3 Steps to Grow Your Brand on Xiaohongshu (RED)

Welcome back to this week’s blog, Part 2 of our 3 part Xiaohongshu (RED) series. Last time, we talked about what RED is all about and touched upon the basic demographics and user behaviors of the popular and growing platform (over 300 Million users). This week, we will take a deeper dive into the platform and talk about how you can grow your own business on RED.

Is RED the right platform for your business?

Before any business decides to start on a new platform, they need to know exactly who their target audiences are and whether the products and services they offer would be suitable for the platform. 
Luckily, with its strong focus on beauty and fashion content, and the fact that the majority of its users are female, RED has differentiated itself from other big platforms like WeChat or Weibo.

Since around 76% of the 85 monthly active users on RED live in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities in China and about 87% of those users are middle or upper-class women with a higher amount of disposable income, this makes Xiaohongshu a great fit for luxury brands such as Dior and Gucci.

However, RED is still a lifestyle content first platform including beauty, fashion, food, travel, entertainment, reading, fitness, and childcare. So as long as your brand can appeal to female audiences in any of those categories, you can definitely have success on this app.

3 steps to grow your business on RED

More than 20,000 brands have community accounts on RED. The platform hosts nearly 10,000 third-party e-commerce merchants and offers more than 100,000 different products. So building an account is the most important first step.

Fun fact: Did you know that even Kim Kardashian created an official account in 2018 to promote her beauty line, KKW Fragrance?

After you have set up your account with a Chinese phone number on RED (you can also set up an account with your overseas phone number but this means your functions on the app will be limited), the next step is to find out if you can utilize their in-app e-commerce feature. In order to use this feature, your company must have a business registration IN China. One huge advantage that RED has as a social commerce platform is that they have their own store so that consumers can purchase directly through the app. This closed-circuit integration helps many brands sell their products seamlessly. 

There are two simple ways to sell your products and the first one is...

Almost every social media platform will let brands purchase newsfeed ads. Why? Because like us, they also want to make money. duh.

There are two types of ads on RED. The two on the top is a landing page takeover that shows upon load-up of the app. The two on the bottom blend in with the page showing up as native content, in-feed ad as the user scrolls through their newsfeed.

RED recommends that you only ‘boost’ posts that have demonstrated a good engagement rate, because if the organic engagement rate is too low on the post, the platform will actually stop you from running the ad boost, EVEN if you put money behind it. The platform wants to promote content that users will truly find interesting and authentic in their newsfeeds, so make sure you choose an organic post that has a high engagement rate. 

What is a high engagement rate? We would recommend a post that has at least a 15-30% engagement rate based on views. For example, if your post has been viewed by 3000 people and you have 300 likes, saves, and comments, then that would be a good start.

With that being said, only making simple display ads will not cut it on this app. Unlike many other social media apps, the reason why RED is so big is because of their user-generated content and the trust within communities. 

And the only way to build trust, is to use...

KOLs are China’s version of Influencers, and they are even more valuable on RED than on any other Chinese social platforms. The goal of any influencer marketing is to get influencers with a trusted connection with their followers to recommend your product so their followers would buy. 

Influencer marketing on RED is such a big topic we will cover everything on next week’s blog. However, if you really want to learn how to advertise on XiaoHongShu, go watch our Youtube Video series on RED marketing. Otherwise, stay tuned for next week or follow us on all of our social media to stay connected.