The CMO’s Guide to WeChat Marketing in China WeChat Ecosystem
Target Customer scans the QR code
Follower!
WELCOME
Text Link to H5 Allows new Company people to Account MENU follow!
Web WeChat page link Store Push Post
Moments Friends Groups
Forward post to
Fans What is WeChat?
WeChat is the most popular social network in China. With over 1.1 billion active users, 1 billion of which live in China, it dominates the country’s communications. Chinese people spend more than one third of their time online on WeChat, with 81.5% of users spending over an hour a day on the app. Globally, 23% of internet users check WeChat at least once per day.
Developed by the technology behemoth Tencent in 2011, WeChat combines the best of Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp into one mobile app. Users can share messages with their friends and post short updates, photos and videos for their fans. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. You can scan and pay at the convenience store, or book movie tickets. Then, you can get some ideas for your perfect weekend outfit from your favorite live streamer. You can buy coffee on your way to work and have it delivered to your desk. This is all after you’ve used WeChat to pay for your subway ride of course.
As the one app that appears on most Chinese users’ mobile phones, WeChat is now commonly referred to as the “Swiss Army Knife” of smart phone apps.
800 million users There are over 1 bn 81.5% of users spend 1.1bn active users use WeChat pay WeChat mini-program over an hour a day on WeChat each month transactions everyday
WeChat’s biggest group of users (almost 60%) work in the corporate sector or have their own business, 11% are employed by the government, and over 4% describe their occupation as specialized industry. Your customers, educated professionals with mobile phones, are using this platform to communicate.
WeChat Fact over 75% of users have over 100 contacts. In fact, the average user has 194 contacts. Account Types
Businesses can set up one of two kinds of official accounts to promote their brand on WeChat. Through the setup and verification process you will provide documents to Tencent that prove that you have the rights to use the brand name. Companies located abroad, in most countries can also set up a WeChat Official Account.
1. Service Account
• Offers more advanced features, such as mobile payment and interactive menus • Limited to 4 posts per month (may include multiple messages in one post) • Accounts displayed alongside a user’s personal contacts
Pros • You’re not spamming your followers • Your message goes right into their personal feed • Your account is far more interactive
Cons • Is a post of once a week (on average) enough? • Less frequent content has to be very good quality to stand out Account Types
2. Subscription Account
• 1 message per day • Housed under a different tab, so users have to actively check for content • Does not offer the same functionality as a service account • Used often by media, fashion accounts and bloggers to keep their fans up to date
Pros • You can connect with your followers every day
Cons • Users have to go in and find your content under their subscriptions menu • It is very content hungry
Brand Takeaway
Investigate account types and decide which one will suit your brand, your resources and your budget best. For most B2B organizations, the Service Account is the most appropriate.
WeChat Fact 78% of users spend more than half an hour a day on WeChat. Account Setup
Menus are one way users interface and engage with your WeChat account. These are basically similar to a mini website.
Main menu with sub menus
It’s worth noting, you can only use a limited number of characters in your menu headings.
Menus can connect to:
• A WeChat post
• A web page
• WeChat store page • “H5” slideshow animation • Other WeChat developed apps or pages, such as an event invitation
Brand Takeaway
Think carefully about your menus. Which language is your target audience engaging with you in? Make your menu headings clear, rather than clever. An easy user-experience is key if your account is to be successful.
WeChat Fact 83% of WeChat users use the general app for work WeChat Post
The standard WeChat post can be boring in terms of layout due to the limitations of the WeChat development platform. On the other hand, it loads faster than a web page connection.
Many accounts use third-party platforms to add nicer layouts to their WeChat posts, although this is quite a painstaking operation as the platforms are not particularly user-friendly, especially for non-Chinese speakers. That being said, a good China marketing agency will have the capability to elevate the look and feel of your WeChat content.
Videos and photos can all be added to posts as well - note that videos must be either uploaded to the Tencent video platform or the back end of WeChat, and approved before they become available to the audiences. Web Page
Connecting directly to a web page allows users to develop on-brand content. WeChat can connect to your website directly, if it is responsive to mobile, or you can develop a web page with standard HTML/CSS coding specifically for WeChat and host this on a server.
Brand Takeaway
In the menus you can use a combination of Web Pages as well as WeChat posts. Finding the right combination of brand identity and speed is critical.
WeChat Fact
Penetration rates Tier 1 Cities
Beijing Tier 1 Shanghai cities Guangzhou 93% Shenzhen Perfect Moments
Moments are where people share content they want their friends in the WeChat ecosystem to see. This is why good content is so important - by sharing, that person is endorsing and associating themselves with your brand. They will only do this if it’s content they really like or think is valuable. People share from official accounts onto Moments by clicking share buttons, either on the app or embedded in the content.
But…
WeChat is a walled garden. A lot of users like this degree of privacy. A user‘s contact list is not visible to others, and Moments can only be seen by friends they have approved. In addition, they can only see interactions with people in their contacts. So, unlike Facebook, only mutual friends can see each other’s comment.
Brand Takeaway
Make sure your content is sharable. People want to pass on articles, infographics and images that are useful, insightful, or amusing. It’s a way of enhancing their own standing amongst their peers.
Secondly, think what B2B can learn from the B2C playbook. A lot of B2C brands use sharing on Moments as a competition mechanism. This incentivizes consumers and means they spread the brand word. Can your brand do this in the B2B space?
WeChat Fact 10 billion hits on WeChat Moments every 24 hours. Push Posts
Service accounts allow push notification. This means the user is informed with a red dot and ping of their phone when the content post is published. As
we have said, it sits in their inbox alongside their personal messages, so has a much higher chance of being opened and read.
Subscription accounts get a red dot and ping too, but only to say a new post has arrived in their subscription folder. It doesn’t say who it is from, and the user has to go into their folder to find and then read the post. It’s another extra step that may determine your target audience’s response and engagement.
