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What is WeChat Livestreaming

Livestreaming is a powerful tool to engage directly with potential customers and drive sales. Sales assistants from physical stores or even CEOs can participate in the company’s live streaming to promote the brand. There are mainly two ways to host live streaming on WeChat.

WeChat Mini Program Livestreaming

Brands and businesses can add a Livestreaming module or component to WeChat mini program. For example, brands such as Perfect Diary, Forest Cabin (in Chinese: 林清轩), and Prada have held live streamings through WeChat mini program for sales or events.

Most of the viewers of mini-program live streaming are already followers or have used the brand’s mini-program. Brands can send notifications to followers and drive traffic organically to mini-program live streaming. If it’s an important event, brands can also promote live streaming through additional WeChat Advertising.

WeChat Channels Livestreaming

The Traffic Coupon we are talking about is for live streamings on WeChat Channels.

WeChat Channels is a short video feature integrated within the WeChat ecosystem. WeChat launched this feature back in 2020 in response to challenges posed by Douyin, the Chinese Tiktok. Up to early 2022, WeChat Channels have reached 450 million Daily Active Users, a 50% increase compared to early 2021. (source: CBN Data)

WeChat Channels Livestreamings are more visible to the public audience compared to mini-programs. For example, people browsing content on WeChat Channels may enter live streaming of a brand they didn’t know before. Trendy domestic brands beloved by young people, such as Pop Mart, Luckin Coffee, and Hey Tea, have made their debut on WeChat Channels Livestreaming.

What is WeChat Traffic Coupon?

According to Merchant Incentive Plan launched by WeChat, “for every new user a merchant brings to WeChat Channels, the platform will give back a user from public traffic in return.” (source: Newrank) Brands or merchants can use this “Traffic Coupon” to “purchase” public traffic. 

How to gain Traffic Coupons for WeChat Livestreaming?

In 2022 April 12th to December 31st, any live streaming for shopping purposes with the shopping cart function activated will be automatically participating in Merchant Incentive Plan.

Brands or merchants have to introduce 50 new viewers that didn’t come from WeChat Channels to gain official traffic coupons. You can drive followers from your WeChat Official Account, spread the news through WeChat Moment, WeCom, personal chats, or groups, to Channels Livestreaming.

Once completed these requirements, the platform will reward the merchant with official traffic coupons, which are valid for seven days. The more new viewers, the more coupon you’ll be rewarded.

How does Traffic Coupon work?

According to WeChat, there are two ways to leverage Traffic Coupons:

1. System Smart Recommendation: automatically push the Livestreaming to users who might be interested  
2. Custom Targeting: use this if you have a preference or established target audience. It works like in-feed bidding ads: you can target users by selecting age, city, and interests. Although, the segmentation capacity is quite essential compared to the WeChat Advertising backend. 

Does WeChat Livestreaming worth trying?

Before, WeChat Service Provider (the agency that helps brands run WeChat Ads and other services) needed to apply to WeChat Team to promote Channels Livestreaming. Still, they cannot select segmentations such as age and cities. In comparison, Traffic Coupon has a clear advantage of reaching your target audience more accurately.

According to a Traffic Coupon user Xiaheng (夏恒), each UV (User View) is approximately 0.5 CNY (~0.08 USD). During significant sales festivals, you can raise the bidding price to 2-3 CNY (~0.31 USD-0.46 USD).

Traffic Coupons can bring actual sales returns. According to the same source, a traffic coupon of 10k UV can get more than 2000 product clicks and reach 150k CNY (~23k USD) of sales. This result is quite significant, but you can generally expect to gain 1000 CNY sales by spending 1000 UV traffic coupons.

Up to April 2022, merchants can only gain traffic coupons by participating in the Incentive Plan. It’s not open for purchase yet.

Therefore, for brands with an active WeChat Channels account, live streaming is a smart way to leverage the platform’s support, gain more traffic and increase sales.

Looking for more information about WeChat? You will find these guides helpful:

• WeChat Mini Program Guide
• Official Account Guide
• WeChat Advertising Guide
• WeChat Pay Guide

The post WeChat Channels Livestreaming Rewards “Traffic Coupon” to Drive Traffic and Sales appeared first on WalkTheChat.

The post How to set up WeChat Pay? A Simple Guide appeared first on WalkTheChat.

• What are WeChat mini-programs?
• Cons: What are the main drawbacks of WeChat programs?
• Pros: What makes them interesting for marketers?

Do you want to create a WeChat Mini-program for your brand? Feel free to contact us.

What are WeChat mini-programs?

Examples of WeChat mini-programs

WeChat mini-programs are “sub-applications” within the WeChat ecosystem.

They enable to provide advanced features to users such as e-commerce, virtual store tour, task management, coupons, and other services.

Here are a few examples of WeChat mini programs.

JD.com (the second largest B2C e-commerce platform in China) has developed an e-commerce mini-program:

During Covid-19, local governments have leveraged mini-programs to control the spread of the pandemic: real-time health QR codes, record PCR test results, request or register vaccination, Q&A, etc:

Farfetch has also made their presence on mini-program, enabling users to browse the brands and purchase products as if they were in Farfetch App:

Because these experiences are built completely within WeChat, they are usually very fast (in terms of loading speed) and smooth (in terms of UX, integration with WeChat features and navigation)

How to access WeChat Mini Program?

You have many ways to access the WeChat Mini Program.

The most popular way is you can swipe down on WeChat to access a list of saved or recently used Mini Programs. According to Youzan, a WeChat shop platform, 27% of Mini Program traffic comes from this swipe down the interface.

This is a major step WeChat took in positioning its self as an operating system. Most businesses no longer need to launch an App, a WeChat Mini Program will do the work.

Users can also access to Mini Program via:

• WeChat Official Account menu
• Embedded into WeChat article
• Discover tab of WeChat
• Sharing card on WeChat groups
• Scan of Mini Program QR code
• Search

And according to Youzan, here is the major traffic source of WeChat Mini Programs:

Although the overall time user spends on WeChat is decreasing, WeChat Mini Program is still a promising channel, especially for verticals such as service and eCommerce. According to ALD analysis, WeChat Mini Program GMV has reached 2000 billion CNY (approx. 310 billion USD), increasing by 67% compared to 2019.

Is that something brand new?

WeChat mini-programs are actually not as exciting as one might think.

It is indeed possible to access any web-App from within the WeChat browser. This means it’s already been many years that companies provide e-commerce and services via in-WeChat experiences, long before mini-programs were released.

Companies like eWashing (a dry-cleaning company taking orders via WeChat) have long managed to leverage WeChat has an App ecosystem (without using mini-programs):

Many of these companies have so far stuck to these Web-Apps instead of switching to mini-programs. We’ll now explain why.

