WeChat is synonymous to marketing in China. It’s massive 1 billion active monthly users acts as a testimonial as to why it is the most popular and most used app in the whole of China to date. WeChat not only serves as a multi-purpose messaging app but a social media and mobile payment app as well and has come a long way since its first release in 2011.
WeChat’s primary intention is to keep the users on their platform for as long as possible. To enable user retention, WeChat has amalgamated all the different functions from existing apps and merged it into one single app. From Facebook’s news feed to Instagram’s photo feed and Apple Pay’s function of payment processing, WeChat has got users in China #hooked.
Monetizing WeChat becomes second nature with an audience this BIG. In general, there are a lot of businesses that are looking to enter into the Chinese market for obvious reasons. The main one being the existence of new wealth that has followed from the past 5 to 10 years. New wealth that comes from the Chinese demographics age ranging from mid 20’s to mid 30’s.
So the million dollar question now is – how?
Let’s start from the basics.
When we talk about marketing and advertising for WeChat, we first look at the type of accounts your brand or business will be getting on WeChat. There are essentially two different types of accounts that your business can choose from. The two accounts are Subscription and Service.
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1. Subscription Account
WeChat has two different types of subscription accounts. One is the individual subscription account and the other is the verified business subscription account. As verified business entities, we will be looking at the latter.
Under a subscription account, your brand is entitled to push one content per day. You will also have a custom single tier menu at the bottom of the subscription homepage where you can insert CTAs or links to any landing page that is already hosted on Tencent. External links are not allowed.
Source: Simplify China
* Take note that it is important for users to follow your account first as your subscription account will not appear on the homepage of a user that hasn’t followed your brand or business.
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2. Service Account
The key difference between a service account and a subscription account is the amount of content your brand is allowed to push. Under a service account, a brand is only allowed a maximum of 4 content per month.
Despite the limitations in quantity of content uploaded, WeChat’s service accounts are a lot of more robust as compared to the subscription account. This is simply due to it having more significant key features.
Source: Simplify China
A service account also includes a custom multi tier menu as compared to the custom single tier menu on the subscription account.
Other key features include:
Real Time Push Notifications
Notifications are enabled for the user whenever your brand or business does an update or push a content. Notifications helps to notify the user especially when the user is not using or looking at their WeChat account.
Personal Siri
Business entities can prepare a set of pre answering messages or robotic scripts to reply user enquiries. For example, China Bank uses their WeChat official account to let users ask for their bank balance.
Templated Messages
Templated messages are similar to auto reply emails where your business can craft an email response to suit each occasion an enquiry.
Key features of WeChat
There are essentially three key features that you would need to take note of.
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1. Moments
WeChat Moments is similar to the timeline or newsfeed that you see in Facebook and Instagram. Moments is coined to refer to the special moments in people’s daily life. Users on WeChat can get themselves updated on all the nitty gritty moments in the lives of the friends and family.
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2. Official Accounts
Take note that you need to acquire an official account before your business is allowed to market on WeChat.
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3. E-Commerce
If you’re a small company or a start-up, your business can start by using Weidian. Weidian is an e-commerce platform which enables you to build your online shop in a few hours and sell your products. Weidian is a convenient way to build up your e-commerce shop on WeChat as it uses the simple drag and drop tool function.
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Click here to learn how to set up your official WeChat account (Part 2).[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]