Soft advertising volume and reporting anti-funnel are the A and B sides of Xiaohongshu's ecosystem

On Xiaohongshu, a diversified social platform, the choice of marketing strategy is crucial to the growth of a brand. This article explores the position and role of two marketing phenomena in the Xiaohongshu ecosystem: amateur soft advertising and reporting anti-funnel, for your reference.

The amount of soft advertising by amateurs seems to be becoming less and less popular, and the official restrictions and monitoring of soft advertising notes are becoming increasingly stringent. This phenomenon has begun to appear on KOLs, and more and more KOLs are only willing to accept reports and turn up their noses at soft advertising.

Is it true that soft advertising cannot be done? Is it correct to report it?

I don’t think so.

If a platform only has one ecological niche and fails to form an ecological balance, then this platform cannot be called an ecosystem.

Ecological balance is a dynamic balance. The ecosystem is not static. There will always be imbalance caused by changes in some part of the system, and then the ecosystem will rely on its self-regulating ability to enter a new state of balance.

If Xiaohongshu can only accommodate the underwater style, the discovery page will probably be dominated by notes marked with "advertisement", which may not be what Xiaohongshu wants. And does soft advertising necessarily mean low-quality notes? This is a typical stereotype.

For example, we also help partner brands to do some soft advertising, and these soft advertising notes take on a more diversified perspective. If a brand can only be searched under the brand word in the process of users searching back to understand the homogeneous KOL notes, it will actually make users feel that the advertising content is too high and they will not be persuaded to buy.

However, it would be more convincing if users could also see the promotion notes from different perspectives posted by different KOCs. Brands can appropriately make some KOC soft advertising notes, treating KOCs as super users, and share a product that they have not paid attention to but can actually solve their real needs.

The truly high-quality content of Xiaohongshu is not the exquisite pictures and texts, or the wonderful videos, but the real notes, those notes written based on their own experiences. These notes allow users to find notes written by real users who had the same needs as me in a short period of time, which contain their similar experiences and various solutions.

KOC is the best at this, because KOC is both a real consumer and a creator. The balance between the two can produce some very good soft-advertising notes, which is actually what the community wants. As long as the proportion is well controlled, there will be no points deducted. This type of note is also the "balance point" of Xiaohongshu's ecosystem.

1. Below the balance point is the logic of "traffic business"

There is a type of merchant that is naturally suitable for amateur soft advertising: non-brand merchants, not limited to industrial belts, supply chains, collection stores and other front-store-and-back-factory merchants.

There is no need to follow brand logic, with medium to high customer orders and high profits, and use soft advertising notes to guide private domain or Taobao store transactions. Thanks to the low cost of amateur soft advertising notes, as long as there is one article among dozens of articles with good data, ROI will easily be positive.

It is inevitable to deduct points for violations, but it doesn’t matter. Brand A violates the rules and then re-labels it as Brand B. The product remains the same, but the brand changes. This is the advantage of merchants with a store in front and a factory in the back.

It is a typical traffic business logic that Xiaohongshu is just a platform for these merchants. This platform has traffic bonuses, cheap content, and exchanges volume for volume. There is no logical problem, and Xiaohongshu cannot control it. After all, merchants are not afraid of being deducted points.

2. Above the balance point is the logic of "crowd business"

The practice of spreading soft advertising by amateurs underwater is completely contrary to the practice of using reverse funnels above water.

It is not that soft advertising is impossible for brand-type merchants, but it is inefficient. The keyword collection effect is poor, the average reading volume and interaction volume are low, and the traffic accuracy is also reduced. The official restrictions on this "wild way" are not only reflected in the deduction of points for the brand, but also that you cannot reach the real "potential consumer group" with soft advertising notes, you can only reach the "general traffic group" that has not been marked by the platform.

Why can the reverse funnel work? Because after the reporting notes are bound to SPU, they will help the product find "potential consumer groups" with their own preference tags or even e-commerce search behaviors, which is equivalent to the distribution of commercial traffic. The distribution is more accurate and efficient, which is helpful for both seeding and conversion.

The difference between the two lies in the accuracy of traffic. If a brand merchant wants to make a brand bigger and stronger, the water-based approach is more suitable. This is determined by the commercial product structure of Xiaohongshu. After all, branding is a crowd business. Traffic alone is not enough. There must be crowd recognition. If a brand does not adopt the water-based approach, it will not be able to accumulate brand crowd assets in the Xiaohongshu commercial system. Without crowd assets, there is no way to achieve precise crowd marketing and cannot accurately increase volume.

Therefore, think clearly about what you want, find your own ecological niche, and then match the corresponding strategy. Whether it is soft advertising or reporting anti-funnel, both are correct. The only difference between the two is the strategy, there is no absolute right or wrong.