What is the problem with WeChat min-programs?

Mini-programs have many drawbacks as compared to web-Apps accessed within the WeChat browser:

1. They can’t send out push notifications
2. Mini-programs have to be developed in a specific “language” (a JavaScript framework developed by Tencent. Developers have to write wxml, wxss instead of traditional html and css, and leverage this framework for all their development)
3. Updates have to be submitted to Tencent
4. WeChat mini-programs only work within WeChat (while traditional web-App works on any browser)

That’s a long list of downsides. Yet, lately, mini-programs have started to gain traction. Why?

Why have WeChat mini-programs started to gain traction?

WeChat Mini-programs and social e-commerce

Over the last few months and weeks, the tide has been turning. Key Opinion Leaders such as Yu Xiaoge started to boast more than 1.5 million USD of monthly sales through their e-commerce mini-programs.

A growing number of top WeChat influencers started developing their own e-commerce and content mini-programs.

In order to understand the trend, we have to look into these influencer accounts in more detail.

WeChat has been the place where a striving community of influencers developed (partly due to specificities of the Chinese market, and partly due to the fact that WeChat advertising wasn’t that good at targeting customers).

These influencers became huge growth drivers for fashion, childcare and cosmetic brands. Their recommendations were extremely trusted by Chinese users, driving a huge amount of sales.

But there was one problem: influencers use WeChat Subscription Accounts (somehow equivalent to Facebook Pages) to send notifications, but the articles sent on these accounts can’t contain hyperlinks! It was therefore difficult for influencers to link to products in order to convert from content to e-commerce.

There came mini-programs, which conveniently solved this problem: WeChat made it possible to link from a Subscription Account article to a mini-program, increasing conversion rates.

And this is the true driver of recent mini-program growth: they enable much more dynamic navigation from WeChat Subscription Accounts (toward e-commerce or other pieces of content).

As such, they are not a really transformative piece of innovation but benefit from the “superpowers” that WeChat gave them, within their own walled garden.

Offline usage of WeChat mini-programs

Besides these e-commerce conversions, WeChat mini-programs also can be useful for offline use-cases. For instance, paying for gas at a gas station, or unlocking a shared bike.

Can WeChat mini-programs replace Native Apps?

As we speak to WalktheChat’s clients, a common question comes over and over again: are WeChat mini-programs a substitute for my native App?

The answer is: it depends on where and for whom. Let’s look at the data to break down this idea.

Where does WeChat Mini-programs beat native Apps?

Native Apps and Mini-programs appeal to different populations. In particular, WeChat mini-programs are especially convenient for users in lower-tier cities with cheaper data plans and are more reluctant to download new Apps, or those who simply don’t have enough storage on the phone.

54.7% of the JD.com mini-program users come from Tier 3 or small cities, against only 43.7% of the Native App users.

A similar trend can be observed when comparing the Native App and WeChat Mini-program of services such as Pinduoduo, Weipinhui or Meituan.

WeChat Mini-programs also might help target users with a specific purchasing power. Across all platforms, mini-programs users seem to be more likely of spending small amounts (below 200 RMB) and less likely to spend large amounts (above 1,000 RMB).

In the case of Pinduoduo, 6.9% of the Native App purchasing users spend less than 200 RMB per month, against 10% for Pinduoduo’s Mini-program. 37.6% of the Native App purchasing users spend more than 1,000 RMB every month, against only 32.4% for the Mini-program.

Weipinhui and Meituan both show similar trends:

There seem however not to be any significant trends in terms of gender distribution: JD.com, Pinduoduo, Weipinhui, and Meituan all seem to have a relatively similar proportion of male and female users on their Native App and WeChat Mini-program.

Age doesn’t seem to be an important driver of the adoption of Native Apps vs. WeChat Mini-programs. JD.com users’ age distribution is broadly similar between their App and Mini-program.

What does the data mean for you?

In practice, it means that mini-programs can more fully replace native Apps:

• If you are targeting users in lower-tier cities
• If you are selling affordable products/services targeting users with lower purchasing power (who might be reluctant to install new Apps due to cheap phone plans for instance)
• If the application you’re developing is not overly large (mini-programs are limited to 10 MB size)
• If you are confident enough that you will not be blocked by WeChat: WeChat Mini-programs remain part of the Tencent ecosystem, and companies like Alibaba and Toutiao get frequently blocked
• Age or gender of your target users aren’t really a determining factor

Does it mean that high-end companies should pass on WeChat Mini-programs? Certainly not.

If you’re targeting higher-end users, then WeChat Mini-programs will likely still be an essential part of your marketing ecosystem as they will help you convert new users more easily. Users who get a taste of your services via the WeChat Mini-program will then be much more likely to convert to a Native App.

In practice, 50% of the top WeChat Mini-programs also have a Native App. This is especially true in the E-commerce and Lifestyle services sectors, where more than 80% of top-100 WeChat mini-programs have a corresponding Native Application.

How is WeChat mini-programs performing over time?

Age of Mini-program users

Age distribution of mini-programs is extremely balanced, although leaning toward younger users (only 15% of users are above 40 years old).

Usage of mini-programs is getting more widespread: the proportion of users below 18 years old grew from 5% to 7% from Q1 2017 and Q1 2018, while the proportion of users above 40 years old grew from 10% to 15%.

Age distribution of mini-program users also depends heavily on the type of mini-programs: business card/social WeChat Mini-programs (used mostly in professional contexts) have 28% of users above 40 years old (they are the largest user group).

On the other hand, WeChat E-commerce Mini-programs are being mostly used (32%) by users under 24 years old.

Gender of Mini-program users

The Gender of WeChat Mini-program users is also heavily correlated with the type of mini-programs.

Overall, WeChat Mini-programs have an even number of male and female users (51%-49%).

However, most WeChat E-commerce Mini-program users (71%) are female. This trend is mostly due to the fact that E-commerce mini-programs are heavily promoted by public accounts and influencers in the fashion/cosmetics/childcare industry which has a majority of female followers.

Most of the users of business card/social mini-programs are male (68%)

Geographical distribution of mini-program users

The geographical distribution of WeChat Mini-program users is also getting more balanced over time. Although mini-program users used to be more concentrated in Tier 1 cities, the proportion of Tier 1 cities users dropped from 30% to 19% between Q4 2017 and Q2 2018.

The bulk of WeChat Mini-program users is, as we might expect, concentrated within mainland China (98.6% of mini-program users)

The majority of oversea mini-program users are located in Europe and Russia (56.98%)

Engagement with mini-programs

Time spent on WeChat mini-programs has seen a sharp increase over time: it shot from 3.1 minutes per session to 13.1 minutes per session between May 2017 and June 2018.

