In 2025, Chinese consumer interest circles are evolving with greater depth and cross-industry overlap than ever before. As niche brands multiply and choices expand, traditional marketing methods are becoming less effective. Today’s consumers aren’t just passive recipients of information—they actively seek out brands that align with their interests, lifestyles, and values. To stay relevant, brands must shift from a “product-first” to a “consumer-first” mindset. By truly understanding and engaging with these dynamic interest communities, brands can build real connections, earn loyalty, and unlock powerful growth.
What Are Chinese Consumer Interest Circles ?
Interest circles are communities united by shared passions and behaviors—groups of people who consistently engage with similar topics through browsing, searching, interacting, and expressing opinions. Unlike traditional demographic segmentation, interest circles transcend age, gender, and income, focusing instead on behavioral patterns and content preferences. These circles develop their own unique languages, content styles, communication channels, and influence mechanisms. Their strong social cohesion and high engagement levels translate into powerful engines for brand influence and purchase decisions.
Chinese Interest Consumer Circles Marketing Strategy: Expanding from Core Audiences to Wider Segments
When designing marketing strategies centered on interest circles, brands should begin by engaging their core audience—the most loyal consumers with the strongest brand affinity—and progressively expand outreach to target and broader audiences. Target audiences represent potential consumers the brand aims to convert, while broader audiences encompass a wider pool of prospective buyers. This tiered approach allows brands to accurately identify the distinct needs across consumer segments, enabling the creation of highly tailored and effective marketing campaigns.
Achieving Precision Marketing in China Amid Interest-Driven Consumption Trends
With consumer demands becoming more diverse and interest-based subcultures growing increasingly segmented, traditional mass marketing is losing ground. To drive effective growth in the Chinese market, brands must embrace an interest-driven strategy that places interest circles at the heart of marketing efforts. This shift empowers brands to achieve precise audience targeting, boost conversion rates, and sustain long-term growth.
1. Precise Targeting: Leveraging Data to Identify Interest Circles
Brands must begin by clearly defining their product’s target users and mapping the interest circles to which these users belong. By harnessing social media analytics, search behavior insights, purchase journey data, and user surveys—combined with AI and big data technologies—brands can develop comprehensive user profiles. These profiles should encompass multiple dimensions, including interests, content preferences, lifestyle patterns, and consumption contexts, providing a robust foundation for targeted, circle-based marketing strategies.
2. Channel Strategy: Strategic Placement Within Interest Circle Hubs
Different interest circles gather and interact on distinct social platforms. Selecting the right channels is the foundational step for brands to effectively engage their target audiences.
Xiaohongshu
Xiaohongshu positions itself as a “lifestyle sharing community,” predominantly attracting young women aged 18 to 34 from China’s first- and second-tier cities. It is a flagship platform for China’s “grass-planting culture” — organic, peer-driven product recommendations. Content centers around beauty, fashion, fitness, travel, and food, with users demanding high authenticity and aesthetic value. The platform fosters a genuine sharing atmosphere, resulting in strong user loyalty and trust.
Marketing Approaches:
Brands establish trust through KOL/KOC note sharing, product experience short videos, and unboxing content. Leveraging seasonal campaigns and product launches, brands initiate grass-planting topics and challenges to boost user participation and amplify UGC (User-Generated Content). Managing official brand accounts further enables the creation of IP content matrices.
Advertising Formats:
Xiaohongshu offers diverse ad formats including in-feed ads, search ads, and splash screen ads. In-feed ads integrate seamlessly within users’ interest-based recommendation streams, combining images, text, or short videos for natural grassroots promotion. Search ads target brand keywords to capture high-intent traffic, while splash screen ads maximize brand visibility during key sales periods or product launches.
Douyin
Douyin is China’s largest short-video platform, boasting over 700 million daily active users across all age groups, especially popular among young users in first-and new first-tier cities. The platform’s content skews heavily towards entertainment, with an algorithm that excels at creating viral sensations.
Marketing Approaches:
Brands can drive viral content spread through creative short videos, challenge campaigns, branded IP accounts, and influencer collaborations in live streaming. Livestream e-commerce stands out as a powerful feature, enabling brands to partner with influencers for deep product presentations and recommendations. Coupled with in-app shopping carts and mall features, Douyin directly converts engagement into sales. Content should prioritize fun, storytelling, visual impact, and user interaction.
Advertising Formats:
Douyin provides a variety of advertising options including in-feed ads, splash screen ads, and interactive sticker/effect ads. In-feed ads offer precise audience targeting and native integration into users’ recommendation feeds. Splash screen ads provide full-screen exposure upon app launch, ideal for large-scale promotions. “DOU+” is Douyin’s self-service promotion tool to amplify content reach, while the Juying Engine backend supports data-driven campaign management and audience targeting.
