Xiaohongshu Ad Campaign Templates: Ready-to-Use Campaign Structures for International Brands
Date Published
Table Of Contents
1. Why Campaign Structure Matters on Xiaohongshu
2. Understanding the KFS and BFS Frameworks
3. Template 1: New Market Entry Campaign
4. Template 2: New Product Launch Campaign
5. Template 3: Seasonal / Shopping Festival Campaign
6. Template 4: Always-On Conversion Campaign
7. How to Choose the Right Template for Your Brand
8. Key KPIs to Track Across All Campaign Types
9. Getting Expert Support for Your Xiaohongshu Campaigns
Most international brands that struggle on Xiaohongshu (小红书) — also known as RedNote or Little Red Book — do not fail because of bad products or weak visuals. They fail because they approach the platform without a structure. They run one-off KOL posts, launch Feed Ads without Search coverage, or invest in awareness content without building any pathway to conversion. The result is wasted spend and no measurable growth.
Xiaohongshu is China's leading social commerce platform, with over 300 million monthly active users who treat it as a search engine, a peer review database, and a purchasing guide all at once. That combination of behaviours means campaigns need to be engineered — not improvised. The platform rewards brands that map their activity across the full consumer journey: from discovery and consideration through to purchase intent and conversion.
This guide provides four ready-to-use Xiaohongshu ad campaign templates, each built around specific brand objectives. Whether you are entering the Chinese market for the first time, launching a new product, capitalising on a major shopping festival, or running a sustained conversion programme, each template gives you a proven channel mix, phased content structure, bidding guidance, and KPI framework you can adapt immediately.
Why Campaign Structure Matters on Xiaohongshu {#why-campaign-structure-matters}
Xiaohongshu's advertising ecosystem looks deceptively simple from the outside: pay for Feed Ads through Juguang (聚光), run some Search Ads, work with a KOL or two, and let the results follow. In practice, brands that approach campaigns this way consistently underperform. The platform's content culture, algorithm behaviour, and purchase journey are fundamentally different from Western social platforms, and campaign structure is where those differences show up most sharply.
Unlike Instagram or Meta, where users passively consume content pushed by an algorithm, Xiaohongshu users actively search. Nearly 70% of monthly active users have search behaviour on the platform, and one-third open the app and search immediately, before browsing their feed at all. Daily search volume reached nearly 600 million queries in Q4 2024. This search-first behaviour means that awareness-stage content and conversion-stage content need to be coordinated deliberately — awareness activity should be seeding the search terms that your Search Ads are targeting. Without that coordination, each channel performs in isolation and the compounding effect that makes Xiaohongshu so commercially powerful never materialises.
Beyond search, the algorithm itself rewards structure. Xiaohongshu's content distribution system uses a tiered traffic pool model: every new post is first shown to a small pool of users, and only content that meets engagement thresholds within the first few hours earns broader distribution. Brands that build campaigns around a consistent content rhythm — seeding multiple angles across KOCs before amplifying top performers through Feed Ads — see significantly stronger performance than brands that spike spend on a single piece of content and go quiet.
The four templates below are built around this reality. Each one maps campaign activity to the platform's KFS or BFS framework, phases content deployment to match the consumer journey, and tells you where to invest paid budget at each stage.
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Understanding the KFS and BFS Frameworks {#understanding-kfs-bfs}
Before working through the templates, it helps to understand the two campaign frameworks Xiaohongshu itself endorses for paid activity.
KFS (KOL + Feed + Search) is Xiaohongshu's official recommended marketing model, developed by the platform's Inspiration Marketing (小红书灵感营销) team. It maps campaign activity to three stages of the consumer journey:
• K — KOL/KOC Content: Influencer and Key Opinion Consumer content seeds initial discovery and brand credibility. This is the organic foundation that gives paid amplification something to work with.
• F — Feed Ads (信息流广告): Feed Ads amplify the strongest-performing KOL and KOC content to broader audiences through Juguang, extending reach in the discovery phase. The core principle is amplifying proven content rather than pushing untested creative directly into a paid environment.
• S — Search Ads (搜索广告): Search Ads capture high-intent users who are already actively researching your category or brand. Since over 40% of Xiaohongshu users search for product reviews when considering a purchase, Search Ads are where discovery converts to consideration.