WeChat mini-games also saw strong growth in engagement: from 3 minutes per session upon launch on January 2018, to 12.7 minutes per session in June 2018 (with a peak at 16.4 minutes per session in April, when several WeChat Mini-games got extremely viral)

The majority of mini-program users are heavy users: 67% of them use mini-programs more than 4 times per day.

This frequency is lower on E-commerce mini-programs, although engagement remains high: 69% of them use E-commerce Mini-programs at least weekly.

The retention rate of WeChat Mini-programs has also been booming, shooting from 4.63% to 13.92% after 1 day, and from 0.14% to 1.51% after 14 days (a more than 10 times increase)

Spending behavior on WeChat mini-programs

The proportion of small orders on WeChat mini-programs has been increasing over time to 42% of orders between 200 and 1,000 RMB. This is due to the trend we mentioned of the increasing number of mini-program users in smaller cities.

Monthly spending remains however modest. Only a small fraction (16.6%) spend more than 1,000 RMB per month via mini-programs.

Due to the large representation of smaller cities within mini-program users, average income is also relatively low: only 7.4% of WeChat mini-program users earn more than 10,000 RMB per month. 58.9% of them earn less than 5,000 RMB per month.

How are WeChat Mini-programs accessed?

The way people are accessing WeChat Mini-programs is also changing over time. Sharing has been getting more popular with the growth of social commerce (pushed by Apps such as Pinduoduo).

The growth of “Recently used MP” and “WeChat articles” as a way to access mini-programs shows that WeChat mini-programs are getting more ingrained into users’ daily life.

Other “early-stage” access methods such as QR code, Discover tab or Nearby Mini-program have seen a sharp decrease.

Method of access depends strongly on the type of WeChat Mini-program. E-commerce mini-programs are more likely to be accessed via WeChat Official Accounts (as they are usually promoted by influencers) or via sharing (through social e-commerce – especially through group-buying deals).

On the other hand, offline services mini-programs are more likely to be accessed via a QR code scanned at the offline venue.

Conclusion

Mini-programs are a strange, ambivalent piece of technology.

At face value, they seem like a terrible choice because of their limited capabilities and proprietary language.

But their ability to better convert from WeChat content to e-commerce makes them a powerful tool, especially in an ecosystem where influencers play such as crucial role.

The post What are WeChat Mini-Programs? A Simple Introduction appeared first on WalkTheChat.

Traditionally a land of tea, China was exposed to the specialty coffee culture in 1999 when Starbucks opened their first shops in China’s larger cities. The coffee chain essentially faced no serious competition in China in the early years, and effectively established itself as a daily routine for white-collar consumers. At one point Starbucks controlled 80% of the market.

Source: CNN

Nearly two decades later, Starbucks has 3,300 shops in China, as the country expects to surpass the US as the cafe chain’s biggest market in a few years. With no intention of slowing down, they plan plans to double the current count to over 6000 locations in 5 years, adding 500 shops per year. That means opening a new one every 15 hours.

Meanwhile, coffee shop sales reached some 30 billion RMB last year (and is expected to reach 1 trillion RMB in 2025), with a year-on-year growth of 15% to 20%, far exceeding the international market’s 2%.

It is getting too big to let a single giant dominate, and two homegrown coffee startups are running as fast as they can in this expensive fight for the market, grabbing as big a share of the pie as quickly as possible.

Luckin: from 1 billion RMB investment to 1 billion USD valuation

In Beijing alone, if you have taken the subway, or even walked into an elevator anywhere within the third ring, chances are you have noticed the omnipresence of blue-and-white ads featuring tier 1 celebrities like Zhang Zhen and Tang Wei posing with a Luckin coffee.

“New retail” is often used to describe Luckin. The experience revolves around the smartphone. There are no cashiers in their minimalist blue-and-white coffee shops, where customers order and pay on their app, for both delivery and dining in.

Luckin was founded just recently in November 2017 by Jenny Qian Zhiya. “We have plenty of cash,” said the former COO of car-hailing platform UCAR at a press briefing in May, when she revealed that her hyped coffee startup entered the market with an initial investment of over 1 billion CNY.

The bulk of it was spent on celebrity endorsement, plastering cities with billboards, waging heavy initial subsidies and discounts to court new customers, and setting up shops across the country. You’d have to presume that they are prepared to run at a loss for quite a while.

Luckin is amazing at opening locations fast, primarily in central business districts to target white-collar customers. As of July, the company has 809 outlets across 13 higher-tier cities in China, less than 8 months after its launch. Their delivery service is aggressively promoted – About 40% of the outlets essentially serve as kitchens to fulfill orders placed in offices and homes.

The rapidly expanding company claimed to have sold more than 18 million cups to a customer base of some 3.5 million, which is more than double the numbers the company announced in May. Luckin plan to reach 2,000 shop-fronts nation-wide by end of the year, 15% of which will be delivery kitchens and the rest sit-down cafes.

Luckin often heavily discount their core offerings, American-style coffee, and bakery items. Newcomers get a free drink for ever referral to the app. The two-for-three and five-for-ten deals are regular. For delivery orders, if you courier doesn’t arrive within 30 minutes as promised, the next drink is on them. And at least through 2018, all food is half price. Compared to Starbucks, whose prices are still expensive for most of China, Luckin offers a lower price point about 20% cheaper, with an Americano at 21 CNY and 24 CNY for a latte.

Luckin’s investors, including Centurium Capital and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, must approve the cash-burning strategy. Luckin just closed a USD 200 million funding in June, giving the young company a 1 billion USD valuation, which makes it a unicorn in less than a year.

Coffee Box, the viral marketing powerhouse

Lian Coffee, AKA Coffee Box, has been around since 2012, first as a coffee delivery app that offers popular foreign brands like Starbucks, Gloria Jean’s and Costa to customers in China. This means when they set up their own brand Coffee Box in 2016, and started taking delivery orders via their WeChat mini program in early 2017, they did it with years of data on digital-savvy users’ habits and needs under their belt.

This soft-entry approach paved the way for their espresso-charged brick-and-mortar expansion. They raised 158 million CNY in March and have 200 shops as of July, reporting a peak daily sales of 400,000 cups and a user base of 3 million.

The recipe behind Luckin’s dizzying expansion is not something entirely new, relying on on-demand services and heavy initial subsidies. But Coffee Box wins major creative points for their marketing.

On 1 August, they rolled out a “pocket cafe” campaign. Users can open a shopfront on their WeChat mini program, choose the look and feel of the virtual shop and stock the “cafe” with a limited selection of drink. For every cup sold via your shopfront, you will get 0.1 cups of coffee reward (i.e. you get one free drink for every 10 sold).