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Bilibili
Bilibili is a vibrant video community centered on youth culture, predominantly attracting Generation Z users. It hosts a variety of vertical interest groups including ACG (animation, comics, games), gaming, knowledge sharing, digital product reviews, and more. Users expect high-quality, creative content and participate in a strong community atmosphere that encourages engagement, identity, and content creation.
Marketing Approaches:
Brands collaborate with popular creators to execute soft content marketing, such as unboxing and product reviews, narrative-driven product placements, and educational content. The content must be original, engaging, insightful, and closely aligned with Bilibili’s unique cultural tone.
Advertising Formats:
Bilibili’s “Huahuo Platform” facilitates influencer matchmaking, data analytics, and budget management. In-feed ads are placed within homepage recommendations and category content streams, enabling precise audience targeting. Pre-roll ads are ideal for high-traffic videos to boost brand awareness. Additionally, splash screen ads and barrage placements enhance brand visibility. To maximize effectiveness, advertising content should seamlessly integrate with Bilibili’s ecosystem, reflecting the brand’s personality and resonating with user preferences.
Zhihu
Zhihu is renowned for its high-quality Q&A content and an environment that fosters rational, in-depth discussions. Its user base primarily consists of highly educated, high-income professionals concentrated in first- and new first-tier cities. The platform’s content focuses on categories with long decision-making cycles and significant information demands, such as technology, finance, education, healthcare, maternity, and home living. This makes Zhihu an ideal platform for brands aiming to build professional trust and achieve deep consumer influence.
Marketing Approaches:
Brands can engage as “Brand Answerers” by participating in core topic Q&As, demonstrating expertise and thought leadership. Collaborations with niche KOLs to create in-depth content—such as product reviews, solution analyses, and purchase guides—help establish credibility and trust. Zhihu’s content enjoys a long lifecycle, making it well-suited for content asset accumulation and SEO support. Rich storytelling and professional insights tend to generate strong user engagement and upvotes.
Advertising Formats:
Zhihu offers a variety of ad formats including native in-feed ads, search ads, Q&A page brand cards, and branded homepages. In-feed ads blend naturally into users’ content consumption, delivering high exposure without disrupting user experience. Search ads target high-intent users at the moment of query. Brand homepages and verified Blue V accounts provide platforms for sustained brand presence and community building. Additionally, Zhihu provides premium custom content solutions, ideal for brand co-creation and PR initiatives.
3. Content Resonance: Crafting Targeted Content for Interest Communities
Brands need to deeply understand the interests and values of their target communities to create exclusive content that resonates on an emotional level. Using storytelling and emotive messaging, brands can establish strong emotional connections with community members. KOLs within these circles wield significant influence and authority. Collaborating closely with KOLs enables brands to amplify their reach, enhance brand awareness, and boost reputation.
Take the Adidas x Gucci collaboration, for example. By fusing iconic elements from both brands, they created a standout retro style that caught everyone’s eye. Through offline pop-up events and online buzz on social media, the campaign drove massive exposure and engagement. It’s a great showcase of how creative brand partnerships and multi-channel strategies can break out of niche circles and win over broader audiences.
4. Interactive Operations: Building a Closed-Loop Marketing System from Exposure to Conversion
Generating interest-driven traffic is just the start; sustainable growth hinges on closing the conversion loop. Brands can cultivate authentic, engaging interest-based communities through a combination of community management and user co-creation. For instance, launching groups like “Fitness Girls Nutrition Club” or “Blind Box Enthusiasts Daily” can stimulate content co-creation activities (such as UGC campaigns and challenge topics), turning users into active brand ambassadors.
By integrating interest tags with membership systems, brands can segment users precisely to deliver personalized content recommendations and foster interactions. Gamification features—such as achievement badges, tiered tasks, and points-for-rewards—further enhance user engagement and foster a strong sense of belonging.
In private domain operations, brands can use tools like WeChat Video Channels and WeChat Work to stay closely connected with high-value users. These platforms help build direct, personalized communication channels. By offering timely promotions, exclusive perks for community members, and fun interactive giveaways, brands can boost engagement, drive repeat purchases, and spark word-of-mouth sharing—turning users into loyal advocates and growing long-term value.
Contact STAiiRS
If you’re looking to execute precise and effective marketing in the Chinese market by leveraging Chinese consumer interest circles to accelerate brand growth, STAiiRS is here to help. We specialize in crafting data-driven community strategies that enable you to accurately reach your target consumers, seize market opportunities, and lead industry trends.
Get in touch with STAiiRS today and take the lead in China’s dynamic market.
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