Brand Takeaway
According to Tencent, the average WeChat user reads seven articles a day of around 1,000 characters each - that works out to the length of a novel over a month.
And what are they reading? Content from the accounts they follow and is pushed to them, but also content shared by their friends onto the Moments feed. If people are sharing your content as Moments, you open yourself up to a new audience.
WeChat Fact 94 % of registered WeChat users are active on WeChat every day. Great Content
Content is king. You’ve heard that before, but we’re repeating it because for WeChat it is so true. Look at the types of content you can create, and the medium choices you have for posting.
Article Infographic Video Animated Slides
The volume of content is growing all the time so it‘s important that your content stands out. To give you an idea of the size of the task, every day on WeChat:
• Over 20 million articles are published • 1038 push posts are made • The average open rate is lower than 3.3% • The average share rate is 0.95%
Brand Takeaway
In addition to producing great content, there are steps brands can take to amplify it: • Leverage your team. Make sure your in-market staff members are liking and sharing everything • Be part of the community. By participating in relevant, active communities and WeChat groups you can share your content directly to your target audience • Use influencers. Although this can be an expensive option, partnering with a relevant influencer/KOL can help you tap into their follower base and quickly increase your reach • Paid amplification. WeChat Ads can be a good solution for maximizing how many people are seeing your content
WeChat Fact 53 % of users reported “sharing information” as one of their top 10 WeChat activities Advertising on WeChat
Advertising on WeChat
Brands have the ability to deploy advertising campaigns on the WeChat platform via WeChat Ads.
WeChat Ads is a program developed by Tencent that allows companies to display promotional messages on user timelines or feature on WeChat Official Account articles. Campaigns are managed in a similar way to Google Ads but there are some aspects that are unique to WeChat.
Advertising on WeChat in this way can help brands to grow their followers, drive traffic to their website, encourage app downloads, and so on.
WeChat Moments Ads
As the name suggests, WeChat Moments Ads are native ads that appear in a user’s Moments timeline in a format similar to original content shared by friends. They have the potential to reach millions of high-quality users, however, they can be very expensive. Advertising on WeChat
WeChat Banner Ads
WeChat Banner Ads also work in a similar way to regular traditional banner advertising, except for the fact that WeChat Banner Ads appear at the bottom of a message published by an official WeChat account.
WeChat Banner Ads can be used to encourage users to follow an official account, download content, buy a product, and so on.
Targeting
WeChat Ads allows advertisers to target users based on over 700 data tags within its data base. These tags include:
• Location • Gender • Age • Education • Marital Status • Industry • User behavior & interests
And many more.
Brand Takeaway
WeChat advertising is potentially a fantastic tool for international brands looking to reach a large audience quickly. However, it is not suitable for all. It can be an expensive use of resources and many B2B brands might not enjoy the types of ROI they typically see for western digital channels. WeChat Mini Programs
WeChat Mini Programs are essentially ‘sub-apps’ within the WeChat ecosystem that allow brands to create deeper user experiences for their customers and deploy advanced features such as e-commerce, appointment booking, task management, and much more.
WeChat Mini Programs can also be used for offline user experiences such as ordering and paying for food in a restaurant, or opening a shared bicycle. As a result, some companies see WeChat Mini Programs as an alternative to developing and launching a traditional Native app for the China market.
Brand Takeaway
WeChat Mini Programs can be a powerful tool for brands, particularly those that are looking to offer extended experiences for their customers. Managing WeChat Data
WeChat offers a robust platform that developers can tap into to make a typical Official Account into something more useful as a marketing tool. Adding in CRM capabilities is one of the most popular tactics for both consumer and B2B brands.
Brands can deploy a social CRM (sCRM) platform that ties into WeChat to bind WeChat users with their information, such as their phone number, name and company. If the WeChat UX includes a landing page, download center or fill out form, for example, brands can match that data with a WeChat username, helping to paint a clearer picture of that user and getting a handle on their WeChat behavior and preferences. This allows the brand to create user personas like the one illustrated below, and to target them with personalized content.
Male 45 Age
Occupation Region Personal Marketing attributes
database 1 from other Male 45 platforms
Potential Highly active Activity Level client Beijing X Medium Lifecycle Exploring Pricing rate 2 Internal WeChat database Old client
Preference Project tag Industry tag
3 Referred by old client
Interaction Interaction history frequency
Brand Takeaway
Having a WeChat CRM strategy will help your brand maximize the ROI for your WeChat activities. Let's Chat
This is where most of the millions of messages a day that are sent on WeChat end up: private chats. It’s people arranging to meet friends, sharing jokes, sending little love notes to their other half. This is the way China communicates now – go onto any metro in Shanghai and the packed carriage will be full of people exchanging messages.
But then there’s Group Chats – this is where you can make an impact as a B2B marketer.
Group Chats are conversations involving more than two people. They can range from a few friends having a chat or a space to share banter and plans, to more organized networks. For example, we’re hearing more and more about industry professionals setting up groups to exchange ideas and tips.
Brand Takeaway
Like the Moments content, people will share your content if they perceive it as having some value, and will enhance their reputation amongst their peers. Ask your customers and contacts in China if they use such groups, and what sort of material is shared – they are your best source of information. From them, you can create and pitch the type of content that will make your customers the group hero.
WeChat Fact There were 1 billion67% WeChat Pay commercial transactions per day by the end of 2019. How do you get people to follow you on WeChat –
it’s all about the QR code
QR codes are ubiquitous in China, and if your brand is serious about penetrating this market, you need it all over your physical collaterals, present at trade shows and fairs – we’ve even seen companies who put their QR code on their employees’ business cards. It’s the king of offline to online conversions.
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