As you sell more, you get to “unlock” more special drinks and thus stock and sell a wider variety of drinks. They push hard to motivate cafe “owners” to share their shops to friends and on their Moments, not only to sell drinks but also to get more users to open shops and effectively do their sales and promotion work for them, in exchange for free coffees.

Social e-commerce plays a big part in their growth. You have to give credit to their designers for the cutesy graphics and smooth user experience, letting users customize their shopfront with whimsical furnishings and decor for irresistible sharability. Also, the gamified model that lets users “level up” (i.e. unlock and sell special drinks after reaching certain sales goals) helps create stickiness for this decentralized sales structure.

Merely hours after the pocket cafe program was rolled out, the post has garnered over 100,000+ views, far exceeding the average 20,000-50,000 of the other posts on their official account.

Regular group-buying deals make for another major driver of their sales and following. Back in April, without any external promotion, Coffee Box garnered 200,000 followers via their mini-program with the introduction of group-buying, presumably investor-subsidized promotions. Select drinks like bulletproof coffee and their signature avocado smoothie are sold at 1 CNY when a user gets two friends to buy with them.

The beverage offerings deserve some props too. Ordinary drinks are tweaked with catchy names and enticing decoration. In addition to the usual range of espresso coffees, they also have such gimmicky products as sparkling pink lemonade, fruit-themed smoothie, and seasonal cocktails.

And everything comes in a box. That is kind of the point.

Starbucks is pressed to do delivery, too

Chinese consumers developed a growing taste of java thanks to Starbucks, who took their time to educate and localize to the market. For years, they have provided a luxury product that is as much about the coffee as the cafe experience. Shanghai being home to the world’s largest Starbucks is a testament to that.

Starbucks Reserve Roastery Shanghai is the largest Starbucks in the world spanning 30,000 square feet.

Without offering delivery or spending major efforts in advertising, Starbucks has secured its sweet spot as the market leader, while the rise of these two homegrown coffee chains may be changing that, especially given the report of a sudden slowdown in China’s growth.

Starting this fall, they will begin testing delivery service with Alibaba’s delivery service Ele.me, embracing the lifestyle ritual of on-demand services in China, just like their rapidly growing competitors.

The partnership between Alibaba and Starbucks also goes beyond delivery:

• Starbucks will open delivery kitchen in Alibaba’s Hema offline stores
• Starbucks will set-up a presence on Alibaba’s largest e-commerce platforms Tmall (via a flagship store) and Taobao

Conclusion

If you are still walking to get a cup of coffee in China, that is so 2017. Coffee Box delivers with Meituan; Luckin’s orders promise to arrive within 30 minutes with SF Express, and Starbucks will soon be just a few smartphone taps away too.

The average coffee consumption in China is only 5 cups per person and per year (20 in first-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou), compared to 300 in the US and 360 in Japan. So immensely profitable and with so much room for growth, the Chinese coffee market can easily accommodate more than three successful retail chains. The end game here is not to compete with each other. To boost coffee consumption in China, we shall see much more of the innovative efforts to grow the “coffee pie” from these players, homegrown startups and multi-national giants alike.

The post China’s coffee wars: How Luckin Coffee & Coffee Box plan to take on Starbucks appeared first on WalkTheChat.

The WeChat Impact Report 2018 is out!

Among the highlights:

• WeChat-driven information consumption reached RMB 209. 7 billion
• WeChat accounted for 34% of the total data traffic of users
• WeChat drove RMB 333.9 billion traditional consumption, covering travel, food, shopping, tourism, etc.
• WeChat contributed the employment of 20.3 million persons in 2017, more than twice the 2014 figure
• The number of stores accepting WeChat Payment in Japan was multiplied by 35 in 2017

And much more… read on!

Impact on consumption

WeChat-driven information economy has reached RMB 209.7 billion, making up for 4.7% of China’s total information consumption.

In aggregate, WeChat makes for an outstanding share of total mobile traffic in China: 34.0%. In comparison, Facebook makes up for only 14.1% of mobile traffic in North America.

WeChat-driven consumption in traditional sectors of the economy has also been rising exponentially, rising 22.2% in 2017 to 333.9 billion RMB.

WeChat helped to create 20.3 million jobs in 2017, more than twice the 2014 figure. This partly includes bloggers and entrepreneurs who started companies via WeChat Official Accounts, many of which later become million-dollar brands. According to WeChat, the number of registered WeChat Official Account has reached 20 million, and active Official Account reached 3.5 million by September 2017. The WeChat ecosystem is contributing to the Chinese economy overall.

WeChat is among the top App that contributes to the highest percentage of data consumption. What’s interesting is the older generations depends more on WeChat. For users over the age 60, WeChat contributes to over 50% of the data consumption for 60% of users. While for users who are 18-35 years old, WeChat takes less than 30% of data consumption for half of the users. It could be caused because the younger generation is more likely to spend data on other apps such as games, video and other social media Apps.

The social impact of WeChat

The number of users donating to charities via WeChat reached an impressive 40.3% in 2017, almost twice the 2015 figure.

The cumulative of WeChat City Service Users is also booming, many of these services have doubled the number of users between 2016 and 2017.

In the healthcare sector, the impact is particularly strong: waiting time is shortened by 43.6 minutes on average in institutions which implemented WeChat.

WeChat users are more balanced distributed among users of all age in 2017 than they were in 2015.

WeChat Payment

Penetration of WeChat payment has been skyrocketing, especially for users under 18 years old where it reached an impressive 97.3% in 2017. For users over 60 years old, WeChat penetration reached 46.7%. Given this could be the first time these 2 groups of users have a smart phone, the penetration of WeChat Pay is very impressive.

Usage almost doubled in most situations, especially in daily-life expenses such as supermarket payments, food payments or online shopping. The most popular use case for WeChat Pay is in an offline environment, such as the supermarket, and restaurants. 45.2% people use WeChat for online shopping.

Outside China, WeChat has also seen explosive growth in catering to Chinese tourists. In Japan, the number of stores receiving payments via WeChat Payment has been multiplied by 35 in 2017 only!

WeChat Official Accounts and Mini Programs

Subscription to official accounts have been growing in most categories (although relatively slowly due to increasing competition between WeChat Official Accounts)

WeChat at work (the “Slack” equivalent of WeChat) has reached 30 million active users from 1.5 million registered enterprises.

WeChat Official Accounts have been satisfactory to their operators: 34% of them mentioned that the usage of WeChat Official Accounts enabled them to decrease costs by more than 30%.

WeChat mini-programs have seen the most dramatic adoption trend. 580k of them were created by the end of 2017.

The social e-commerce application Mogujie disclosed that the conversion rate of its mini-program is twice higher than on its native application. Group Buying contributed more than 70% of new purchasers in the mini program. Cash Off brought 500,000 new users within 12 days from its launch, of which 18% purchased later.

