WeChat Marketing is the best policy to promote your business, brand & content. Because WeChat is China’s omnipotent all-in-one supper app equipped with full spectrum of features and tools. It is widely used social network in China where majority of the people uses WeChat. There are more that 45 billion messages sent on WeChat daily. A large number of Chinese people expends their time on WeChat everyday. It’s not only used in China but also used globally & more specific used by Chinese community outside of China. Here we discussed few main strategies about WeChat Marketing:
Time needed: 15 minutes.
Table of Contents
- Bring Innovative Idea
- Verified/Official Account
- Develop Loyalty Programs
- Promote on Other Social Platforms and Apps
- Mini Program
- Live Stream
- Private Traffic
- Social CRM
- Grow your user base through H5 games and KOLs
Bring Innovative Idea
With WeChat Marketing, everything is possible, and cooperation with Tencent is possible. From store owner to event planners can develop their own app based on WeChat as a third party integration. For example- VI MEDIA in Vancouver Island, Canada is in partnership with WeChat. So you can develop your own solution to bring your innovative idea to live.
Verified Account
WeChat verified account provides trust to your target audience, follower & members. A verified account means that WeChat recognizes any verified account as a trusted & quality account. You can engage with your followers or other users when you use a verified account and post your content using the verified WeChat account. As a result, it’s worth verifying your account. And verified WeChat account is super important for WeChat Marketing, and you need one if you are really serious about your business or brand.
Develop Loyalty Programs
You can definitely convert your followers into members easily. Take advantages of GEO Locations, start promoting to their nearest location.
However, There are three ways to promote on WeChat:
- Offer a VIP card
- Start promotions
- Create coupons which they can exchange at your store
Promote on Other Social Platforms and Apps
Other social media platforms & apps can be very handy when it comes to promoting your WeChat account. This is just because there are traffics who use those platforms & apps. And also there are many traffics which are common among multiple platforms. For example- people who likes Weibo, they can also like WeChat, or Q Zone, etc. Another important thing is- you are getting backlinks towards your WeChat account from other platforms & apps. As a result, you or your business can be found very easily on the web or search.
Mini Programs
WeChat’s easier-to-use alternative to stand-alone apps, which allows users to avoid the “tedious process” of downloading and managing apps on smartphone. The advantages of Mini Programs include:
- Load Instantly: Mini programs are restricted in size to ensure they can be loaded instantly even on slower internet connection. Without any needs for signing up, users can login their WeChat account and get on with whatever they were trying to achieve in just one click.
- Easy to Develop: Mini programs can be built quickly and easily using web technologies like HTML, JavaScript and CSS on top of framework provided by WeChat with access to powerful APIs (eg. WeChat payments).
- Deeply Integrated: WeChat have gradually added touch points throughout the app for users to discover, share and interact with mini programs.
WeChat Pay – WeChat Pay is a native feature of WeChat and was first made to promote Tencent video games and incentives players to more easily make purchases. In 2020, WeChat Pay is used by 900 million monthly active users with 1 billion of transactions per day, from O2O connections, mini programs or Tencent platforms.
Advertising – There are four type of WeChat advertising:
- Moments Ads – Similar to a “normal” port on users’ WeChat moments. The post will look like a native content, except with an “Ad” icon on the top right corner.
- Article Banner Ads – Banners, In-text ads or video stickers can be added at the end of articles to promote official account.
- Mini Program Ads – Advertisement can be made through mini programs, with banner ads, mini-game ads or pop ups while using mini program. The biggest advertisers on Mini Programs were E-Commerce and Mini Games companies in 2018.
- Account Promotion – Latest feature in 2020. Brands can push their official account and promote articles in the subscription section.
Live Stream
In February, WeChat opened WeChat Live for businesses to help businesses to interact with customers and generate sales via Mini Program live streaming. Users can watch the live stream while making purchase and communicating all simultaneously in real-time. Advantages include easy to operate and short development time; interactive and high conversion rate; user retention and precipitation.
Earlier this year, SaSa Hong Kong collaborated with WeChat for the first ever cross-border WeChat live streaming on WeChat mini program and they are the first overseas merchant.
The reason for choosing WeChat as the platform for live streaming is because of hundreds of millions of users traffic on WeChat platform and the completeness of WeChat ecosystem. So Brands can benefit from getting more loyal users and empower brand traffic.
Private Traffic
According to the level of relationship, it can be divided into 4 levels:
- 4th tier: Fans
- 3rd tier: Community
- 2nd tier: Friends
- 1st tier: CRM
In order to make use of private traffic, fission is the most characteristic marketing method. Common fission methods include: Group buying; Unlock; Distribution sale; Bargain.
For example, cosmetics brands can share their upcoming promotions in WeChat beauty and shopping groups.
Social CRM
It is the glue which combines everything in one place. That is to say, the WeChat ecosystem has become rapidly noisy with millions of accounts vying for limited attention spans of users. Social CRM on WeChat provides an opportunity for brands to build more meaningful connections and avoid spamming your followers.
Grow Your User Base Through H5 Games and KOLs
You can grow your WeChat user base via H5 games and Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs). But you have to keep your eyes on niche influencer which is very aligned with your brand.
An example is SK-II launched an H5 campaign to promote their limited edition product package. Users were encouraged to design and share their H5 ink drawings to win the chance to receive the new edition product.
KOL marketing is also a popular method to grow your user base. By working together with influencers this will expose your brand to a large audience – most of whom are loyal followers and do have some interest in your brand. Note that the latter is only true if you select your KOLs wisely and choose to work with the ones that are best aligned with your brand image.
KOL refers to Key Opinion Leader. These are influencers who have willingness to talk about your brand or business for money. There are many influencers exist but you have to pick the right one for your niche. For an example- if you want to promote a beauty product, then you have to pick an influencer from the beauty niche. Influencers really play a vital role for WeChat marketing.
Technology changes over time & same thing is true for marketing strategy. And WeChat marketing is no different. Sometimes it is very hard to keep yourself up to date. And that is why you many need to take help from professional or agency whose sole job is working with this field.
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