How Xiaohongshu improves advertising effectiveness through competitive product analysis

Competitive product analysis is a very useful method that is applicable to all industries and fields. For example, it can help us improve ROI when used in advertising, and it is very valuable for reference.

However, Xiaohongshu’s competitive product analysis is different from our regular analysis categories. Let’s take a look at the author’s analysis.

No one can ignore the importance of competitor analysis. Only by understanding the categories and competitors on Xiaohongshu can you accurately position your products, choose the communication points and the most efficient dissemination paths, and ensure that your products are competitive on Xiaohongshu.

As long as there are competing products in the category that are heavily promoted by Xiaohongshu, they are very valuable for reference, because competing products can be used to determine which communication points have received good feedback from Xiaohongshu users and which have received poor feedback; competing products can also be used to determine which topics, scenarios, and formats have good communication effects.

It can be said that before formulating a communication strategy, doing a good competitor analysis can bring a lot of useful information and improve the effectiveness of our communication strategy!

The topic of competitive product analysis has been discussed before, but not in detail. This time, I will talk about how to conduct competitive product analysis on Xiaohongshu from a practical perspective.

Next, I will introduce the two aspects of content and brand account:

1. Content

The delivery content refers to the delivery in Xiaohongshu in the conventional sense, including the basic data of competitors' delivery in the site, delivery content preferences, delivery experts, and fan distribution of competitors, etc. Here we generally choose the note data within 90 days as a reference

1. Basic data [You can use charts and compare with the data of this brand]

1) Notes:

Basic data indicators

To analyze the note situation of competing products, we must first look at some basic data indicators:

What we usually do here is to analyze and judge the exposure, clicks, interactions, likes and other indicators of competitors' notes.

By analyzing the data of competitor-related notes within 90 days, we can get the current attention of the competitor on the site. See if people have a high level of interaction with this brand? Do they pay attention to the brand-related notes?

This will allow us to make a basic analysis of the voice of competing products.

Business Notes/Non-Business Notes

Secondly, the number of business notes is also an important evaluation criterion. Here we need to look at the number and proportion of business notes and non-business notes respectively.

Through the proportion of business notes, we can draw conclusions about the brand’s delivery situation. If a brand has a high number of business notes, it means that the brand has delivered more content and the volume of tap water on the platform is relatively smaller. Conversely, it means that the brand has a higher volume of tap water on the platform.

However, the business notes captured from the data platform are not that accurate and can only be used as an auxiliary reference for decision-making.

Content format

The content format here is the simplest to understand. Let's see whether the notes placed by competitors on the site perform better in the form of pictures and texts or in the form of videos. This will provide a format direction for our subsequent note placement.

Negative Notes

For negative notes, you can directly search for the corresponding competing brands on Xiaohongshu, or you can pull them from a third-party data platform to see if there are any negative reviews in the first few articles that appear under the brand keywords.

If there are a lot of negative comments in the first 30, 40, or 50 articles within 90 days, we can extract the relevant negative comment information and provide an avoidance idea when we are designing content for our own brand.

2. Hot Articles

Number of popular articles with hundreds/thousands/tens of thousands of likes

By conducting statistical analysis on competitors’ popular articles with 100, 1,000, and 10,000 likes, we can determine the proportion of popular articles in the overall placement of competitors and make a more specific judgment on the placement of competitors on the site.

Number of impressions, clicks, total interactions, likes, etc.

After the above summary, we have already known which contents of the notes released by competitors are better and which notes are of higher quality. Then we can conduct a specific analysis and deconstruction of the top one or two popular articles.

By breaking down the click volume, interaction volume and other information of the hot articles, key information such as the experts related to the notes, content focus, and note format can be extracted to provide some reference and inspiration for the subsequent creation of hot articles.

2. Content

1. Note content

Next is the content of the delivery part:

The content of notes on Xiaohongshu can be divided into: sharing of good things, evaluation, DIY production, tutorials, etc. Here we generally choose to use pie charts to clearly show the proportion of each content form.

By analyzing the emphasis of the content of these notes, we can see which forms of content the competitors' notes with better performance focus on, and determine the focus of our future note placement.

2. Note tags and keywords

We can simply do some statistical analysis on the competitor’s note tags and keywords. For the tags and keywords with better competitor data, we can directly quote them in our own brand notes.

3. Analysis of popular/hot article notes

After we get the popular notes based on the data analysis, we first need to make a general analysis of the hot notes of competitors, and examine the content direction, note tags, etc. of the hot notes of competitors. Then we can do a simple analysis of the top hot notes in a targeted manner, and look at the content tags, expert selection, publishing format, etc. of the notes with good data performance for reference.

3. Experts

The analysis of competitive product placement experts provides three dimensions of investigation:

The first is to examine the level and proportion of talents

Expert level/delivery ratio:

Through the data statistics of competing products, we can get the proportion of influencers currently using competing products. According to the number of fans, influencers can be divided into top influencers, mid-level influencers, tail influencers, koc, amateurs, etc.

Here is a formula for a brand to find influencers on Xiaohongshu, which can be used as a simple reference:

Of course, a brand’s influencer placement cannot be solved once and for all by relying on a single formula; it also requires subtle adjustments based on factors such as the influencer data distribution and output results of competitors.

Account type/proportion: Enterprise account/top influencer/amateur account…

Regarding the account categories of influencers, we need to distinguish them from the influencer levels mentioned above. We need to see whether the data source of the brand with a higher voice on the platform comes from influencers placed by competitors, competitor brand accounts, or celebrity traffic, etc., so as to make a more objective evaluation of the competitor's data.

Expert Type/Proportion

The type of experts needs special attention here.

Check whether the influencers used by competitors are all related to the brand category or are there diversified combinations? If there are diversified adjustments, do the notes data from the influencers of different categories they choose show a better trend? If so, what specific categories are they combined with?

Based on the above questions, we can also come up with a diversified combination strategy for talent delivery types and make diversified scenario combinations for our own delivery.

4. Fans

The analysis of the fan situation of competitors mentioned here mainly examines the audience of the relevant notes placed by competitors on the site.

By simply breaking down the audience portrait of the relevant notes, we can obtain basic information such as their gender ratio, age distribution, and the city they live in.

Secondly, we can also find out what kind of content they pay more attention to in this brand or category on Xiaohongshu, that is, to find out their focus. By capturing consumers' focus, we can feed back to our subsequent delivery.

Finally, we also need to look at the fans’ demographic tags to determine potential consumer needs and combine products with diversified scenarios.

1. Brand number

In addition to content delivery, brand accounts are another important step in Xiaohongshu’s on-site delivery. The analysis of competitor brand accounts should also start with basic data analysis.

2. Basic information

The data analysis of competing brand accounts can be carried out from aspects such as note data, fan growth, fan base, and note content.

Here we would like to emphasize the analysis of brand account note content.

Unlike influencer marketing, brands can use brand accounts to directly introduce products and promote new products. They can also conduct various activities such as sweepstakes and interactions within the brand accounts. Therefore, when analyzing the content of competing brand accounts, it is necessary to classify and compare the data of different note contents to see which aspects the competing brand accounts focus more on and what the resulting data is.

3. Conversion

Since we have opened a brand account, we naturally hope to achieve certain on-site conversions. Therefore, the on-site conversions of competing brand accounts are also one of our assessment indicators.

It is necessary to focus on studying the forms of online conversions of competitors, how the conversion content attracts traffic, online product links, interactions, etc.