Offline stores also started using mini-programs: Yonghui Superstores saw the digitization of its users skyrocket from 30% to 87% after adopting WeChat mini-programs.

In the public sector, “Bus Steward” 巴士管家 was launched in 13 cities in Jiangsu province to enable users to purchase transportation tickets via WeChat mini-programs. By the end of 2017, the mini-program had been used 11 million times.

Conclusion

Although WeChat has nearly saturated its growth potential in China in terms of the number of users (with more than 1 billion Monthly Active Users), the App is still very far from resting on its laurels.

From business innovation through city services and cross-border commerce, to technical innovation with mini-programs, WeChat keeps reinventing itself and discovering new paths for growth.

2017 has been an impressive year for WeChat, and the momentum shows no signs of slowing down.

WeChat Impact Report of 2018.

WeChat Impact Report 2016

Key highlights include:

• 70% of users spend more than 100 RMB per month on WeChat
• WeChat news overtakes both news websites and TV combined
• 61% of WeChat users open WeChat more than 10 times per day
• 28% of users have more than 200 friends, that’s more than twice last year’s data
• 61.4% of users check moments each time they open WeChat

The post WeChat impact report 2018: all the latest WeChat data appeared first on WalkTheChat.

1. Alibaba attempts to acquire Ele.me
2. Momo acquires Tantan
3. Tiao-yi-tiao mini-program starts monetizing
4. iQiyi files for IPO in the U.S at $US 10 billion valuation
5. Mini-program analytics App Alading raises 60 million RMB funding

#1. Alibaba attempts to acquire Ele.me

Alibaba made a move to purchase food-delivery leader Ele.me for $9.5 billion USD, according to ifeng.com.

The Chinese e-commerce giant already owned a 23% stake in the company after investing almost US$1.2 billion in it, a bargain compared with the current acquisition pricetag.

Baidu Waimai had previously sold its business to Ele.me for a reported US $800 million. This leaves two giants in the Chinese food delivery business: Alibaba’s Ele.me and Tencent’s Meituan.

This move would leave Alibaba in a dominant position with about 55% of the total food delivery market in China.

#2. Momo acquires Tantan

The online-dating leader Momo has expanded its reach by acquiring competitor Tantan for an impressive 800 million USD.

After launching its live streaming feature in 2015, Momo saw an explosion of its revenues: they skyrocketed from 50.9 million USD in Q1 2016 to 354.5 million USD in Q3 2017: an astounding growth of 38% per quarter.

Momo has also grown way beyond its initial scope as a dating website: it provides games and live streaming features, along with features copied from Tantan.

Tantan has a simpler set of features (very similar to Tinder – to the point of copying the interface), but was successful at attracting the very sought for post-90’s and post-95 users. Tantan figures speak for themselves (as of early 2017):

• 110 million registered users
• 72 million verified users
• 20 million monthly active users
• 7 million daily active users
• 75% of daily active users were born after 1990

Momo had seen its growth slow down (monthly active users grew from 74.8 million to 94.40 million between Q2 2016 and Q3 2017)

#3. Tiao-yi-tiao mini-program starts monetizing

You’re likely to have heard of the Tiao-yi-tiao mini-program. Actually, you are likely to have spent a few hours of your life playing with it.

The mini-program recently launched an interesting monetization strategy: it started releasing “branded blocks” that it sold to various large brands such as Nike and McDonalds.

However, these ads are not for everyone: the price tag is 20 million RMB, and the brand are personally handpicked by Zhang Xiaolong, WeChat’s founder. Users can see the logo but cannot engage with the brand, leaving it impossible to measure the ROI of the ads.

#4. iQiyi files for IPO in the U.S

Baidu’s video service iQiyi files for IPO in the U.S. It is expected to raise 1.5 billion USD with a total valuation of about 10 billion USD.

iQiyi has been seizing the majority of the video streaming market in China, with about 70% of video streaming users subscribing to their service as of 2017.

#5. Mini-program analytics App Alading raises 60 million RMB funding

The mini-program analytics App Alading raised 60 million RMB in funding.

Alading enables mini-programs to gain insights about their mini-program’s engagement: user data, sharing behavior and most popular pages/bounce rates.

This round of funding is proof of the fact that, after a slow start, mini-programs are definitely picking up steam.

Beyond individual applications, a real ecosystem of services is being born under the concept of mini-programs, which will push the limits of what they can provide for end users and brands.

The post Alibaba attempts to acquire Ele.me & 4 other news appeared first on WalkTheChat.

The target

About a year ago, I wrote a 5-days email course about WeChat Marketing. The course has been a success, with many thousand people subscribing and benefiting from it.

As many of our readers are located outside China, I was wondering: would it be possible to adapt the course for Facebook Messenger?

The tools

In order to develop and distribute the course, I used a few tools at my disposal:

• ManyChat is a platform helping create Facebook Messenger experiences
• Facebook Ads were used in order to get users to signup
• Facebook Retargeting Pixel enabled to target users who had visited WalktheChat website

The results

The results of this (small scale) test were quite impressive:

• $28.21 USD of Facebook Ads spend
• 152 conversations started on Messenger on WeChat Account creation

That’s about $0.18 USD spent for a qualified, B2B lead which can then be engaged on the long-run! Let’s deep-dive a bit more about the strategies we used here.

The Facebook Messenger campaign

The secret from the campaign was to clearly lay down the content of the course. A simple, mobile-friendly description, quickly describing the content of the 5 lessons.

Targeting was aimed at two groups:

• Users who liked our Facebook page
• Users who had previously visited our website (re-targeting pixel)

When clicking the button, subscribers automatically got engaged in a ManyChat sequence, which took them in an interactive way through the steps of creating their WeChat Official Account.ManyChat enables to create “drip” sequences where messages are scheduled and progressively sent:

Why is Messenger a great way to give an online course?

There is are many ways you can deliver information to users and customers online. The two most important metrics in order to decide which platform to use are the following:

• How convenient/interactive is it for end users to access the course?
• How much can you learn about the person taking the course, in order to send out more relevant information in the future?

Here are how a few options perform on these two metrics:

• eBooks are the most traditional and inefficient way to go. They do not adapt well to multiple devices, and are therefore not very convenient for users. Once you have sent an ebook, you usually have no way of knowing how much of it was read, and which parts were most interesting to readers
• Email courses are already much more interactive: you can know which lessons had the best open rate, monitor the click-through-rate of links inside your lesson, and identify highly-engaged users
• Messenger courses take this interactivity to the next level: you can for instance collect information about users by taking them through different “decision trees” as they go through the course. You can also see the click-through rate of all the various elements you choose to include in your course

Messenger also enables you to automatically collect information about users, such as their email. You can then directly upload this information to a CRM system such as Hubspot or Salesforce (you can do this easily with a software called Zapier)

Moreover, some information is directly accessible through Facebook for all users, such as full name, location or place of employment. This makes it very easy to match Messenger leads with full LinkedIn profiles.

