In this article, we will cover a few tips:

• Create WeChat Groups to engage with your loyal VIP consumers and hear their feedback
• Leverage WeChat mini program for offline events registration & engagement campaigns
• Use WeChat Channels (WeChat Video Account) to republish your Douyin videos
• Run WeChat retargeting ad campaigns during key sales seasons

WeChat remains strong as a loyalty & community platform

Apart from selling on WeChat Store, WeChat is often used as a loyalty platform. Brands can create WeChat groups to engage with loyal customers or launch a WeChat mini program with membership program or offline events.

For example, Lululemon leverages WeChat mini program to organize offline fitness events, in collaboration with Lululemon offline store staffs or professional trainers. Users can find group activities such as body combat, running, yoga, pilates, etc in major cities cross China. Such activities help affiliate customers and create a positive emotional attachment to the brand.

That’s not the end of the story. The loyal brand lovers will share their experience on social media (Red/Xiaohongshu, for example), creating an organic second-wave exposure. We noticed that these UGC contents can get more genuine engagement than brand account. Such exposure will also attract new potential brand lovers and close the loop from loyalty to new consumer acquisition.

Create WeChat mini program for branding & engagement

During Covid, luxury brands built WeChat mini programs for VR store, offering customers a similar shopping experience while offline shopping wasn’t possible.

Right now, as most Chinese cities have opened up, offline activities have vibrated again. More brands are using WeChat mini program to drive traffic offline.

For example, Burberry built a pop-up store & café in a ski resort and used a dedicated WeChat mini program to invite customers to explore their offline location. Outdoor Ski is considered a “luxury” sport in China because of the skiing equipment’s pricing, the sport’s seasonality, and the scarcity of quality ski resorts.

By opening a pop-up store at ski resorts, Burberry hit three birds with one stone:

1. Accurately target high-income groups with sophisticated lifestyles to showcase their winter jacket collection
2. Offer an entry experience (coffee with Burberry logo), which is quite affordable for people who are interested but intimidated by the price of the ready-to-wear collection
3. Encourage social sharing and create more buzz and “desire” among the mass audience

Every year, top luxury brands create dedicated campaigns on WeChat mini programs, especially on special occasions such as new collection drops, store openings, Chinese New Year, Chinese Valentine’s Day, etc.

In November, Louis Vuitton launched a dedicated WeChat mini-program game called “Ma Jump” (麻Jump) to create buzz for its very first restaurant, “THE HALL,” opening in Chengdu, China.

In this mini-game, players need to control the direction of a small ball to reach the goal. The game itself is not too original, but what’s more exciting is the local cultural elements that Louis Vuitton embraces in this small game:

• The name of the game resembles “Ma Jiang (麻将)” in Chinese, which is a traditional tile-based game well-spread across the country;
• Apart from LV’s Monogram, users can notice more Chinese elements such as panda, chilly pepper, stone lines;
• the background music of the game is created by a local rapper, etc…

Louis Vuitton did a great job going “Glocal,” maintaining a luxury positioning while showing respect for traditional Chinese culture. The effort has gained goodwill and recognition from local customers.

Leverage WeChat Video Account (WeChat Channels) just like Douyin

WeChat also noticed that traditional text articles in Official Accounts are losing traction and have launched a “copycat” of Douyin within the WeChat ecosystem, called WeChat Video Account or WeChat Channels.

Up to 2021, WeChat Channels have 500 million DAU (Daily Active Users), growing at 79% year-on-year. It’s expected to reach 600 million DAU in 2022. Compared to Douyin‘s 800 million DAU, WeChat Channels still have some way to go.

WeChat put a lot of effort into attracting content creators and supporting their monetization with traffic coupons. However, for brand accounts, we can still notice a significant gap between the viewership and engagement between WeChat channels and Douyin.

For brands already operating a Douyin account, it’s wise to republish the Douyin content on WeChat Channels, without putting too much effort on this channel. To be honest, most of the traffic and engagement will still come from Douyin.

WeChat Ads can yield positive ROI for retargeting

For branding campaigns, WeChat Moment Ads remains a powerful tool to reach a maximum of 1.4 billion Chinese people. If you have a WeChat mini program and have access to retargeting data (for example, store visitors, add-to-carts, purchased users), WeChat retargeting ads can yield very positive ROI. If you need help with how to do so, feel free to reach out to us!

WeChat Marketing Conclusion

In summary, WeChat is losing momentum as a content platform. Maintaining engagement or gaining new followers on WeChat Official Account is hard without advertising spending or purchasing views. But still, there are ways to better leverage WeChat, especially for loyalty.

If you need help with your WeChat or general China marketing, feel free to reach out to us by the bottom below, and we will help you define the best strategy!

The post 3 ways to leverage WeChat mini program in post-Covid China appeared first on WalkTheChat.

In this article, we will take a few brands as examples to analyze their WeChat marketing strategies, success and loss. We will cover international brands of different tiers, from Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Burberry, Ralph Lauren, Lululemon, to Zara, and Uniqlo.

WeChat has lost momentum as a content marketing platform

We analyzed the number of average views of headline articles on WeChat in October 2022. What is worth more attention is the general decline of viewership compared to October 2021.

Well-established fashion brands such as Zara suffered a -42.7% drop in average views. Even the new star Lululemon seems to have lost momentum on WeChat with a -27.1% decrease.

Uniqlo and Louis Vuitton remain at 100k+ views, but keep in mind this data can be misleading as WeChat doesn’t disclose the number of views after 100k (so we can simply say that they both remain at a very high number of views, but can’t actually comment on the change).

