RED, also known as “Xiaohongshu (小红书)” or “Little Red Book”, is one of the most popular social media platforms and is especially powerful for influencer marketing to Chinese. RED is a vibrant hub of commerce-related, user-generated content in the form of product reviews and recommendations. It encourages users to share products and lifestyles through text, photos and videos. It helps businesses sell products.
There are always opportunities – how about the local Chinese community?
Madame Flavour is a Melbourne based tea brand with its tea products sold online and offline in local supermarkets. With its great quality and taste, Madame Flavour has become one of the most popular tea brands in the local community. However, there are always other opportunities, and the Chinese community is a big one. Madame Flavour recognised the Chinese buying power and love of tea and wanted to reach out to Chinese tea-lovers to get to know the brand and, in turn, increase sales.
From desktop research to consumer opinions, Chin identified the target audience – young Chinese females; the most suitable platform – RED; and the first step – influencer seeding marketing. The campaign combined Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) and Key Opinion Consumers (KOCs) – KOLs to bring more exposure and KOCs to create great content for RED’s recommendation system to pick up and promote to other users.
It was not a huge budget campaign, but because of the right content and right influencers, the campaign was a great success in branding, and as we kept pushing out new content, more and more people became aware of the brand and its great taste and quality, and went out and bought it.
The campaign had a total reach of 25,000+. All posts were well liked on RED, with comments expressing interest and intention to purchase Madame Flavour tea products. It’s now one year after the campaign, the enthusiasm for Madame Flavour on RED did not fade away. It’s not surprising that today we still see new organic content on RED about Madame Flavour. The brand is steadily growing and has now become a trusted local tea brand amongst Chinese consumers in Australia.
Major Takeaways from Madame Flavour’s Case
- As a product sharing and recommendation platform, RED does much more than just get your brand seen. More importantly, Chinese consumer buying decisions largely rely on what other consumers say about the product. The trust that RED users have in KOLs and KOCs can encourage people to actually try your brand and generate more shares, earning more recommendations and thus increasing product awareness and word-of-mouth sales.
- RED marketing does not require a big budget, your investment in KOL and KOC, in fact will be far less than what the Chinese market will give you back; a small investment can create a buzz for your brand in the Chinese market.
- The investment is resilient and continues long after the campaign
- There are no set up fees or ongoing management costs
It is never too hard or too late to open up the gate to the Chinese market. The strategic marketing team at Chin Communications has rich experience in RED marketing and helping Australian businesses to communicate with their Chinese audience through high-quality marketing solutions. If you are trying to find a good way to enter the Chinese market through RED, our experienced China marketing professionals are here to help.