Can this workflow be translated to WeChat?

It is possible to use just the same strategy in WeChat, but it is more complex for a few reasons:

• WeChat is more conservative than Facebook in terms of limiting the quota of messages per user
• It is not very easy to send very customized messages via WeChat
• Facebook enables to dynamically give “suggestions” to the users in the chat window (like a multiple-choice menu), which is not possible via WeChat

In order to create such a course on WeChat, you will have to:

• Start the course when the user is in the 48 hours customer service window (just after the user joined the account, clicked on a menu item or wrote to the account). This is the period during which you can send unlimited promotional messages to the user
• Keep the user within this 48-hours customer service window through the course (so during each lesson you should ask the user to write something to the account so that they will be able to receive the next lesson on the following day)

Conclusion

Although pure chat-bot interfaces have not been very popular, they can do a good job at providing education while collecting a lot of information about users. Today, Facebook Messenger offers more flexibility for marketers to leverage this type of tactics, but they can also be transferred to WeChat with a bit of creativity.

The post Case Study of Facebook Messenger Marketing appeared first on WalkTheChat.

Newranks tracks the performance of the 500 top-performing WeChat Official Accounts every month. They compared the data between April 2017 and the same time last year, and reached a surprising conclusion.

Highlights include:

• 75% of top performing accounts last year decreased in ranking in 2017
• Only 55% of the accounts stayed in the top 500 list for two consecutive years
• Average reading number decreased by 5,257; while like number increased by 138
• Media-type accounts make up 24% of all accounts which got better rankings
• % of original content articles increased from 8.7% in 2016 to 11.2% in 2017
• % of audio content increased from 2.1% in 2016 to 4.8% in 2017
• 12 of the top accounts were deleted or banned due to various reasons

When we refer to “Ranking” in this article, we refer to the Newrank index which is a formula based on various engagement and growth metrics for the account.

Engagement Trend of top 500 WeChat Accounts

Over 1 year, WeChat added 175 million Monthly Active Users. So how comes the average articles’ views decreased by 5,257 views per article?

Truth is, the Official Account market is increasingly competitive. This decrease in view number could be caused either by more Official Accounts competing for users’ attention; or due to the fact that people are less willing to share good articles on WeChat Moments.

However the average like number increased by 138 per article. Increasing amount of accounts are encouraging followers to like their articles and engage with the account.

Accounts in general publish 7 articles less per month. It could be due to the fact that content creators are spending more time to produce higher quality articles rather than just focusing on the numbers.

Overall trend of the top 500 WeChat accounts

Among the top performing accounts in 2016, 75% of them decreased in ranking this year. Only 21% of accounts moved up in ranking this year. The decrease was mostly caused by increasing quality of other accounts and the viral and unpredicable nature of social media trends.

How much did the ranking change?

Compared to last year, only 274 accounts managed to remain in the top 500. Event the most popular accounts have to constantly adapt their content to engage with users and keep them interested.

The account which saw the biggest improvement is Global Times (环球时报), ranking increased by 428 year over year.

TripAdvisor on the other hand lost 15,584 points. Last year, almost every article got more than 100k article views; compared with only ~10k views recently. It’s a typical effect of stopping the use of “Zombie followers” in order to meet KPI’s, and focusing on content strategy to generate real followers.

Media type of accounts stands out in the new top 500 accounts

Among the 104 best-performing accounts this year, 24% are media accounts. It’s a strong indicator that the Chinese media is shifting focus from the traditional print TV and radio to WeChat. Media accounts have the natural advantage of having full-time reporters to create timely and original content.

Content trend of top 500 WeChat accounts

% of original content increased from 8.7% to 11.2% in a year. It’s very clear that the accounts with increasing in ranking produce a lot more (16.4%) original content than those with decreasing ranking accounts’ (9.7%).

More accounts are publishing audio content, 4.8% in 2017 compared with 2.1% in 2016.

Among the accounts with increasing ranking, 7.6% are publishing audio content. This is still a new form of content creation, and companies could try to re-purpose old content in audio format

Conclusion

Overall, the competition among the top 500 WeChat Official Accounts competition is getting fiercer. But this might be a good thing for marketers: more competition also means you have more choices of KOLs to choose from.

The post Trend report of the top 500 WeChat Official Account appeared first on WalkTheChat.

Let’s have a close look into that.

What do Alipay mini-programs look like?

Alipay mini-programs look, in many ways, exactly like WeChat mini-programs.

Like WeChat miniprograms, Alipay miniprograms…

• are accessed usually via scanning QR codes
• are built on their own framework based on JavaScript
• are something in between native APPs and webpages

Why is it all a mess?

That all sounds very good, so why is it very bad?

Simply because Alipay just added a new framework that programmers have to learn in order to be able to write code.

That’s a problem because it means that in the future, programmers might have to learn the following frameworks in order to be able to develop an application usable accross all platforms:

• Swift for iOS
• Java for Android
• WeChat mini-programs framework
• Alipay mini-program frameworks
• One general web framework for website (React, Angular, Ember, there are multiple standards here)
• And of course this is just for “front-end” (the part users see), but there is also need to learn back-end frameworks (to manage data) such as Node, Ruby, Scala, Go, Python and more…

This multiplication of programming languages and frameworks might be okay for very large companies who can benefit from large teams and outsourcing agencies to cover all this spectrum. But what about smaller startups trying to get a product to market?

Little by little, the open web is transforming into a world of competing proprietary platforms.

How does Facebook do it?

It is interesting that, as of now, Facebook didn’t take the “mini-programs” approach yet. Although Facebook bots are very similar to WeChat Official Accounts, they chose to “iFrame” website inside their bots. This means that you can open a website directly inside the bot in order to offer extra functionalities.

This approach, although it is less “native” than the one of WeChat (transitions are less smooth, speed isn’t as fast) enables developers to build just one version of their application (web-based) and then deploy it to multiple platforms.

How well are WeChat mini-programs doing exactly?

WeChat recently released a score of new features for mini-programs to make them more accessible, easier to share and more powerful as marketing tools.

However, they still fail to gain traction. In a recent Tencent report, 80% users indicates they have never used WeChat Mini Program.

More than half of the users are not clear what Mini Programs do.

The website Github is the place where a lot of a programmers share their Open Source code, and it is a good place to assess which frameworks are winning or losing (depending on “Stars”, which are kind of “Likes” from programmers toward specific frameworks)

If we look at Github stars for the most popular WeChat Mini-program framework (WePy), the framework doesn’t even get to 1,000 stars.

