How Can my Brand Make the Most of WeChat?

With over 1.6 billion active users at the last count, and over 45 billion messages sent everyday, WeChat as a marketing channel is ubiquitous in China.

In fact, according to a South China Morning Post report , an overwhelming majority of 90% of Chinese employees prefer WeChat as their main work communication tool. And according to China Internet Watch , of the 77 minutes on average a day that WeChat users spend reviewing WeChat content, up to 30 minutes of this time is spent looking at official WeChat output from brands and businesses.

So, with all this for context, it’s safe to say that WeChat should be at the heart of any international brand’s China marketing strategy, particularly for B2B companies looking to build brand awareness and engagement, as well as generate quality leads for their sales teams. In fact, many B2B brands entering China will turn to a well-designed and managed WeChat account as an alternative to a Chinese website as the basis of their digital footprint in China.

So, in order to make the most of your WeChat presence in China, here are Brandigo China’s top 5 tips:

1. Make sure your account features a great UX – this might seem obvious, but it really is easy to fall into the trap that many brands fall into. They create their WeChat account with no strategy or content plan in place and give no thought to the end user. As a result, the account begins to resemble a disorganized mess.

Spending time on creating an attractive menu structure and a great UK for your account will help demonstrate its value to your target audience and keep them coming back.

2. Create shareable content – again this might seem obvious but regurgitating the same global content and messaging with no thought to your target audience’s needs is a wasted opportunity. WeChat allows brands to present longform content in various formats. You have animation, video, infographic, and so on, all at your disposal. Mix it up, make it look nice, add an authoritative localized messaging house and tone of voice. All these things will attract followers and make them want to share the content you are working so hard to create.

3. Take advantage of WeChat Channels – WeChat Channels is a relatively new addition to the platform and is simply a channel for sharing video content. The benefit is, unlike WeChat accounts, which operate largely in a ‘walled garden’ in that only your followers will see your posts, WeChat Channels rewards good performing video content with additional traffic.

4. Make WeChat work for Sales – in recent years we’ve worked with some of our B2B clients to help them add a sales enablement functionality to their WeChat channel. It can be set up to act as a great repository for all your latest sales and marketing brand assets, putting them right in the palm of your sales team as and when they need them.

5. Build your community – engagement is a two-way street. When you are an active participant in your industry community, encouraging conversation and discussion, your account builds credibility and becomes part of media fabric of your industry.

Hosting community groups relevant to your industry is a great way to foster this.