3 Lessons Learned from the Little Red Book Advertising that I Lost 3 Million Yuan On!

This article will approach the issue from the perspective of brands and service providers, and provide two ways of thinking about the 618 review.

Recently, during the 618 promotion period, many friends said that they were about to review the activities, but they didn’t know where to start. Therefore, this article cuts in from the perspective of brands and service providers and provides two thinking paths for review. You can learn from and refer to them based on your own situation!

1. How do brands review 618?

1. Determine the time node of the brand's 618 event

It is better to start one or two months in advance, and then plan the specific time nodes when reviewing.

2. Approach from the perspective of materials

Statistics were collected on how many types of notes were produced by the brand during the 618 event (one or two months), and how much of each type of notes were reported and underwater. At the same time, the number of content produced by each type of note, the number of corresponding hot articles, and the actual conversion effect brought by the hot articles.

These data can be used as a reference for brands to plan the pace of advertising at different stages. For example, during the product-effect period, what kind of content can the brand produce more appropriately; or during the big promotion period, what content can be focused on and how much budget is reasonable, so as not to waste brand resources and miss the opportunity to increase sales.

3. At the expert level

We also need to conduct statistics on the overall data (1 month or 2 months), including the spending of all influencers during the event, including the proportion of top influencers, the proportion of bottom influencers, or the proportion of grassroots KOCs; as well as the number of explosive articles produced at each level, and which level has the most significant conversion effect.

We have summarized the conversion rate brought by influencers in one sentence: judge the cost performance of this influencer. For example, if a brand cooperates with an influencer who is paid 100 yuan and produces a hot post with 10,000 likes, the number of likes, collections and comments keeps increasing for half a month, and finally brings us sales of 100,000 yuan, the cost performance of this influencer is actually very high.

After 1 or 2 months of summary, we will be able to judge based on the existing data standards: when a new product is just launched, we can choose high-quality KOCs to cooperate with; when it reaches a certain scale, we can choose top influencers, so that the overall conversion effect may become better, and so on.

4. Review of the investment flow sector

Traffic investment can be divided into search promotion and information flow promotion, which is how much money is spent on each to bring about the approximate CPC and CPE. In fact, traffic investment ultimately depends on the brand's product transaction situation, that is, GMV. It is necessary to use the average sales of the brand before the 618 event and compare it with the conversion situation during the event.

For example, the brand's average monthly sales before the 618 event were 1 million, and this month it sold 2 million, a significant increase. Then we need to find out where the 618 node may be, specifically which note it is, how much traffic it attracts, and then split it up layer by layer.

2. How to conduct review as a service provider on 618?

1. Based on the brand’s delivery goals, focus on the notes published during the 618 period

Review all the content that brought conversions and find their common core highlights. Analyze the reasons for the content that did not convert, whether it deviated from the core strategy at the beginning, and whether the influencers used are suitable.

2. Focus on key actions in the conversion process and business-related indexes

Observe a series of data obtained by using tools such as Little Red Star, Little Red Alliance, and CID, and determine the trend brought about by each data change (for example: an increase in the store entry index; an increase in the number of repeat purchases, etc.). Have we taken key actions at each change node in this trend? At the same time, we can summarize these actions and come up with a set of methodologies that can improve conversion rates.

3. Evaluate collaboration with brands

Find out what is done well and what is not, and analyze possible regrets, such as whether the KPI delivery arrangement can be faster, whether the decision to release good content can be more decisive, etc.

3. What pitfalls do brands need to avoid when reviewing their 618 sales?

1. Companies do not control budgets or control budgets too much

For example, during the Chinese Valentine's Day last year, our company spent two to three million on Xiaohongshu, one million was spent on influencers, and the remaining two million was spent on traffic. The transaction volume for that month was very good, and the GMV increased significantly. However, due to the lack of detailed investment planning and budget control, the sales performance in the following months dropped precipitously.

This is a typical case of not controlling the budget, spending the money to produce immediate results without considering subsequent delivery arrangements.

Secondly, I was too controlling of the budget, that is, I only considered the cost in the influencer placement and ignored the value of high-quality influencers, which limited the space for selection. My boss asked me to do underwater placement from the beginning and not cooperate with Dandelion, but if I did too much underwater placement, the brand would be blocked.

Then I went to spread this knowledge to my boss, and he said that you should control the budget of talents to around 100, and the restriction is very strict, so there will be very few talents to be screened and no room for maneuver.

2. Insufficient content maintenance after the event node, resulting in the inability of the initial investment funds to continue to play a role

Our company cooperated with a well-known blogger during the Chinese Valentine's Day last year, and he was very popular at that time.

At that time, we could have extended it to include more underwater content, information flow content, etc., but we didn't do it. Then, because the project was not invested in anymore, the money was spent without any use. It was just a waste of time.

Here we must clearly understand that Xiaohongshu is a long-term business that requires detailed marketing planning.

3. Failure to prepare plan B, i.e. the testing content is too single-minded, resulting in heavy losses if the strategy fails.

In daily promotion, if a brand only targets one user group, there is a high possibility of failure and money will be wasted.

I have encountered a brand that used Douyin to attract people of a certain age group to make transactions on Tmall, and then promoted to Xiaohongshu targeting the age group of people in their 40s and 50s. If there was no plan B to lower the age group, the entire brand promotion would be aborted.

Because there are very few people and bloggers in their 40s and 50s on the Xiaohongshu platform, there are also few directions that can be tested.

4. Brands are too concerned about the data of popular articles, but not the final conversion situation

Some brands only care about indicators such as likes and collections of notes, and don’t pay much attention to the final situation in the comment area, or the transaction situation of Xiaohongshu diverting traffic to other platforms.

For example, if there is no good guide link for notes about good things, out of 10 people who follow this note, 9 of them may buy other products. The note data looks very beautiful, but it is actually useless.

Author: Nan Kaikou

WeChat public account: Nankaikou (ID: nnvoice)