As a comparison, the Open Source framework from Google, Angular, totals 23,810 stars, while Facebook’s framework React collected 66,066 stars!

Ironically, the most popular Github repository referring to WeChat mini-programs does not contain any code… it is a collection of ressources and articles talking about WeChat mini-programs compiled by the “WeChat mini-app fans” website (you can find it here).

Isn’t this the ultimate proof that, as of today, WeChat mini-programs are still mostly hype?

Conclusion

Alipay is jumping on the mini-program bandwagon… which might very well be about to crash into a wall. The multiplication of frameworks makes it difficult for developers to keep up with all the companies trying to pull the rug toward their own proprietary framework.

The most likely outcome is that programmers will stick to open standards (like the Google and Facebook frameworks) and mini-programs might not gain significant traction until the whole ecosystem matures.

The post Alipay releases “mini-programs” in response to WeChat appeared first on WalkTheChat.

Here are the ways you can get started with WeChat ads.

What is WeChat Advertising?

WeChat advertising is the Tencent program enabling companies to display promotional messages on user’s timeline, in WeChat Official Account articles, or even in 3rd party Mini-programs. WeChat ads enable brands to grow WeChat Official Account followers, drive traffic to the official website or mini-program, and generate App downloads.

There are 3 major types of WeChat advertising:

• WeChat Moments Advertising – learn more by clicking here.
• WeChat banner adverting – learn more by clicking here.
• WeChat Key Opinion Leader advertising – learn more by clicking here.

For all types of WeChat ads applications, you can reach out via info@walkthechat.com or by filling this form.

Method 1: WeChat moments advertising

The first and most familiar method of WeChat advertising for Western marketers is to promote on WeChat moments. They are the equivalent of Facebook ads appearing on the timeline.

Let’s dig deeper into this method.

Who can advertise on WeChat Moment?

WeChat advertising on moments is restricted to two major cases:

• Companies registered in Mainland China (either local companies or Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprises – WFOE) willing to invest at least 50k RMB (~8,000 USD) per campaign (reservation method), or starting from 50 RMB (~8 USD) per day (bidding method).
• Foreign companies willing to invest $1,500 – $8,000 USD (updated on April 2017)

Chinese companies can follow the following link to apply: http://ad.weixin.qq.com/

For foreign companies the process goes through a dedicated Tencent team, you can reach out for questions (info@walkthechat.com). As of the writing of the blog, Tencent does not permit advertising from the real estate, drugs, tobacco or electronic cigarettes, and financial industry.

What is WeChat Moments advertising?

WeChat moment ads were launched in early 2015, when 25 brands including Coco-Cola and Mercedes-Benz took part in the first testing campaign.

Even before this official launch, the WeChat “timeline” had been a target for advertising companies who relentlessly tried to find ways to access user’s Moment. They usually used forwarded messages via a network of personal accounts (a practice forbidden by Tencent terms of use).

For example, a WeChat advertising company created a scheme for advertising on personal WeChat Moments. In Shanghai and Beijing, they leveraged 600 individual accounts, each with at least 500 friends. The price of posting on individual’s moments ranged from 10 RMB to 400 RMB per post.  Advertising through such a network enabled to reach over 300,000 WeChat users. However this was a very manual process.

What Tencent Moment ads bring is a much more sophisticated way to reach the user timeline by directly buying access from WeChat.

How does it work?

Moment ads can have the following component:

1. Brand name and profile picture
2. Up to 40 character ad description
3. Link to a html5 webpage that’s hosted on Tencent’s server
4. Up to 6 pictures or 6-15 seconds short videos

You can target users according to their location, interest, age, gender, device and phone network.

Location:

You can target Chinese residents by province, city, or any area of 0.5 – 5km within a customized location.

Since April 2017, Tencent starts to offer WeChat Overseas Advertising to target Chinese users traveling overseas, which is attractive for foreign brands looking for Travel Retail. However in 2021, due to changes in data protection law and regulations, the WeChat Overseas Advertising capacity for overseas residents and tourists has been paused.

As WeChat’s advertising capacity is constantly changing, in case of doubt please reach out to info@walkthechat.com for the most updated version.

Gender & Age:

Gender and age from 14 to 60 years old

Industry specific:

Companies can choose to advertise to 18 industries and 122 sub-categories. The 18 core categories include education, travel, finance, cars, real estate, furniture, fashion, F&B, personal services, professional services, cosmetics, home electronics, sports, health, child education, bags, watches, shoes, jewelry, politics and law, luxury goods, drinks, Internet, entertainment.

Marital Status:

Single, married, newly married, or raising a kid

Education level:

PhD, master, bachelor, high school, primary school

WeChat behavior / Remarketing:

You can choose to either retarget or exclude users who: are currently following your official account; collected a WeChat coupon from ads within the past year; showed interest in your previous ads during the past year; and remove users who are not interested in your content.

Individual users can see up to one Moment ad every 48 hours. The ad will disappear within 6 hours if the user did not like, comment or click on the link. If the user interacts with the ad, this will increase the likelihood of his/her friend receiving the same ad. This viral effect will increase the number of target users.

How much does it cost?

WeChat Moment Advertising:

Minimal entry price (both foreign companies and Chinese companies): 50,000RMB per campaign

CPM (cost per 1,000 impression):

Core cities: Beijing, Shanghai

Large cities: Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Suzhou, Chongqing, Nanjing, Tianjin, Xi’an, Guiyang, Changsha, Qingdao, Ningbo, Zhengzhou, Dalian, Xiamen, Jinan, Harbin, Fuzhou

WeChat Overseas Advertising： targeting Chinese tourists

Minimal entry price:

50,000 RMB for the following countries/regions:

Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, United States, Australia

10,000 RMB for the following countries:

Germany, France, England, Italy, Canada, New Zealand

How to apply?

Chinese companies:

1. Verify your WeChat Official Account. Step by step guide for WeChat Official Account verification.
2. Apply for the right to advertise on WeChat by going to the backend of your official account, and click on 广告主 to apply 

   

3. Once you got approved for 广告主 (right to advertise on WeChat), you can then create campaigns via the WeChat Official Account backend.

Note you will need to provide industry specific certificates when applying for the right to advertise. If the first application didn’t go through, you can try to apply again by selecting another industry category.

Foreign businesses:

Need to manually submit application request to WeChat advertising team. Contact info@walkthechat.com to apply.

Is WeChat Moments advertising right for you?

WeChat Moments Advertising program is not for everyone.  Compared to Tencent’s other advertising channel, Q-zone and Tencent Weibo have CPM between 0.2-1RMB; WeChat banner ads has CPC (cost-per-click) of between 2-5 RMB; KOL campaign has a CPC of 0.5-1 RMB, WeChat Moment ad is comparatively much pricier.

