3 Steps to Reach China’s Affluent Customers through WeChat

Looking to drive more customers within China?

You may be considering these platforms…

Baidu

Weibo

Ren Ren (almost dead)

YouKu

Fast-rising innovative platform WeChat

Here’s the first thing you should know about these platforms…

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China

China

China

China

What’s Wechat？ WeChat is a smartphone application that consists of…

Social network

Free messaging

Investment Free calling Bill payment Movie Ticket

Taxi order Group buying User Review Mobile payment

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+   +   +   +  

What’s Wechat？ As of Q1 2015, it has a coverage of 90%+ smart phone user and monthly active user are close to 55 Million user across 200+ countries with 20+ language supported.

In addition, there’re over 8 million brand/ company open public account and connected to 85000 apps, users with Wechat pay enabled are over 400 Million.

WeChat Roadmap

Launch  of  WeChat  

600million 556million

549million 198million

WeChat Weibo

Users Users Jun 2014 Apr 2014

Active monthly Users Mar 2015 Mar 2015

Active monthly Users

WeChat is #1 Platform In China now

Wechat Userbase

RMB  

Now you know the power of this platform, let’s look into the 3 key steps you must do to start driving

more customers!

This 3-step framework has achieved results such as…

Over US$1.1 million of ticket sales from Facebook in less than 48 hours

“… $200K revenue [from social media]...” "Working with SocialMetric is like breaking the jackpot machine! I always thought social media was great for awareness, but they have went beyond and helped us to drive sales for one of our tourism campaigns. This was something which I didn't know was possible, and we had more than 60 pax sign ups in total, amounting to around S$200K in revenue. Simply awesome"

Ethel Yow, Marketing Manager CTC Travel

“Increased Footfall by 34% and sales by 23%”

“After applying these techniques, we saw our Beauty By Nature branded stores increase

their foot fall by 34% and sales by 23%.”

Chairman / Co-Founder Fusion Cosmetics Pte. Ltd.

Retail Industry

So let’s get into the details of what you’ll need to do…

First – Listen in on what people are talking about!

WeChat Conversation Tracking Through social media listening, you can track what other people are talking about your brand, products and even competitors. This will give you a better idea of how to grow your community and eventually how to convert them to become paying customers.

Reaching out to influencers and having them to spread the word about your brand and products is one of the fastest way to create buzz

Identifying Influencers

Then next, set up your WeChat Brand Account

Service Account

Subscription Account

Sub account – basic functionalities for media or small-mid size brands to spread their content to subscribers and for users to distribute relevant

information

Service account – enhanced functionalities for company or organization to provide prompt response and service, create unique user

experiences

There are 2 basic types of accounts….

•  Service：To provide service, good for customer management

•  Sub：To engage with content Purpose

•  Service: 4 Messages per month •  Sub: 1 Message per day Message

limitation

•  Service: Collated with the list of friends’ messages

•  Sub: Aggregated in one folder for all Sub account

Display Method

•  Service: Apply customized menu for free •  Sub: Able to apply for customized menu after

verification, RMB300 Functionality

Difference between “Service account” V/S “Sub account”

Next…

Grow your Community on WeChat

But unlike Facebook, you can’t run advertisements within WeChat to grow your community

But there are a few ways you can grow a following….

Use QR Codes (They’re a huge digital culture in

China!)

Get your target audience to search for

you

Chat up with potential target audiences via Location

Based Search

Reaching out to digital influencers and getting

them to recommend your brand

1 2 3 4

Next…  Convert your community to paying customers!

And we know the best way to convince and convert communities on social media is

through content

Produce content through the Contagious Content framework

Social Assets Social Fanaticism Social Antagonism

Advise

Trending Triggers

Amplify

Inspire

Heartfelt

Amuse

Anger

Fear

Anxiety

Here are some successful case studies

OBJECTIVE To engage with mobile users

CAMPAIGN A user can send an emoticon to Starbucks, who will in return send a track of an album according to the emoticon. WeChat’s point-to-point communication ( text, voice, picture, and video) establishes it as a strong customer service platform

RESULTS Starbucks had tallied 62,000 fans on WeChat and received an average of 22,000 messages per day, with the bulk of the interaction driven by the emoticons. With a budget of 250,000 yuan (US$ 40,047), sales of Refresha went up to 7.5 million yuan (US$1.2 million) in three weeks

OBJECTIVE To integrate platforms with the campaign.

CAMPAIGN Pepsi China’s "Bring Happiness Home" campaign, had a WeChat feature that let followers send their own voice recordings to the account and have them remixed into a customized Pepsi theme song to share with friends and loved ones.

RESULTS Viewership for Pepsi's integrated campaign attracted close to 870 million across Pepsi's success was measured through earned media generated from news reports across digital, print, and on national TV, CCTV.

OBJECTIVE To give creative powers to the consumers.

CAMPAIGN Burberry promoted its ongoing Art of the Trench digital campaign with WeChat, which was followed by a virtual runway show where fans received updates from celebrities in attendance and could request a personalized image.

RESULTS Trench hash tag was used more than 80,000 times on Weibo.

Wechat membership card – Giving a retailers a boost from online to offline Wechat Membership card

•  These give you access to immediate discounts or long-term perks from store chains, with the virtual card kept safe inside your WeChat account.

•  The cards are free to use, and they pop up automatically when you follow brands that support them.

•  There are big names like McDonalds, Watsons, and Pacific Coffee making use of these cards in WeChat already.

Meal and Life Brands are actively participating on WeChat

WeChat is good for such one-on-one interactions -- conversations between a consumer and a brand – because it's a pumped-up

messaging app. Marketers Are Becoming Innovators on a Tricky Platform for Brands

Hotel and Flight in one shot

WeChat’s m-commerce offering has added flight booking service that is provided by LV.com (formerly 17u.cn), a Chinese online travel service Tencent has a stake in.