How Does WeChat Marketing Work For My WeChat Store?

WeChat marketing and WeChat stores can be a bit confusing if they aren’t something you’ve experienced. We get a lot of enquiries from confused readers that ask how the customer completes a purchase from a store that is inside a chat app. How exactly do people arrive at the WeChat store? Of course, it is a bit confusing if you’re closest comparison is WhatsApp – So how does marketing work for my WeChat store?

How Does WeChat Work?

As we often emphasise – In China, WeChat is like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, WhatsApp, Skype, and more all rolled into one. In WeChat you purchase online and offline goods, send and transfer money, join a chat group of like-minded individuals, video call, play games, read the news, and much much more..
If you know how users interact with WeChat then you can integrate into your marketing and business strategy. People in the West people use multiple apps and platforms to do daily activities. People in China just use WeChat. So how do they use it? What are the specific ways people interact on Tencent’s monster app? How do we get customers from a friendly chat to your buy now button?

WeChat As A Chat App

Tencent created WeChat to allow people to connect with friends, family, and colleagues through a chat-based application. Users have a unique WeChat ID and QR code that is linked to your government ID. They can connect bank accounts and other services used by the government or official businesses.
Once you’ve connected or added your friends, work colleagues or anyone else, you can chat and call, send voice messages or stickers, links and photos. In this way, it is exactly like WhatsApp. You can also send money to friends with two taps inside the app. The receiver has the money in their WeChat balance the moment they tap to receive.
You can also post on WeChat Moments – much like any other social media news feed. Here, you can write updates on your life, share links, or post quick videos or photos. This is becoming more like an Instagram feed as the platform wants you to engage more and share your day.

How Do People Use WeChat Groups?

WeChat groups are huge part of the engagement on this app. These replace Facebook groups (Facebook is completely blocked in China) or WhatsApp groups. It’s a group chat and looks like a WhatsApp group, except the Chinese WeChat users have more options on what they can share. WeChat allows you to share links, accounts, mini-programs, products and more. This is magic for sales and marketing in China as it means that referrals to your content and offers get much more easily passed in a natural way – this can be great for sales. No copy and pasting between e-mail, WhatsApp and Facebook. Everything here is a cozy tap inside the WeChat ecosystem.

How Do People Use WeChat Official Accounts?

Official accounts are must-haves for businesses in China. We’ve covered the ins and outs of Service versus Subscription accounts elsewhere, but in a nutshell: service accounts allow you to send direct messages to subscribers 4 times a month. Subscription accounts can send messages/posts every day, but they appear in a subscription folder within WeChat and so not directly in the user’s chat list. There are other benefits and drawbacks to each type of account. If you are looking to enter the world of Chinese e-commerce or services, we recommend getting a WeChat Official account.

How Do People Use WeChat Mini-Programs?

Now, mini-programs are also a key feature to WeChat that allow businesses to connect with customers. They’re basically slim versions of native phone applications that exist entirely within WeChat. Mini-programs can be anything from games to VR shopping experiences to ride-hailing services. You can use mini-programs to find an international school, book a maid, get food delivered, or buy that pair of red shoes.

Users get into a mini-program via a link or a QR code, a search within WeChat, or from an advert or official account. Users can then pin most-used mini-programs to their WeChat or simply exit out of one after a single use. The benefit of mini-programs is that they can function much like native applications, but all within WeChat and all without a user having to do more than simply open the program. 

How Does WeChat Advertising Work?

WeChat ads can come in three places: WeChat Moments, banner adverts, or through key opinion leaders. Moments and banner ads are easier to create just by yourself. We’ll focus on those in our case study. Adverts within WeChat can be text, video, or pictures and the landing pages they link to can be official accounts, mini-programs, or articles. Users see adverts on their WeChat Moments or at the top or bottom of articles posted by official accounts. 

WeChat Moment Ads

• WeChat moment ads appear between updates from friends on the social timeline.
• The ad can be combination of text, images, videos and links.
• If the same ad is also displayed for the users friends, then comments are also displayed.

WeChat Banner Ads

• WeChat banner ads appear at the bottom of articles published by a third party WeChat Account.
• The ad includes a logo, account name and headline.
• A call-to-action allows users to follow an account, purchase a product or simply link to a landing page or micro site.

How WeChat Marketing Works:
A Theoretical Case Study

Seem like a lot of communication options? It is. But because WeChat is so integrated into daily life in China, in reality, it’s not that difficult to create a product or campaign that can seamlessly integrate as well.

Below is a theoretical case study of a UK company looking to expand its presence and customer base in China. The company, Big Red UK-Made Shoes (BRUMS), sells high-end shoes that come in different shades of red. Because they are selling a product and want to create a WeChat payment option for clients, they have an official Service Account.

This means BRUMS can send 4 push-messages per months to customers, a dedicated account with a WeChat menu linking to articles and products, and can create WeChat mini-programs. We’ll follow two customers, Cindy and Nick, as they go through WeChat interacting with BRUMS. 

