The Ultimate Guide to Wechat Marketing

wechat-marketing-guide-for-fashion-&-luxury-brands-in-China

The introduction of WeChat has changed the way companies communicate in China. Nowadays, it is a necessity for brands to have a presence on this Chinese social platform in order to promote their products and services. However, what many do not know is how to go about doing so effectively. In this blog post, we are giving you some tips that will help you market your fashion brand on WeChat!

WeChat in a Nutshell

Launched in 2011, WeChat is a free social media application developed by the Chinese company Tencent. China’s largest social network, WeChat has more than 1.26 billion monthly active users, making it one of the most popular social media platforms in the world.

WeChat is a popular messaging application that has gained massive popularity among Chinese social media users. It offers a wide range of services, from chatting and sharing posts with friends to ordering and paying for products.

WeChat marketing - app statistics

Wechat offers more traditional networking options like video and image sharing, games, stickers, and the ability to share and connect with friends via WeChat Moments. But it’s also a social commerce platform, integrating: WeChat Stores for online shopping, WeChat Pay and WeChat Wallet for payments to online suppliers.

It even offers professional functions like tracking expenses. It can be used to book a taxi, a flight, or a medical appointment. It is China’s most popular mobile app but it is important to know that 90% of users are in China.

The marketing potential of Wechat

The typical WeChat user was born in the 1980s or 1990s. Users born during this period are the most active users of WeChat of all age groups. About half of WeChat users spend more than 82 minutes on WeChat every day. With such a large user base, it was logical and inevitable that WeChat became an indispensable tool for marketers.

Wechat marketing - Gucci store
Gucci on WeChat

How can brands use Wechat for Marketing purposes?

WeChat is the go-to platform for the majority of Chinese, not only for contacting their family and friends, but also to; check official accounts of brands they like, follow the news pages, watch short videos, pay using WeChat Pay, shop in WeChat mini-programs, book taxis, cinema spots and more. This is why it’s important to have a good WeChat marketing strategy for your brand so that you don’t miss out on the opportunity of targeting its users.

There are many ways to use WeChat for marketing, including;

Lead Generation – Nurturing

WeChat is an excellent tool for lead generation. The WeChat app allows users to share content on businesses in their social circle, which can result in greater exposure for the company and attract more leads.

WeChat also has functions designed to help companies reach the right audience. For example, WeChat Wallet has a coupon-sharing function. Vouchers can be shared when users digitize QR codes and choose to “share with friends”.

This way, even if the person who shares your voucher is not your target audience, the function can help you reach your target customers. There are many other features on WeChat that can help companies gain new leads.

GMA Case Study - Vogue

Customer relationship management

As email and SMS have become less popular in China, brands started to use WeChat as their main hub for customer relationship management. Remember, the core functions of WeChat is messaging, and you can treat the app as a customer services channel.

You can do it manually, meaning you have someone that answers your follower’s request but you could also couple this with a menu where the most common questions and requests are treated like automation. It saves you time and your followers get their needs attended to right away.

Wechat marketing - CRM
Read more About WeChat CRM Strategy

Besides marketing, Wechat-integrated CRM can help a brand keep customers loyal and generate leads. Enhance the customer experience and generate reviews in multi-channels, and tailored customer support to keep customers engaged more with the brands. Email marketing in China should be replaced by the creation of a newsletter replacement for the followers.

CRM helps you make every decision based on customer-oriented. After gathering their history of interaction with brands, transaction history, and demographic characters by their QR code scanning and analysis, you can tailor your content for each specific segment at a suitable time or location.

New collections announcement, articles, marketing, and advertisement all can be pushed to the users who scans your QR codes or follow your official account. Then, you can schedule your posting time. For message management, chatbots and auto-reply save your time to receive and respond to messages.

Wechat marketing - Wechat official account

Wechat content marketing

WeChat is a channel where the Chinese read. The Chinese read the information in their Moments feed and on the official accounts they follow. In addition, people can search for content to be read in the WeChat application. WeChat users connect up to 90 minutes per day on the application, although this time is generally divided throughout the day into many micro-moments. Therefore, publishing content on WeChat is a great way to capture the fragmented time that people spend on mobile.

Official accounts can regularly transmit shared content to their followers, may it be from the post or WeChat channels. If the content is not relevant to them, these people are less likely to interact with the brand the next time they publish something. Therefore, it is important to segment users and create customized content for each group. Only if you target the right content in the right group, it will be shared and will have the chance to become viral.