The KFS model works because each layer reinforces the next. KOC content drives organic discovery and builds a pool of engaged users. Feed Ads extend that content's reach and stimulate search behaviour. Search Ads then capture the demand those efforts generate, closing the loop from awareness to conversion.
BFS (Brand + Feed + Search) is a variation better suited to established brands maintaining long-term presence on the platform. Instead of leading with KOL/KOC seeding, BFS leads with branded content from the brand's own Professional Account (专业号), supported by a dedicated Brand Zone. Feed Ads and Search Ads then amplify brand-originated content, with UGC supplementing rather than leading. AFU, the Chinese skincare brand, used the BFS model to sustain momentum and rebuild brand perception after an initial KFS-led campaign — curating a brand zone for official content, flooding feeds with UGC, and optimising search keywords to convert one-off buyers into long-term advocates.
The templates below specify which framework applies to each campaign type and why.
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Template 1: New Market Entry Campaign {#template-1-new-market-entry}
Objective: Build brand awareness and establish search presence from zero
Framework: KFS
Recommended Duration: 8–12 weeks
Best For: International brands with no existing Xiaohongshu presence entering the Chinese market for the first time
The biggest mistake new-to-platform brands make is leading with paid ads before any organic credibility exists. Xiaohongshu's algorithm — and its users — distrust content that looks like a brand talking about itself. The entry campaign template is designed to establish search presence and social proof first, so that paid amplification has something credible to work with.
Phase 1 — Cold Start and Content Seeding (Weeks 1–4)
This phase is entirely organic and KOC-led. The goal is to seed the platform with enough authentic content that your brand appears in search results before you spend a single yuan on ads.
• Seed product samples to 30–80 KOCs whose content is aligned with your category. For most consumer categories, micro-KOCs (10,000–50,000 followers) outperform mega-KOLs at this stage because their audiences trust them as peers, not promoters.
• Brief KOCs on your brand's unique selling points, China-specific positioning, and any mandatory compliance requirements — but give them latitude on format and tone. Authentic, first-person content consistently outperforms templated brand-directed posts.
• Prioritise content formats that perform well in search: product reviews, "how to use" tutorials, problem-solution posts (e.g., "I tried this foreign brand for my sensitive skin"), and comparison posts against familiar Chinese alternatives.
• Use a mix of 5–8 hashtags per post: 1–2 broad industry tags, 2–3 product-specific tags, and 1–2 campaign-specific or branded tags to begin building a searchable content pool.
Phase 2 — Amplification and Search Coverage (Weeks 5–8)
Once Phase 1 content has had 2–3 weeks to accumulate engagement data, identify your top-performing posts by save rate, comment volume, and share count. These are the posts you promote through Feed Ads via Juguang — the goal is to extend proven content to look-alike audiences, not to test new creative in a paid environment.
Simultaneously, launch Search Ads targeting the keywords your Phase 1 content has already seeded organic results for. This is the core coordination principle: your organic KOC notes have already established relevance for certain search terms; your Search Ads ensure brand presence at the top of those results when intent is highest.
• Feed Ads: Use CPM bidding for broad awareness targeting, shifting to CPC as you identify the highest-converting audience segments.
• Search Ads: Start with exact-match keywords around your product category and brand name, expanding to broader category terms once click-through performance is established.
Phase 3 — KOL Validation and Consolidation (Weeks 9–12)
With organic credibility established and paid distribution optimised, bring in one or two mid-tier KOLs (100,000–500,000 followers) in your category for endorsement-style content. At this stage, the KOL is amplifying an existing conversation rather than starting one from scratch — which is both more credible and more commercially effective. Boost the KOL content through Feed Ads and ensure your Search Ads cover any new keywords the KOL content introduces.
KPIs to Watch:
• Brand name search volume growth (trackable via Lingxi 灵犀 analytics)
• KOC content save rate (target: 3–8% for discovery-phase content)
• Feed Ad CTR (benchmark: 1.5–3% for well-localised creative)
• Search Ad impression share for target keywords
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Template 2: New Product Launch Campaign {#template-2-product-launch}
Objective: Drive concentrated product awareness and early-stage sales conversion
Framework: KFS with optional Splash Ad for high-budget launches
Recommended Duration: 4–6 weeks (plus 2-week pre-launch warm-up)
Best For: Brands already established on Xiaohongshu launching a new SKU, product line, or collection
A new product launch on Xiaohongshu needs to do two things simultaneously: create enough buzz that the product appears in search results before it is widely reviewed, and build the social proof that turns curiosity into purchase intent. The template below structures these activities in parallel.
