How to Advertise on Xiaohongshu

Xiaohongshu is becoming a key player in social media with significant marketing potential, and both local and overseas brands need to consider the app as a crucial part of their strategy when targeting the Chinese market.

Building on our previous article, “What is Xiaohongshu,” which explained how users interact with the platform and how brands can effectively engage with them, this guide dives deeper into Xiaohongshu’s full range of marketing tools.

If you are keen to learn about how to utilize everything from brand management and conversion tools to content creation and data support to maximize impact, read on!

Brand Long-Term Operation

What is Xiaohongshu Professional Account (专业号)?

The Professional Account is the gateway for brands to start commercial activities on Xiaohongshu. Once verified as an official business account, brands will have a blue “V” badge beside their name on their profile, indicating official recognition.

Moreover, brands can receive guidance on marketing strategies, such as giveaway campaigns, to connect and engage with followers, facilitating more targeted traffic conversion.

What are the Benefits of the Professional Account?

Community Management

• In addition to the blue “V” verified badge, Professional Accounts are prioritized in search results, enhancing visibility to potential users and brand awareness.

• Professional Accounts can also create giveaway posts and launch hashtag campaigns, curating quality content and fostering stronger connections with users.

• Professional Accounts can leverage data analysis and insights from the platform for performance evaluation and link their offline stores to convert online traffic into in-store visits.

Store Management

• Brands can set up a storefront within Xiaohongshu, where users can immediately view products and store details from the brand’s profile page.

• They can also create notes (posts) with product links, facilitating the transition from interest cultivation to order placement.

• Brands can also leverage live-streaming commerce on Xiaohongshu, demonstrating their products in real-time, while viewers are able to click on links attached to the live stream to purchase the featured items.

Business/Commercial Promotion

Brands with a Professional Account can use Shutiao (a promotional tool) to boost the visibility of their notes (posts) and engage in brand collaboration, pairing with bloggers to co-create high-quality content.

What is Qianfan Ark (千帆平台)?

Qianfan (Ark) is a platform for merchants to manage Xiaohongshu stores.

How to Promote with Qianfan?

Note (Post) Promotion

In the Xiaohongshu community, posts are referred to as “notes.” As the name implies, note promotion involves using these posts to highlight products.

There are typically two optimization objectives: one focuses on attracting visitors to product details, store homepages, and related pages, while the other one aims to increase conversions from potential customers via product notes.

Livestream Promotion

Livestream Promotion is a paid promotion tool designed to support live rooms by attracting commercial traffic and enhancing visibility. This feature helps to enhance warm-up traffic before streaming and optimize the number of engaged viewers and transactions during the live stream.

Content Creation

What is Pugongying (蒲公英平台)?

Pugongying is Xiaohongshu’s service platform for fostering business collaborations between brands and high-quality content creators, offering reliable, efficient, and secure content cooperation services.

What Does Pugongying Bring to Marketers?

• A Rich Network of High-Quality KOLs: Pugongying brings together over 100,000 Xiaohongshu KOLs across various tiers and over 30 verticals. It leverages quality content to influence user opinions and to drive purchasing decisions.

• Pairing Efficiency: With its advanced targeted and intelligent matching systems, Pugongying streamlines the process for brands to find the right KOLs.

• Comprehensive Data Insights: Pugongying offers detailed data analytics, allowing brands to monitor, analyze, and evaluate the effectiveness of their marketing strategies across multiple dimensions.

• Guaranteed Security: As Xiaohongshu’s only official channel for KOL commercial collaboration, Pugongying offers a range of rights protection services, including KOL credit ratings and compensation mechanisms, to safeguard brand content initiatives.

What are the KOL Collaboration Models?

Pugongying’s KOL collaboration models include customized cooperation, recruitment cooperation, co-creation cooperation, and sprout. For more information, refer to the “Collaborating with KOLs on Xiaohongshu” section in our earlier blog What is Xiaohongshu.

Traffic and Conversion Tools

What is Brand ads (品牌广告)?

Brand advertising typically focuses on content display through high-exposure ad placements and are contract-based. The pricing models for these ads include CPT (cost per time, where ads are priced based on duration), GD (guaranteed delivery, where ads are priced based on the number of displays), and fixed pricing.