BRUMS OFFICIAL WECHAT ACCOUNT

How Do I Get The Customers Attention?

So first things first: how do our customers get to know about BRUMS? 

WeChat users can find accounts in a few ways: 

1. QR Codes
2. WeChat search function
3. Articles
4. Shared contact cards
5. Adverts

BRUMS starts an advertising campaign inside WeChat and through print. In print, they use beautiful pictures of bright-red shoes with a QR code that sends users straight to their official account. Inside WeChat, they post Moments and banner adverts that link to their mini-program.

A young Chinese lady called Cindy, who loves red shoes, sees a BRUMS advert in a magazine. She scans the QR code and enters the official account. There, she can find links to the products via the menu, articles posted by BRUMS about their new range of shoes, and links to their mini-program.

Cindy decides she wants to share news of this new shoe company with her WeChat group. She opens the BRUMS article that introduces their products and shares the article to her red-shoe-loving WeChat group. There, fellow shoe lovers can open the article, click on the author link at the top of the page, and explore BRUMS’s account for themselves.

Through their online adverts within WeChat, BRUMS also creates WeChat moment ads targeted towards people’s interests and behaviour. The CTA is to get people to open their official mini-program and check out their product range. Another red shoe lover, Nick, sees one of these adverts on his WeChat moments. He’s intrigued by the colours and clicks on the ad. 

How To Get Customer Interest On WeChat

Now that both Cindy and Nick have opened the BRUMS account, they need something more to keep their attention with all of the other shoe companies competing on WeChat.

Cindy reads the articles (or posts) that BRUMS sends to its subscribers 4 times per month. She reads about their latest range of shoes, how red compliments the fall colours, and how buying directly from their mini-program gives her a 10% discount. The article content is so good that Cindy subscribes to the official BRUMS account so that she can get direct messages when they are posted. 

Nick goes straight to the mini-program once he opens the advert. Here, he can search by shoe type, size, shade, and price. All BRUMS products are listed in the e-commerce mini-program, and Nick has the ability to place orders into his cart as well as sign in for more delivery and subscriber-freebie options. He isn’t quite convinced yet though and leaves the mini-program without finalising his purchase. 

How To Do Promotions And Deals On WeChat

Cindy has now seen posts from BRUMS and has shared links with her red shoe group. Now, however, BRUMS creates a promotion all about sharing your love of shoes with your friends. BRUMS creates a promotion where users get 15% off their purchase if they refer 5 friends to the official BRUMS account.

Cindy shares the account directly to two of her friends via contact card sharing in chats. She  posts a link to their article on her WeChat Moments and, of course, shares the link in her WeChat group. From here, more than 5 of her friends begin to follow BRUMS and Cindy gets her discount code.

Nick hasn’t been back onto the BRUMS mini-program since he first saw the advert on his WeChat Moments. However, because of his interests and past behaviour, a new BRUMS banner advert shows up in an article he’s reading. This time, it’s a deal for new customers and Nick once again clicks through to the mini-program where he can see his past cart and now apply a new customer discount. 

How To Convert Customers On WeChat

Now that both Cindy and Nick are familiar with BRUMS and their products, they can use the mini-program within WeChat to actually buy some big red shoes.

Cindy uses her friends discount code, while Nick uses his new customer code. Both customers are able to search for and select exactly which type of shoe they are interested in, input their delivery details, and pay directly through the mini-program using WeChat Pay. The official account then sends them a receipt as well as tracking details for their deliveries. 

How To Deal With WeChat Users And Customer Relationships

As with any marketing or sales campaign, you need to keep WeChat users engaged with your product or brand. And this takes consistent work. For WeChat users, this often comes in the form of new articles, deals and specials, and upgrades to mini-programs.

Because subscribing and following official accounts is so easy within the WeChat ecosphere, brands can easily stay in touch with customers through consistent content and new deals. Promotions for returning customers, adverts for first-time buyers, and promotions that encourage sharing and better returns for loyalty are all common WeChat marketing strategies. 

Chinese customers and users of WeChat are used to things being fast, easy, and convenient. Creating a WeChat account and mini-program to sell your products is essential to the customer journey for Chinese clients. Beyond having a good product and great content, here are a few more things to keep in mind when selling your business on WeChat: 

• Design: keep it simple, easy to use, and eye-catching
• Incentives: create reasons for people to choose you over the many other brands on WeChat
• Content: make sure your posts or articles keep your potential and current customers engaged; create content that is shareable so more people get to know your brand
• Efficiency: make sure your official account, mini-program, store, or adverts are all linked to WeChat Pay and that customers can easily and quickly purchase your products

What Should I do Next?

If this has motivated you to take the next step, then go ahead and get your store open…If you have an existing business and want to move into Chinese e-commerce, then there is no time to waste. Business is booming in China….

If you need to know more about how to set up a store for you brand, get in touch. We’ve more than likely set up something similar lately and can help you with some ideas.