Pre-Launch Warm-Up (2 Weeks Before Launch)
Begin seeding product-adjacent content before the product is officially available. This is the "知草" (knowing the grass) phase — introducing the problem your product solves, the category it belongs to, and the lifestyle it enables, without yet revealing the product itself.
• Brief 10–20 KOCs on early-access posts that tease the product: unboxing previews, "something exciting is coming" lifestyle content, and problem-framing posts that set up the product's positioning.
• Begin bidding on Search Ads for broad category keywords to build impression share ahead of the launch date.
• If your Professional Account is verified and active, publish 2–3 brand-owned teaser posts that establish the product narrative in Simplified Chinese.
Launch Phase (Weeks 1–2)
This is the highest-activity and highest-spend period.
• Activate your main KOL partnership for launch-day content. This post should be your most detailed, visually polished piece of content — an in-depth product review, tutorial, or lifestyle feature that gives users something worth saving and sharing.
• Simultaneously, activate a second wave of KOC seeding (20–40 creators) covering different product angles: ingredient deep-dives, before-and-after results, gifting scenarios, seasonal relevance, and comparison content.
• Amplify your KOL launch post immediately through Feed Ads. Use Juguang to target look-alike audiences based on users who engaged with your pre-launch warm-up content.
• Expand Search Ad keyword coverage to include product-specific terms, ingredient terms, and benefit-driven queries (e.g., "hydrating serum for dry skin" rather than just your brand name).
• For brands with larger budgets, Splash Screen Ads (开屏广告) — full-screen ads appearing when users open the app — are highly effective for launch-day visibility, as they capture prime traffic flow and create a strong first impression.
Post-Launch Consolidation (Weeks 3–6)
Maintain feed presence with a steady cadence of amplified KOC content, rotating creative every 10–14 days to prevent audience fatigue. Shift Search Ads toward CPA bidding to optimise for direct store or product page visits. Monitor comment sections on your highest-performing notes for emerging search terms and consumer questions — these are direct inputs for your next round of content briefs.
KPIs to Watch:
• Product-specific search volume (growth rate week-over-week)
• KOL post save rate and comment sentiment
• Feed Ad CPC and engagement rate
• Search Ad conversion to product page or store visit
• Add-to-cart and purchase rate (if Xiaohongshu Store is active)
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Template 3: Seasonal / Shopping Festival Campaign {#template-3-seasonal-campaign}
Objective: Spike sales and search visibility around a defined commercial moment
Framework: KFS with BFS overlay for brand-safe categories
Recommended Duration: 3 weeks pre-event, 1–2 weeks peak, 1 week post-event
Best For: Brands targeting China's major shopping festivals (Double 11, 6.18, Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day, 520, Double 12) or category-specific seasonal moments
Seasonal campaigns on Xiaohongshu are not simply a matter of adjusting ad copy and adding a discount. Chinese shopping festivals have distinct emotional registers — Double 11 is about considered value, Chinese New Year is about gifting and self-renewal, 520 (China's Valentine's Day equivalent, based on the phonetic "I love you") is about relationships and sentiment. Campaigns that align their content narratives to these cultural registers significantly outperform campaigns that treat festivals as purely transactional moments.
Pre-Event Warm-Up (3 Weeks Before)
Data-informed content planning is the foundation of a strong seasonal campaign. Use Xiaohongshu's analytics tools and category reports to identify the specific trending topics, search terms, and lifestyle narratives gaining traction in your vertical ahead of the festival period. This is where AllXHS's 378+ industry reports become directly applicable — understanding what your target audience is already searching for in the lead-up to a festival shapes your entire content strategy.
• Begin publishing aspirational, emotionally resonant content that connects your product to the festival's cultural themes. For Double 11, this might be "investment-worthy" product narratives. For Chinese New Year, it might be gifting guides or "new year, new routine" formats.
• Seed 20–40 KOCs across different content angles to build a volume of organic search coverage before paid spend goes live.
• Begin warming up Feed Ad campaigns with CPM bidding to build audience pools ahead of peak spend.
