If You Leverage Xiaohongshu Data, You Can Dominate the Beauty Market
In the fiercely competitive Chinese beauty market, eye cream is the focus of competition among major brands. As young digital native consumers pay attention to issues such as dark circles, fine lines and puffiness, brands need to break away from traditional anti-aging propaganda and create differentiated products. When the veteran skincare brand Clinique launched its Radiance Eye Cream, it tapped into the leading social e-commerce platform Xiaohongshu (rednote) to tap into an unmet need - eye care for sensitive skin, and adjusted its product messaging, influencer collaborations and marketing activities accordingly, ultimately standing out in the red ocean. The platform has a significant impact on beauty marketing, with 82.5% of beauty users discovering products through the platform and 94.6% of users satisfied with the platform's content. For Clinique, it is not only a marketing channel, but also a gold mine of consumer insights. This article explores how Clinique used Xiaohongshu data to reposition, engage users and achieve growth, providing experience for beauty brands competing in the Chinese market.
1. Clinique's MarketBackground and Data Insights
The global eye cream market has become saturated, and major brands are competing fiercely in anti-aging, hydrating, and dark circle-lightening products. In the Chinese market, domestic and foreign brands such as Estee Lauder and L'Oreal, as well as local brands, dominate, and differentiated competition is becoming increasingly fierce. Consumers, especially Generation Z and millennials, pay more attention to the safety, mildness, and versatility of ingredients. User-generated content (UGC) on Xiaohongshu shows that although many eye creams focus on reducing wrinkles, it is difficult for sensitive skin consumers to find low-irritation products. Clinique's internal data in recent years also shows that "sensitive skin-friendly" eye creams are in high demand, but there are few related promotions. This insight has enabled its revitalizing eye cream to gain a competitive advantage with its rare positioning of both anti-aging and mild effects. To verify the strategy, Clinique's Xiaohongshu marketing and data team worked together to analyze 2,144 beauty user questionnaires. The survey results showed that more than 30% of users avoid using eye creams due to irritation. Consumers hope that products can be used in various scenarios such as postoperative care, and fragrance-free and alcohol-free formulas have attracted much attention from users. Therefore, Clinique adjusted its promotion strategy to emphasize 0% irritating ingredients, dermatologist-tested safety, and anti-aging benefits to reshape its unique value proposition and provide solutions for neglected consumers.
2. Strategic Marketing Actions
Clinique's strategic marketing actions on Xiaohongshu mainly include three aspects: first, redefining product information, changing the general anti-aging propaganda to "safe anti-aging for sensitive eyes", emphasizing the clinically proven mild efficacy, and matching the before-and-after comparison pictures of real users to meet users' needs for transparency and safety; second, using beauty KOLs to create multi-scenario content, and enhancing brand affinity through use cases such as the "Starry Eyes" series, "Staying Up Late" and "Laser Post-Care"; third, cooperating with dermatologists and Xiaohongshu to release the "Eye Cream Red Book", integrating scientific authority and user-generated content (UGC), while improving credibility and educating users.
Based on the above cases, Topkee can effectively use the platform to help companies improve their brand image and market share. It creates community content that fits the brand through customized theme scheduling, and publishes it in a timely manner in combination with platform functions to increase exposure and consolidate influence. At the same time, it relies on the diversified delivery and precise positioning of professional advertising services to capture the attention of target users and improve conversion rates, and adjusts strategies through user interaction analysis to deepen interaction. It can also use the platform's social sharing and "Internet celebrity culture" to accelerate the viral spread of promotional activities, attract potential customers, and increase sales. It also uses effective advertising strategies to quickly reach the audience with products, and optimizes market strategies and e-commerce conversions through lead collection. In addition, its community customer service manages private messages, comments, and interactions to improve service quality and user experience, and conducts data analysis based on KPI indicators, monitors performance, explores fan portraits, and optimizes content and advertising strategies to help companies achieve sustainable growth.
3. Execution and Amplification of the Campaign
The campaign's execution and amplification spanned three phases: pre-launch, launch, and post-launch. In the pre-launch phase, Clinique built anticipation by pre-optimizing Xiaohongshu search terms like "gentle eye cream" for search ads and having KOLs hint at a "revolutionary sensitive-skin solution" to spark curiosity. During the launch, integrated online-offline tactics were deployed, including the REDay Event—an offline launch featuring interactive demos and live KOL sessions streamed on Xiaohongshu—and limited-edition holiday surprise boxes to drive urgency and social sharing. For post-launch momentum, user-generated contests encouraged reviews with hashtags like #CliniqueGentleGlow, while holiday promotions bundling the product with bestsellers helped maintain visibility.
Topkee helps brands master the secrets of Xiaohongshu's success: its professional team is deeply immersed in the platform, providing a full range of services such as operational planning, content creation, precise advertising, and social customer service to help brands stand out in the industry, trigger viral communication, and achieve double growth in traffic and sales. It provides note creation, eye-catching titles, user-centric copywriting, professional pictures, and innovative videos tailored for the platform. In addition, its advertising services are managed by an experienced team, using multiple forms and precise positioning to attract traffic, support product influence, lead collection, and e-commerce integration, while collecting user feedback to obtain market insights. Social customer service is another key service that manages private messages, comments, user tags, and interactions to maintain brand image and promote community participation.
4. Results and Impact
Clinique’s campaign outperformed competitors with a 40x increase in Xiaohongshu search volume, 450,000+ views for the “Eye Cream Red Book” videos, top ranking in eye cream category searches within a month, and 35% higher engagement compared to rival surprise box campaigns, proving that data-driven repositioning could disrupt even the most crowded markets. Key success factors and lessons learned include listening to unmet needs as Xiaohongshu’s data revealed underserved segments (sensitive skin users), blending science and storytelling through expert collaborations (dermatologists + KOLs) to build trust, and maintaining multi-touchpoint engagement where every interaction from search ads to offline events reinforced messaging.
Conclusion
Clinique’s breakthrough shows how social commerce data can redefine product marketing. In the Chinese beauty industry, Xiaohongshu is more than a platform, it’s a strategic partner for discovering insights and creating resonant marketing campaigns. For brands aspiring to similar success, the lesson is clear: leverage data, co-create with users, and go beyond general propaganda and be innovative. Welcome to talk to Topkee’s experts to learn how to harness the power of Xiaohongshu.