Lancome WeChat Official Account
Lancome WeChat Official Account

Wechat Paid Advertisement

WeChat has its own advertising platform. It can be used to:

  1. Promote the official account in order to gain more followers
  2. Send traffic to the user’s website (outside WeChat)
  3. Send users to a download page from the APP store

Advertisements can be displayed in the user’s WeChat Moments as live social announcements (Wechat Moments ads), at the bottom of articles in other official accounts (WeChat banner ads), or in mini-programs (WeChat mini-program ads). We will delve into WeChat paid advertising more in detail later in this post.

WeChat Payment solution

WeChat allows you to perform online transactions in the application. WeChat Pay is currently one of the two most popular mobile payment methods in China (the other one is Alipay). It is also widely used offline in stores, where payments can be made by scanning a QR code.

Prada WeChat official account

WeChat for brands and businesses

So, now that we’ve mentioned the benefits that WeChat can offer, let’s get to how WeChat actually works.

Create your WeChat official account first

Create a WeChat official account that allows you to access group messaging, direct messaging, comment management, voting, automatic reply, a customized menu, articles publishing, etc. Marketing, eCommerce, and CRM are what you can expect to conduct with your WeChat official account.

Wechat marketing - Wechat official accounts

Why do I need an official account?

Credibility. Verified accounts look more professional and credible than personal ones do and there are some advanced features that won’t be available until the account is verified (such as Mobile Payment or Geo-location).

The business license of a company in China and an organization certificate is also required. To access the WeChat official account, QR code scanning from physical products with promotions and features on the Weibo page can help communicate and advertise directly with followers. Active official accounts help to stand out on account pages in the WeChat search engine.

Why should you verify your wechat official account?

What are the different types of WeChat official accounts?

There are four WeChat official account types that enable external and internal communication.

  • WeChat Subscription Account: content and information sharing, community management, and marketing. It allows you to push newsfeeds to your followers, best suited for businesses whose content is core. Wechat subscription accounts are only eligible for companies registered in China.
  • WeChat Service Account: Geolocalisation, WeChat pay, WeChat store, customer services, and tools support, sales support. This enables you to respond to customers’ messages in a limited time. 4 WeChat posts/month with push notification (your followers will be notified as if a friend texted them). In our experience, the best type of WeChat accounts for companies.
  • WeChat Work(Corporate Account): internal usage for WeChat ecosystem management
  • WeChat Mini Program: an integrated app that users don’t need to install and can use directly from their WeChat account. Brands can use mini-program in many ways: Mini-game, eCommerce, membership management, booking, and so on.

What type of WeChat official account is best for fashion and luxury brands?

  • WeChat service accounts feature more sales-related functions to help you generate more transactions with customized functional menu supports and WeChat Pay support. It also can push your post to the chat list. Unless you need to publish daily, we suggest you go for a service account. Wechat Post from service accounts with their push notification also has a better engagement rate than posts published from subscription accounts.
  • Mini Programs are a great complement to a service account. Many fashions and luxury brands have several mini-program from the WeChat store to booking an offline slot in a luxury store or introducing a new collection in an interactive way. WeChat mini-program since its launch in 2017 has gained momentum and is part of everyday life in China.
Luise Vuitton WeChat store

How to make the best use of the available tools to promote my fashion brand on WeChat?

WeChat marketing tools are for companies to use to extend their digital presence. Brands should invest in WeChat H5 Brochures, mini-programs, channels, and so on, so they have more exposure during searches via people’s social feeds. This will generate new leads as well as constantly push marketing information out there for followers who may not see it otherwise – generating tons of free advertising!

WeChat SEO

WeChat users can search products, brands, and official accounts in “Search”. Compare to place advertisements, SEO saves your budget and can be effective in the long run. Most of your digital presence in WeChat can be searched on the results page, and using strategies to rank higher can bring you more free visibility.

What is WeChat SEO

There is a search engine called Search in WeChat. People search for things in Search and mini-program in the WeChat ecosystem. Optimizing your information and content to be ranked higher in the search engines will help you pop up on the search results page. On the search results page, the information is offered in articles, videos, brand mini-program, etc.

Wechat marketing - Wechat SEO

How to do WeChat SEO?

  • Be relevant between your name and category showcasing in Weixin ID
  • Complete your brand zone presence when searched on Search in WeChat
  • Regularly activate the WeChat official account with more quality content and relevant tags to be ranked higher
  • Verify your account
  • Outlinks from other sites

WeChat H5 Brochure

Wechat Brochures are mobile webpages in HTML5 that are great to introduce a company, its products, a new collection and event, and so on.