Peak Festival Period (Event Week)
This is your highest-spend window. Concentrate Feed Ad budget on your top-performing warm-up posts, escalate Search Ad bids for high-competition keywords, and ensure your store or product links are live and optimised for conversion.
• Activate your KOL partnership for the event's peak day. Seasonal KOL content works best when it incorporates the festival's emotional context — a gifting scenario, a personal story tied to the moment, or a limited-time offer framed as a treat rather than a discount.
• Use Chengfeng (乘风) — Xiaohongshu's integrated e-commerce marketing platform — if you have an active RedNote Store, as it is specifically built to drive in-platform sales conversion during high-traffic periods.
• Run Shutiao (薯条) amplification on your highest-performing organic notes to capture additional traffic without requiring Juguang's full campaign setup infrastructure.
Post-Event Consolidation (1 Week After)
Do not go dark immediately after the festival. Post-event users are still in purchase mode, and first-time buyers need reassurance content (reviews, tutorials, "how to get the most from your purchase" posts) to build brand loyalty. Use post-event engagement data from Lingxi analytics to identify which content formats and audience segments performed best — this data directly informs your next seasonal campaign.
KPIs to Watch:
• GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) attributable to Xiaohongshu traffic during the festival window
• Search volume growth for branded and category terms during the pre-event period
• Feed Ad ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)
• KOL post engagement rate versus campaign baseline
• Hashtag topic exposure volume
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Template 4: Always-On Conversion Campaign {#template-4-always-on-conversion}
Objective: Maintain consistent pipeline of search visibility, consideration, and purchase conversion between campaign peaks
Framework: BFS with KOC seeding rotation
Recommended Duration: Ongoing (quarterly review cycles)
Best For: Brands with established Xiaohongshu presence that want to move from campaign-based to always-on performance
Most international brands on Xiaohongshu structure their activity around discrete campaigns: a product launch in Q1, a festival push in Q4, and relative silence in between. This approach treats the platform like a campaign channel when it is actually a search engine that rewards sustained presence. Xiaohongshu's algorithm benefits accounts that post consistently over time, and search rankings for category keywords compound over months of organic content accumulation. The always-on template is designed to maintain that compounding effect.
Content Cadence (Weekly)
An always-on Xiaohongshu programme requires a structured weekly content rhythm, typically 3–5 posts per week across a mix of brand-owned content and KOC amplification:
• 2–3 brand posts: Product education, lifestyle content, and community-building posts written natively in Simplified Chinese. These should read like peer recommendations, not brand announcements.
• 1–2 KOC activations per month: Ongoing product seeding to new KOCs ensures a continuous flow of fresh organic reviews. A quarterly outreach to 20–50 new KOCs prevents your search coverage from stagnating.
• Feed Ads: Rather than running continuous paid campaigns, use Feed Ads tactically — identify your highest-performing posts from the past 2–4 weeks and amplify them on a rolling basis. This keeps ad creative fresh without requiring new production budgets.
• Search Ads: Maintain a "always-on" Search Ad structure covering your brand name, hero product terms, and 5–10 high-intent category keywords. This ensures you capture purchase intent even during periods of lower organic activity.
Budget Allocation Guidance
For always-on programmes, a sensible starting budget allocation is approximately 40% to KOC seeding and content production, 35% to Feed Ad amplification of proven posts, and 25% to Search Ads covering branded and category keywords. As performance data accumulates, shift budget toward the highest-ROAS channels — most brands find Search Ads deliver the strongest direct conversion efficiency once organic content has established sufficient search authority.
Optimisation Cycle (Monthly)
Always-on campaigns require a monthly performance review using Juguang's analytics dashboard and Lingxi's brand analytics:
• Identify top-performing notes by save rate, conversion to profile visit, and click-through to store.
• Identify underperforming content categories and rotate them out of the brief rotation.
• Review Search Ad keyword performance and expand coverage to emerging search terms identified in the comment sections of your top organic posts.
• A/B test cover images and post titles for Feed Ad creative, as these are the highest-leverage variables for improving CTR on the platform.
