1. Introduction to the WeChat Platform

Presented by Tencent, WeChat is the largest social media platform in China, with over 900 million daily active users. Needless to say, it’s the place to go for anyone who has business in China and who intends to reach the broadest customer base. But if you think the user amount is the only reason to do in WeChat marketing, you are underestimating this powerful tool.

Picture 1 – WeChat UI: “Chat”, the chatting thread list and “Moments”, the news feed (under “Discover”)

Different from any English social media platforms, WeChat is actually an eco-system based on social media. When I say eco-system, I mean each WeChat user can basically complete any digital tasks on this mobile app.

Why so? Because besides regular social media functions like messaging, content-sharing and gaming, what distinguishes WeChat is the payment function – WeChat Pay. Users can easily enjoy this digital payment solution by connecting any kind of bank cards (credit/debit card, saving card, etc.) to a WeChat account. And they can complete a WeChat Pay transaction with a QR code or a red package (Hong Bao) with any merchant or any peer WeChat user.

This article is not about the convenience of WeChat Pay. But just think about it, if an app can support a handy payment solution, what does this actually mean? The answer is everything. Afterall, most tasks in our life are base on transactions. With WeChat Pay, you can buy a movie ticket or a voucher, pay any utilities or tuitions, book a flight or a hotel, even invest in funds. WeChat Pay is the cornerstone of the WeChat ecosystem because it allows the different digital activities to happen on this social media platform.

Picture 2 – In the “Wallet” Under “Me”, Wechat Supports Many Tasks, Including Utilities’ Payment

WeChat is a lifestyle, and it is hard to find a counterpart among the English apps. Now, considering the fact that more than 900 million users are active in this lifestyle, every marketer should have sufficient reasons to make a plan for this platform. And of course, WeChat marketing approaches can be sharply different from those on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.

2. What’s so special on WeChat?

So you have decided to do digital marketing for your company on WeChat. The first thing to do, of course, is to register a company account, a.k.a. the official account to kick off the WeChat marketing activities (posting articles, providing services etc.). The key difference between an official account and a common user account is that the former’s posts will directly display in its followers’ “Chat” section (like a chatting message) while the latter’s will show in the “Moments” news feed of its WeChat friends.

Picture 3 – Wechat Official Account

Alright, after setting up your official account, let’s get started! Since WeChat is actually an ecosystem that supports various digital activities, let’s see how its unique features will affect our digital marketing activities.

2.1 WeChat Pay

As mentioned before, this function is the cornerstone of the whole ecosystem. From a company’s marketing perspective, it can connect the customer-onboarding activities (e.g. marketing article posts) with the revenue-generating activities (e.g. payment).

In practice, many B2C companies directly sell products within their company account, and this is especially common for virtual service providers (e.g. a game company selling credits). As a result, product users can finish the “customer-journey” in the WeChat official account (from impression to conversion) and don’t even bother to visit the company’s website. That’s why many companies treat their WeChat official accounts as a serious portal instead of a social media account. Especially for small players with less web development power or organic traffic, they treat their WeChat official account even more seriously than the website!

Picture 4 – Users View the Marketing Post and Pay for A Product in WeChat

For merchants that rely on offline outlets, this “turnkey marketing solution” is also possible. WeChat provides access to other online marketplaces that support WeChat Pay. Following are some examples.

If you are a retailer, WeChat lets users access to Dianping (Groupon’s Chinese version) under their accounts’ “Wallet” section. As a result, you could put more marketing effort in Dianping to drive people to buy your vouchers using Wechat Pay under Wechat Wallet’s Dianping portal.

If you are in the hotel business, users can search, compare or book your rooms under WeChat wallet’s Yilong portal (Booking.com’s Chinese counterpart). All these customer-journeys also happen without going to your website or the actual Dianping/Yilong websites.

Picture 5 – In the “Wallet”, the Third Party Operators Provide Many Possibilities

2.2 Mini Programs

Launched in late 2017, the Mini Program is a more advanced initiative by WeChat. It reveals a bigger ambition of Tencent to build an OS-like ecosystem in WeChat.

A Mini Program, needless to say, provides functions, and it does act like a sub-app within WeChat. If your company provides a virtual service, you can basically build up any functions of your website into a mini program.

WeChat Pay allows payment in WeChat. But if an official account only has this feature, customers are less likely to purchase via it by only reading the posts. The Mini Program bridges the gap by letting customers interact with information in more ways. For example, a job portal company can let users who are seeking jobs to search positions based on location, salary, industry via its Mini Program. This is impossible to do in the traditional official account page or regular posts.

Meanwhile, Mini Programs support locations. So if you operate a restaurant, your Mini Program with interactive menus and offers can be listed onto near users’ Mini Program lists, similar to Google’s “restaurants near me” searching result.

In short, the Mini Program completes the WeChat user experience and allows customers to interact with the company’s information digitally. With an access to both Mini Programs and WeChat Pay, users can do whatever they need as if they were on the company real website. Again, this combination has 900 million active users, you know what I am going to say.

2.3 Closed Platform

WeChat is a closed platform, which is quite different from other social media apps. When a common user posts something, he/she can see all the replies and reactions from the audience (his or her WeChat friends). On the contrary, a respondent can only see his/her own replies or likes, unless another respondent is also his/her WeChat friend. Consequently, every post shows asymmetrical information for the author and the respondents, and this feature only applies to common accounts and it doesn’t directly affect the marketing activities of an official account. Nonetheless, it’s good to know, because this may somehow affect customer behaviors.

Another aspect of the closure is the link control. Common users cannot post external links, and official accounts are allowed to post external links with certain limitations.

Now, you have some basic understanding of WeChat’s unique features.  And you may want to see how to actually start your WeChat marketing. If you would like this article or have something to share, do not hesitate to leave a comment below.