Why are they beneficial for fashion and luxury brands?

It allows brands to be creative and attract viewers through interactive games, quizzes, and animated brochures. Using these features can help generate new leads and sales with product marketing, sales promotions, and events.

Wechat marketing - WeChat H5 Brochure

Here are some web page tools to help you design the layout. After the page is completed, H5 can be shared through articles within channels in WeChat. With QR codes of official accounts and multi-channels attached at the bottom of the website can increase more publicity of your brand seen in most brands’ strategies such as Versace. 

WeChat Mini Programs

The highlight of Mini-programs allows brands to build e-commerce and sell products within. Foreign brands such as Roger Vivier, Isabel Marant, Giorgio Armani all create their mini program which is a mini-app in WeChat to complete their digital presence.

On average, consumers use the mini-program four times per day, and 72% of WeChat users use it. It provides a wide range of marketing options such as group buying, live streams, games, and social sharing with friends and moments.

Wechat marketing - Brand zone

Why are Wechat mini-programs a must for fashion and luxury brands?

WeChat mini-programs function as your own app but built-in WeChat ecosystem. You can save the investment to build an app and access social sharing within WeChat directly. Although the mini-program was created in 2020, lots of premium brands have joined to activate this platform including lots of foreign luxury and fashion brands.

Users can also reach your mini-program through Search in WeChat. “Mini Programs Nearby” leads users to discover new brands geographically and generate potential offline traffic. “Popular” brings recommendations of mini-programs to users. After WeChat buyers order, they can track the order the same as the eCommerce experience.

WeChat Paid Advertising

There are 3 major types of WeChat advertising. Tencent does not take advertising applications from the real estate and financial industries. Advertising can be your promotion event, e-coupon, membership card, new collections, etc. Moments advertisement and banner advertisement all allow you to drive traffic to WeChat official accounts, stores, or H5 web pages through ads.

Wechat marketing - Wechat ads Chanel

1. WeChat Moments Advertisement

In ads, you can include 40 characters or 6-15 seconds short videos and target viewers based on location, interests, age, gender, device, and phone network. The bidding price is 1000 RMB for a day and starting price is 50,000 RMB for a campaign.

2. WeChat Banner Advertisement

  • Banner Advertisements can link to WeChat H5 Brochure and Mini Program Page. Charged cheaper than Moments advertisement
  • H5 Brochure: middle and bottom of an article, pre-roll video
  • Mini Program page: bottom of a page, pop-up
  1. WeChat Key Opinion Leader Advertising 

Word-of-mouth and reviews are important to Chinese customers as they make their purchasing decisions.

Read more: Wechat Paid Ads

WeChat Channels

Launched for beta testing in early 2020, WeChat Channels is a new short video platform within WeChat that lets users create and share videos on their own private channels. This unique feature provides an opportunity to increase engagement with friends by keeping them engaged on all things related – from entertainment-themed clips during downtime at work or school; to something more serious like providing emotional support when dealing with tough times outside of social media!

Gucci on WeChat Channels

There is a wealth of content on WeChannels, with many different channels dedicated solely for this purpose: from L’Oreal’s advertising videos uploaded into the company’s own channel.

Why are Wechat Channels a must for Fashion & Luxury brands?

In 2023, video content is definitely a must. In the future, there will only be more and more video content appearing. Louis Vuitton presents some short videos of the FW 2020 event on WeChat Channels. Several celebrities and KOLs registered their official verified video accounts as well.

WeChat-Channel

WeChat Channels is a built-in platform majoring in videos. Videos uploaded to WeChat Channels can be saved for over 24 hours. Users can share those videos directly with friends and share them on their own Moments (socially sharing for personal WeChat community).

It allows you to set the notification of scheduled live streams in advance. Account owners can still check all the comments after the live stream. Videos can help you build a community and live streams enable you to engage your customers and viewers.

WeChat Group Marketing

As word-of-mouth builds more reliability of a brand, service, and product in China. WeChat groups can bond similar targets within a group and expand afterward. Businesses can deliver updated and special information directly to correspondent groups as well.

Case Study: As we can see from what the Perfect Diary brand does on WeChat, they have an administrator constantly pushing promotions campaigns to their own groups. Administrators participate in the group conversation sometimes. The character of the administrator is designed to be similar to a friend who shares good products with you, shares discount information with you, and is constantly interacting with you to bond with group members as a close community.