KPIs to Watch:
• Monthly brand search volume trend (upward trajectory is the core signal)
• Feed Ad CTR and engagement rate (rolling 30-day average)
• Search Ad CPC and conversion rate by keyword group
• Account follower growth rate and note save rate (organic health signals)
• Returning visitor rate to brand profile or store
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How to Choose the Right Template for Your Brand {#how-to-choose}
The four templates above are not mutually exclusive — most brands will sequence through them as their Xiaohongshu presence matures. A typical international brand journey looks like this: begin with the New Market Entry template to establish organic credibility and search presence; activate a New Product Launch template when introducing hero SKUs; layer in Seasonal/Shopping Festival templates around China's key commercial moments; and graduate to the Always-On template once the brand has sufficient content volume and platform data to sustain a continuous performance programme.
For brands that are genuinely new to the platform, the most important thing to resist is the temptation to skip Phase 1 of the entry campaign and go straight to paid ads. Xiaohongshu's algorithm treats content that looks like an ad differently from content that looks like a genuine recommendation — and so do its users. The platform's peer-recommendation environment is precisely what makes it commercially powerful, and that environment depends on brands building organic credibility before amplifying it with paid spend.
For brands already present on the platform but seeing inconsistent results, the always-on template is typically the highest-leverage intervention. Fragmented activity — sporadic KOL posts, disconnected paid campaigns, no Search Ad coverage — is the most common cause of underperformance. The always-on structure addresses all three gaps simultaneously.
If you are unsure which template applies to your current situation, AllXHS's industry-specific Xiaohongshu marketing strategies provide vertical-by-vertical guidance across 20+ categories including beauty, fashion, F&B, and mother and baby.
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Key KPIs to Track Across All Campaign Types {#key-kpis}
Regardless of which template you are running, these four metric categories apply across all Xiaohongshu campaign types and should be monitored consistently:
Brand Search Volume is the most important leading indicator of campaign effectiveness on Xiaohongshu. Because the platform functions as a search engine, rising branded and category search volume is the signal that your awareness activity is working. Track this through Lingxi (灵犀) analytics.
Content Engagement Quality encompasses save rate, meaningful comments, and share behaviour. Xiaohongshu's algorithm weights saves particularly highly because saving a post signals genuine purchase consideration — users save content they intend to act on. A strong save rate (typically 3–8% for discovery content) is a better signal of commercial intent than likes alone.
Paid Media Efficiency covers Feed Ad CTR and CPC, Search Ad impression share and conversion rate, and overall ROAS. For campaigns with a direct store or e-commerce component, track cost-per-acquisition (CPA) separately from cost-per-engagement to understand where your paid spend is delivering commercial value versus brand-building value.
Conversion Funnel Metrics include profile visits from note clicks, store page visits, add-to-cart rate, and final purchase rate. These metrics connect your Xiaohongshu activity to actual revenue and are particularly important for brands running Template 2 (Product Launch) or Template 3 (Seasonal) campaigns where ROI measurement is time-sensitive.
For a deeper understanding of which KPIs matter most in your specific vertical, AllXHS's free resources library includes 25+ ready-to-use tools and templates, as well as 378+ data-driven industry reports covering performance benchmarks across 20+ categories.
Getting Expert Support for Your Xiaohongshu Campaigns {#getting-expert-support}
The four campaign templates in this guide give you the structural foundation to approach Xiaohongshu advertising with clarity and purpose. But templates are starting points, not finished strategies. The specific KOL mix for your category, the keyword landscape for your product, the compliance requirements for your industry, and the optimal bidding structure for your budget all require platform-specific knowledge that goes beyond a general framework.
For international brands, executing these campaigns also requires navigating practical infrastructure challenges: a verified Professional Account (专业号), a functioning Juguang account (which requires a Chinese entity to operate), Simplified Chinese copywriting that reads authentically rather than translated, and ongoing creative production aligned with Xiaohongshu's fast-moving content culture.
AllXHS is the #1 English-language resource hub for international brands marketing on Xiaohongshu. Across 20+ verticals and with 378+ industry reports, 25+ ready-to-use tools and templates, and a 21-module training academy, AllXHS bridges the gap between Western marketing knowledge and the platform-specific expertise needed to win on Xiaohongshu. Whether you are building your first campaign from scratch or optimising an existing programme, the resources are designed to be immediately actionable for brands at every stage of their Xiaohongshu journey.
Explore AllXHS's full suite of Xiaohongshu marketing services and industry-specific strategies, or access free resources and templates to get started today.
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