and “双抗” (antioxidants to fight against aging), which both are very popular beauty demandsof the younger generation. When a certain amount of content seeding has been achieved, through the brand’s account and influencer posts, users searching for these keywords on RED will be shown PROYA’s posts directly.
Meeting needs at speed
International brands usually have long product development cycles which can impact flexibility. Meanwhile Chinese local beauty brands have better supply chain access and can create more “cute & RED trending” products in a short time frame, attracting young female consumers immediately.
Take popular Chinese beauty brand Carslan for example, the brand launched their new limited-edition foundation this year, with two product lines and named those two types “little milk cat”（kitten）and “little night cat” to represent the difference in effect. Girls on RED fell in love with them! Due to success of this bold attempt, they continued this line, producing “cute cat” powder. The brand even launched “cute soft pig” lip glosses which gained over 27k likes on the launch post alone.
Another brand that has successfully attracted attention is FlowerKnows. The packaging design of their Angel product line invokes a ‘Disney princess with a Chinese twist’ feel. They combined the classic Disney look with design elements from traditional Chinese culture to deliver products that make consumers feel as though they are a beautiful princess living in ancient China. Their launch post on RED has gained over 52K likes.
Work with influencers to produce high-quality, informative content
Many Chinese consumers use RED as a “search & comparison” tool to aid their purchase decisions. Based on this the content with best performance is usually very informative, such as product testing, product comparisons, or introducing to know a product line or routine. Influencers have stitched several pictures together to attract attention, and attached detailed content descriptions on the pictures for people to easily read — no need to scroll down for the text part when looking at the pictures.
*Real try-on-lips testing on 24 colors lipsticks from Perfect Diary (2k likes)
*One-stop introduction of PROYA products (9k likes)
Posting frequency and content topics
How often should brands be posting on RED, and how should content topics be divided? Here is a breakdown of some of the most popular Chinese beauty brand’s posting frequency:
Perfect Diary (2.043 million followers) 20-24 posts per month
PROYA (139K followers) 18-20 posts per month
Carslan (115K followers) 10-12 posts per month
FlowerKnows (175K followers) 20-30 posts per month
ZEESEA (275K followers) 4-6 posts per month
Most top performing Chinese beauty brands (followers between 10K-200K) tend to post every two days on RED. Content is usually divided between “New Products Launch + Beauty Tips + Celebrity News + Giveaway + Users Experience Sharing + Campaigns on Important Dates”. The percentage of video content is around 30-50 percent. And these brands have opened an official RED store for audiences to have convenient access to product pricing and even purchase.
