Now You Can Dominate Xiaohongshu Like Perfect Diary & Colorkey
In China's dynamic digital landscape, Xiaohongshu has emerged as the undisputed leader in beauty and personal care content. Recent platform data shows that 82.5% of beauty users rely on the platform to discover products, 94.6% of users are highly satisfied with its beauty content experience, and 87.3% of users use it as the main channel to learn about new beauty products, making it an "encyclopedia" in the Chinese beauty field. The platform has a significant advantage in user groups - 71% are Generation Z and Millennials (born between 1990 and 2005), 68% have a bachelor's degree or above, and 95% are female. For beauty brands targeting China's young consumer market, deploying a marketing strategy on the platform has gone from being an option to a must.
1. Understanding Xiaohongshu's User Demographics and Content Influence
Xiaohongshu has cemented its position as the go-to platform for beauty and personal care content through an unparalleled combination of authentic user experiences and professional insights. The platform's beauty users demonstrate remarkable engagement, with content experience satisfaction scoring 4.24 out of 5—the highest among competing platforms. This satisfaction stems from Xiaohongshu's unique ecosystem where professional reviews coexist with real-user testimonials, creating a trusted environment for product discovery. The platform's young, educated female users (primarily Gen Z and Millennials) aren't just passive consumers—they're active participants who create content, share reviews, and drive trends. Their purchasing decisions are heavily influenced by peer recommendations rather than traditional advertising, making them particularly receptive to authentic brand storytelling. With nearly 70% of users holding college degrees, they possess both the disposable income and discernment to appreciate quality products backed by substantive content.
2. Core Strategies for Brands to Reach Users
2.1 Use real UGC to build a marketing trust foundation
Leverage Authentic User-Generated Content (UGC) Xiaohongshu users value peer recommendations over traditional advertising, making UGC the cornerstone of successful campaigns. Brands should encourage organic reviews, such as unboxing videos or daily promotions, to build trust. For example, skincare brands often recommend products to micro-influencers, whose detailed reviews receive three times more engagement than brand posts.
Topkee’s content creation service further enhances this strategy by customizing UGC-style reviews based on the platform’s aesthetics, combining trending hashtags with data-backed narratives to mimic organic virality.
2.2 Build a gradient influence system with the help of KOL/KOC
Establish strategic cooperation with KOLs and KOCs to build layered influence. Such cooperation can effectively enhance brand influence. While celebrity endorsements (e.g. Yang Mi’s makeup product launch) can bring mass awareness, niche influencers (with 10,000 to 50,000 followers) convert 28% more due to their authenticity.
Topkee’s advertising team optimizes such campaigns by identifying influencers at matching levels, negotiating partnerships, and tracking ROI through real-time exposure and engagement metrics.
2.3 Design highly interactive, emotion-driven marketing campaigns
Design highly interactive, emotion-driven campaigns Xiaohongshu users thrive on engagement. Campaigns like the Qixi Festival “Love Dream” (over 30,000 UGCs) succeeded by combining emotional hooks (e.g. emotional stories) with gamification mechanics. Brands can replicate this model by hosting challenges (e.g. “Show Your Skincare Transformation”) or AR filters for virtual makeup trials.
Topkee’s social customer service ensures seamless execution, managing user interactions, comments, and @mentions to maintain engagement after product launches.
3. Case Studies of Successful Brand Campaigns on Xiaohongshu
Many beauty brands have achieved outstanding marketing performance on Xiaohongshu by relying on data-driven strategies and creative execution:
3.1 Chando brand renewal
Many beauty brands have demonstrated outstanding marketing performance on Xiaohongshu through data-driven strategies and creative execution. Chando’s brand renewal campaign fully demonstrated the effectiveness of the platform’s KFS (key feature narrative) approach: the brand first strategically positioned ampoule masks as an entry-level product, and then launched a niche category - scalp essence, which saw an 811% surge in search volume, successfully attracting a younger population and driving a 10% increase in the size of the 19-22 year-old user group.
3.2 Colorkey lip mud launch
Colorkey’s lip mud launch provides another example. With the help of Xiaohongshu’s data insights, the brand captured the emerging “lip mud” trend (exposure increased by 40%) and carefully customized the “Kolaqi Mini Paint Bullet” series: adjusting the color number, using matte packaging (to attract the quality-conscious Generation Z), and equipped with a moisturizing formula to solve the problem of dryness, precisely matching user preferences.
3.3 Perfect Diary's seasonal eye makeup event
Perfect Diary's seasonal eye makeup marketing campaigns closely follow cyclical trends, especially the reddish-brown eyeshadow craze that is popular in autumn. Its "Red Fox Eyeshadow Palette" has become a representative product of this trend, ranking TOP2 in the same category, and driving the brand's search popularity up 41.5%.
Brands can partner with Topkee to leverage its multi-dimensional services: gain user/industry insights via data analysis, create authentic & shareable content (e.g., UGC-style comments, trending hashtags), optimize influencer collaborations and ad targeting for precise reach, and enhance engagement through social customer service and real-time tracking. This full-link support drives quantifiable goals in category leadership, sales conversion, and user growth.
4. Xiaohongshu marketing: strategy, optimization, and trends.
Xiaohongshu's efficient marketing is inseparable from the deep integration of data-driven and creative content: brands need to capture hot topics through data insights, ensure that the content has both visual appeal and emotional resonance, and adopt a phased strategy - from KOL seeding, user participation to conversion guide shopping, get rid of the single exposure model, and build long-term influence.
In terms of effect measurement and optimization, the platform analysis function supports multi-dimensional tracking such as exposure rate, interaction rate, and UGC generation. Brands need to dynamically adjust strategies based on search volume growth and category ranking fluctuations, and optimize content based on instant feedback. Taking the Qixi Festival event as an example, it achieved 350 million exposures, 40,000 user contributions, and 80,000 interactions, proving that the combination of creative narrative and accurate data can achieve the dual goals of emotional resonance and commercial conversion.
Looking ahead, brand opportunities focus on market segment development, cross-platform communication integration, and adapting to the algorithm's preference for real long content - the real experience sharing of "amateur" users will become the core, promoting the seamless integration of professional content and UGC. In short, brands that deeply cultivate the interests of young groups and adhere to the delivery of true values will maintain their leading edge in the Xiaohongshu ecosystem.
Conclusion
Xiaohongshu has revolutionized Chinese beauty marketing by driving purchase decisions with real content. Brand cases such as Chando have proven that combining data insights, creative narratives and social interaction can achieve significant results. In the future, brands that master the platform's "social commerce + content discovery" model and keep up with young users will take the lead, and working with Topkee's professional consultants who are familiar with the platform's characteristics is the key to unlocking Xiaohongshu's potential.