Here’s an overview of the various brand advertising formats:

What is Juguang Aurora (聚光平台)?

The Juguang platform is Xiaohongshu’s newly launched advertising solution. It caters to a wide range of marketing objectives, including interest cultivation, sales boost, customer data collection, live stream promotion, and market opportunity capitalization.

The Juguang platform integrates two critical aspects of user decision-making: search and browsing (providing advertisers with advanced targeting) and smart ad delivery based on SPU (Standard Product Unit).

For more information on optimizing ad performance on the Juguang platform, you can refer to the “How can Nativex Help You Stay Ahead of Market Trends?” section in our article What is Xiaohongshu.

What is the Ad Delivery & Optimization Process on Juguang?

Search Ads & Delivery (搜索通)

The Search Delivery allows clients to draft creative content highlighting their product or service features and purchase relevant keywords for targeted ad placement.

The strategy for search ad delivery varies depending on the delivery goal (i.e., private message inquiries, note engagement, product sales) and marketing objectives.

Private Messaging (私信通)

Private Messaging is Xiaohongshu’s one-stop platform for lead management, connecting users with brands to facilitate conversions and enhance the efficiency of private message marketing on Xiaohongshu.

What is Shutiao (薯条)?

Shutiao is a self-service ad delivery tool designed for content creators and businesses. It is accessible via mobile and offers two versions tailored to specific needs: one for boosting content, and the other for marketing promotions.

What are the Benefits of Shutiao?

• Content Boosting: Brands can use Shutiao to promote original notes, enhancing visibility among Xiaohongshu users and driving greater engagement and interaction.

• KOL Marketing: Shutiao can also improve notes from Pugongying, optimizing the reach and impact of the KOL partnership content.

• Account Management: Shutiao makes it easier for interested Xiaohongshu users to discover and follow the brand’s account, which leads to increased followers and overall account growth.

• E-commerce Interest Cultivation: By using Shutiao to boost notes, brands can capture and nurture users’ interests, ensuring their content reaches the targeted audience effectively.

Strategic Phases of Account Growth with Shutiao

1. Initial Follower Build-up: In the early stages, Shutiao prioritizes follower count to build a dedicated fan base and enhance the account’s visibility.

2. Note Testing: Brands can allocate a small budget for a 3-day test on the note impression, evaluating the content potential based on CPC.

3. Engagement Enhancement: Brands should invest in likes and favorites to maintain and improve note engagement, creating content that resonates and retains heat.

4. Quality Note Amplification: In this final stage, brands should aim for a dual focus on both likes and favorites as well as follower count to leverage the engagement of high-quality notes, maximizing their reach and impact.

Marketing Data Support

What is Lingxi (灵犀平台)?

Lingxi helps brands identify market opportunities, understand user preferences, track trending topics, and implement precise and efficient marketing strategies. Lingxi provides strategic guidance on product and service niche selection, engagement scenarios, target audience identification, and product reputation assessment.

In addition, Lingxi offers comprehensive marketing insights, including market opportunities, search and content strategies, product reputation analysis, audience segmentation, and public opinion monitoring. The platform integrates with Pugongying and Juguang Platform and supports brand advertising, offering support to product and marketing strategy.

Lingxi introduces a “Planting Grass (Interest Cultivation) Consultant,” a data module designed to optimize a brand’s overall performance on Xiaohongshu. It helps brands to plan, execute, and manage their marketing strategies based on different marketing objectives.

Why Nativex for Your Xiaohongshu Marketing

We are an official Xiaohongshu Cross-Border Marketing Agency. Our expertise covers media strategy, influencer marketing, creative production, ad campaign management, and social media optimization. We can provide solutions that resonate with Xiaohongshu’s unique user base, ensuring meaningful impact.

Nativex is here to help you skyrocket your brand to success. Ready to get started? Contact Nativex to begin your next campaign.

If you want to learn more about different social media app marketing in China, take a pick from our “what is” series on WeChat, Xiaohongshu, Weibo, Naver, and Kwai. Also, keep an eye on the blog for new articles as they are released.