Moment ads tend to be a better choice for well-known brands with visually attractive products.  It is great to build brand awareness and encourage user engagement. For small and medium companies or companies in service or B2B industry, other advertising channels such as KOL, WeChat banner ads, and Tencent ads on QQ and Q-zone could be a better choice.

Method 2: WeChat banner advertising

There is another form of advertising on WeChat called “banner advertising”. These banners are very much like the ad banners you would see on a website. Except that in the context of WeChat, they will be featured at the bottom of a message written by a WeChat Official Account, or while browsing in a WeChat Mini-program.

There are two types of WeChat banner ads:

Standard WeChat Banner Ads

Launched in August 2014, this type of WeChat ads has notoriously low performance (most people don’t click on them). Advertisers can pick some rough targeting (gender, location, age, and type of account in which the banners are displayed) and the ads will be shown to the target group of users. The targeting is the same as the WeChat Moment advertising, see above for detail. Advertisers can’t control on which specific account their ads appear.

WeChat banner ads has three component:

1. WeChat article: WeChat banner ads appear at the bottom of a WeChat article written by another WeChat Official Account
2. Ad banner: the banner contains a logo, account name and headline. If clicked, it takes the users to a page containing additional information about the brand/product
3. Action call: the action call takes users to another landing page, see below for detail.

The banner ads can drive users to follow WeChat Official Account, download an app, claim coupons, buy a product, enter a mini-program, signup link, or enter a customized landing page. Compared to other objectives, this placement is more efficient for follower acquisition (by simply one click) or coupon collection, where users enjoy a clear benefit.

• KOL banner version: launched in October 2016, these new WeChat banner ads enable the advertisers and the WeChat official account to enter into an agreement about the ad. They must both agree on the cost paid per view by the advertiser, and a range of views which will be accounted for (for example, if the first article of the account has an average of 100k views, the promised view rate will be limited to 80k to 150k views). Here is an example:

How much do WeChat banner ads cost?

Standard WeChat Banner advertising:

Minimal entry price (both foreign companies and Chinese companies): 1,000 RMB (around 160 USD)

CPM (cost per 1,000 impression):

Core cities: Beijing, Shanghai

Large cities: Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Suzhou, Chongqing, Nanjing, Tianjin, Xi’an, Guiyang, Changsha, Qingdao, Ningbo, Zhengzhou, Dalian, Xiamen, Jinan, Harbin, Fuzhou

The WeChat KOL Banner version:

The KOL banner version is much more expensive. Although the payment is also performance-based, it still depends on the KOL to determine the price. You can inquiry price from the specific KOLs.

Who can use WeChat banner ads?

WeChat banner ads are mostly restricted to Chinese companies. Unlike Western systems like Facebook and Google, there is a large amount of oversight about who can publish ads on Tencent platform. For the most part, you will need:

• A registered company in China
• All the licenses to justify the fact that you can advertise in the specific industry that your ads are associated with (ex: if you want to advertise food, you will have to provide all the licenses allowing you to sell food to China)

It is also possible for foreign companies to apply for banner advertising. You will have to go through a manual application process. Contact info@walkthechat.com to learn more.

Are WeChat banner ads a good choice for your WeChat advertising?

WeChat banner advertising is the most predictable way to grow your WeChat followers with stable ROI. We suggest running a few test campaigns with different content to calculate the CPA. A WeChat follower can cost between 8 RMB – 20 RMB depending on your targeting and how well you optimize the campaign. It’s a good method to get started on WeChat. However, the quality of the followers tends to be lower compared with WeChat Moment advertising. Brand should not neglect the importance of posting original and useful content on WeChat to organically grow WeChat followers.

The “KOL version” is much more promising, but take it on a case-by-case basis. The way it works is very similar to a traditional Key Opinion Leader campaign, with pros and cons:

• Pros: performance based pricing, and easier to drive users to your website
• Cons: few KOLs have this feature available today. Very pricey. Tencent gets part of the money.

If your budget permits, these new banner ads are likely a better choice for your brand.

Method 3: Key Opinion Leaders

Collaborating with Influencers is another way to market your brand on WeChat. It means paying a popular WeChat blogger (either through a flat fee, a result-based fee or by giving away products) in exchange for a promotional post on their WeChat official account.

The push message can be either a fully customized article talking about your brand, or a banner ad at the end of a content piece (of course, the first option is usually much pricier).

Here’s an example of banner ad at the bottom of a WeChat influencer message:

Some KOLs would even work with brands on an affiliate sales model. These KOLs usually have a great number of followers (usually more than 500,000). And they can drive more than a couple of hundreds of unit sales within posting of one article. Instead of charging for advertising costs, these KOL charges on a commission basis, usually between 20-40% commission. If you can find such KOL to work on a commission basis, it will always be great for market and sales. The drawback is it’s very difficult to find the right KOL. Large accounts tend to be extremely picky about the quality, price and type of your product.

Why should you use Key Opinion Leaders?

Key Opinion Leaders are a truly efficient way to market on WeChat for several reasons:

• WeChat is a social network first, and endorsement from trusted sources can be a huge source of conversion
• Key Opinion Leaders enable you to get started with all types of budgets
• KOL aren’t subject to as much red tape as the ads bought directly from Tencent: vendors selling cross-border will have a much easier time using KOL rather than WeChat native ad program
• Because WeChat has been only recently opening up to advertisers, there is a rich network of Key Opinion Leaders you can tap from on WeChat, and users are already used to receiving ads from them

Where can you find KOL for WeChat advertising?

There are a few platforms enabling you to find influencers for your WeChat ads:

• http://newrank.cn/ is the leader in the field
• http://www.parklu.com/ is a great platform as it provides a bilingual interface and access to influencers across WeChat, Weibo, Instagram, Youku and Meipai
• http://wemedia.cn/ is a platform with a mix of accounts their run by themselves and influencers they represent. Quality is uneven though, so have a careful look.

We conducted a more in-depth study of some of these platforms in this article:
https://walkthechat.com/3-best-platforms-find-wechat-kol/

How much do influencer cost for WeChat advertising?

The cost of using WeChat influencers for advertising can vary widely:

• On the low-end, you might find some advertisers willing to put up a banner for as low as $100 USD
• On the high-end, there is no real upper limit, with large KOL regularly charging as much as $50,000 USD for one push message

Are influencers the right approach for your WeChat advertising?

There are plenty of good reasons to advertise through influencers: they enable targeted, flexible and (sometimes) affordable ad campaigns. They are particularly suited to new brands with little existing recognition in China, for which the endorsement of KOL’s will prove to be an invaluable asset. And for established brands to drive up sales.

The post Advertising on WeChat: a Step by Step Guide appeared first on WalkTheChat.