This works similarly to what influencers do without actually paying collaboration fees with celebrities, KOLs, or KOCs. Their administrator shares the Livestream channel links guided to mini-program and pop-up groups for a campaign when the brand launches new collections or promotes as their own advertisement channel.

However, there is a limitation on the member numbers. The maximum number is 500 people. In China, only WeChat Pay users can still join your group after surpassing 100 people which does not limit foreign WeChat users.

JL CASE STUDY GMA

Wechat Loyalty Program

With your official account, you can create an online loyalty program on WeChat. If a customer decides to join the program, his / her WeChat account (telephone number and WeChat ID) will be connected to a geo-localized map. You can offer members: promotional offers, discount coupons, or invitations to private events.

How to sell on WeChat? Fashion and Luxury E-commerce on WeChat

An efficient way to attract Chinese customers is by having a strong digital presence. Social media is highly used in China netizens’ daily life and WeChat is the leading one. The potential of WeChat e-commerce is not always judged fairly.

Wechat marketing - Wechat store

Why luxury and fashion brands should be doing eCommerce on Wechat?

Although WeChat Ecommerce (and more broadly eCommerce on social media apps), is not as developed as dedicated eCommerce apps such as Tmall, we are observing the rise of social commerce, notably through live-streaming. Because building a WeChat store does not require a lot of financial or human resources, it comes as a nice complement to other selling channels you may have, although keep in mind, that it will never be your main eCommerce channel.

The massive and active platform of WeChat eCommerce can benefit from the smoothness of its own WeChat ecosystem–social sharing on Moments and direct message delivery to contacts as well as pushing promotions, campaigns, and direct Q&A to followers through the message group. Sales advisors can communicate with customers for product details, and services and even help select the products based on WeChat users’ needs.

You can either choose to build your WeChat H5 store or eCommerce in mini-programs. The latter enables you to completely present yourself as your own app for the collection presenting, new campaign banner, membership, shopping cart, etc, with your personal information and WeChat Pay connected for the convenience of online purchasing.

We can help you bring your Wechat marketing to the next level

The weChat ecosystem allows brands to build their eCommerce, and blog and directly engage with followers and customers. Complete your digital presence and service in WeChat can bring customized experience to your targets and maintain long-term CRM.

Creative and right strategies for each specific segment can make you stand out from other WeChat official accounts. At last, depending on your budget, paid advertisement and free SEO can help you generate new leads and promote your campaigns.

Contact us for a free consultation on your Chinese project. We have been helping brands enter and grow in the Chinese market since 2012.

Our WeChat services include:

We offer an overall WeChat marketing strategy, starting from official account set-up, to influencer marketing and sales campaigns. Let’s keep in touch!

10 comments

  • WeChat is indeed at the center of daily life in China and alone accounts for 34% of the country’s mobile internet traffic. First used as a chat application between friends, it is also a social network with a news feed, and also allows you to connect to a very large number of services: order a taxi, buy products, book a hotel room, pay online and in store… The number of uses is endless, because it is possible to develop “mini-programs” within the application giving access to new functionalities developed by brands and organizations.

  • WeChat is soooo powerful, I feel like they are developing new features every year to gather all the existing app best assets! But I have a question, how much does it cost to open a professional account? Can I open a kind of “blog” on WeChat without having a proper company under my name?

  • WeChat advertising has restrictions for almost every oversea industry. Beauty or Fashion brands are only allowed if they have a “certain awareness.” Foreigner Advertisers should be cautious about the audience’s cultural values, very cautious.
    And adapt your Messages and creative should be carefully tailored to this Chinese audience.

  • A

    Not really. it was for the Top wechat KOL account

  • What do you think about that ? Does that affect your marketing strategy on Wechat ?
    http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1000316/china-closes-popular-wechat-accounts
    China Closes Popular WeChat Accounts
    Netizens incensed as internet watchdog begins enforcing June update to country’s cybersecurity law.

  • Yousself

    KOL on wechat are so epensive and not effective… You have better to promote by yourself…

  • Wechat company is really complicated, i hear that you should have acompany with 1000people to apply right ?

  • A really creative article , gentlemen. i put it on my favorite.

  • A great article, the best of your Website. most of fashion Brands spend so much on wechat , are they right ?

  • Very good article , I share it on marketing Wechat, the facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/910224745717687/
    You can join it to know the best article about wechat

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