Amid this turmoil, Ralph Lauren seems to be doing well, growing at a lovely pace of 38.5% in average views. However, if we look further, there is more under the iceberg.

For example, in some of Ralph Lauren’s WeChat publications, all articles published on the same day gathered exactly the same number of views (for instance: 31,000).

On WeChat, brands or influencers can include several articles and send them all in one publication. The headline article has a much larger call to action and cover picture, and usually has the highest number of views. The second article manages, at best, 15% – 30% of the headline article’s performance. Although this is no definitive proof, having an equal number of views for the headline and secondary article looks abnormal and may indicate fake numbers.

Fendi’s numbers also seem a bit fishy. All the comments on their accounts receive an “equalitarian” number of 170 likes. In practice, as on all social platforms, top comments should have the highest number of likes. This very uniform distribution of engagement suggests that some of it might have been bought or faked.

Once again, here, we can’t prove whether the engagement on Fendi’s account is fake or not; we do only point to the data.

So, why is this happening?

The truth is, WeChat is losing momentum as a content platform, as it is losing ground against Douyin, Red and other competitors.

So this is happening:

1. WeChat gets harder to market on
2. Brands’ headquarters don’t always know that (or won’t hear it)
3. Unattainable KPIs are set
4. Fake views/engagement have to be bought to meet these KPIs
5. KPIs are met (thanks to fake views/engagement)
6. Higher KPIs are set (while, in the meantime, WeChat only got harder to market on)
7. More fake views are bought

And thus, the vicious circle of fake WeChat views is closed. Customers are fooled, brands are fooling themselves, and eventually hurting their sales and brand image with meaningless data that they end up believing.

Conclusion: is WeChat dead for marketers?

No, WeChat is not dead as a marketing platform.

WeChat is a wonderful platform for community engagement. It is still the #1 chat platform in China. It has a vibrant ecosystem of Mini Programs.

Do you want to keep in close touch with a tight group of VIP customers? Use WeChat Groups

Do you want to give your customers outstanding services at their fingertips? Use WeChat Mini Programs

Do you want to offer a private shopping experience to select VIP shoppers? Use WeChat stores

But if you’re trying to gain organic traction through publishing WeChat content, you’re likely fooling yourself. Even worse, you might be pressuring your teams into unethical behavior that will eventually hurt your brand.

The post Are Ralph Lauren and Fendi Buying Fake WeChat Views? appeared first on WalkTheChat.

In this article, we will explain:

• What is WeChat Channels (Video Account) and what’s the difference with WeChat Moments?
• How promising are WeChat Channels?
• Should you create a WeChat Channel for your brand?

What is WeChat Channels?

WeChat Channels is a dedicated space to watch video content, similar to Instagram Reels, but more “down to earth”.

Up to 2021, WeChat Channels have 500 million DAU (Daily Active Users), growing at 79% year-on-year. It’s expected to reach 600 million DAU in 2022.

Compared to Douyin‘s 800 million DAU, WeChat Channels still have some way to go. However, considering WeChat has 1.2 billion Monthly Active Users, it’s still possible for it to catch up with Douyin in user volume.

Here are some main differences between WeChat Channels and WeChat Moments:

• WeChat Channels are public by default, while WeChat Moments are private, only visible to your contacts.
• You can publish videos of up to 1 hour on WeChat Channels, while on WeChat Moment, the duration is limited to 30 seconds.

How promising are WeChat Channels?

WeChat Channels are connected with WeChat’s ecosystem, fully integrated with WeChat Official Account, Mini Program, WeChat Search, and WeChat payment.

With established infrastructure, WeChat has been pushing for the commercialization of WeChat Channels.

Since November 2021, WeChat Channels has held several online shopping festivals such as the Live-stream Good Things Festival, the New Year Goods Festival, etc. Brands, live stream influencers, and celebrities started earning money on WeChat Channels.

How do merchants and influencers make money on WeChat Channels? Read further:

• WeChat Channels Livestreaming Rewards “Traffic Coupon” to Drive Traffic and Sales

In 2022, Chinese singers and rock stars held several online concerts on WeChat Channels, attracting more young people to explore the feature.

On July 18, WeChat Channels allowed in-feed ads for the first time. BMW China, Armani Beauty, and Yili Satine became the first advertisers to participate in the beta test. Words have it that WeChat will allow large-scale in-feed ads in Q4 2022.

On July 21, WeChat launched “Channel Store“, allowing merchants to open stores and sell directly in the video account scenario. WeChat’s “Video Store” model can learn from the existing experience of “Kaishou Store” and “Douyin Store”.

The Everbright Securities Research Report believes that once Video Store can close the loop of live stream eCommerce, it’s likely that the GMV (Gross Merchandising Value) of this channel will grow rapidly.

Should you create a WeChat Channel for your brand?

Here are several points for brands to consider.

WeChat Channels work better with Official Accounts and Mini Program

As a part of the WeChat ecosystem, WeChat Channels can better fulfill its functions if you already have WeChat Official Accounts and WeChat Mini Program. Without these, it doesn’t make much sense to have a WeChat Channel alone.

Most of the brands that created WeChat Channels already have these two features. Even for big brands like Dior and Lancome, the average views on their Channel accounts aren’t too optimistic without extra marketing spend – the view per video is quite flat, usually below 100.

WeChat Channels can be the next step for brands with existing awareness

If your brand entered China a while ago and has a presence on major social media channels such as WeChat Official Account, Douyin, Red (Xiaohongshu), and Weibo, you may consider creating a WeChat Channel. To save resources, you can use the same video creatives published on Douyin. Having a Channel can help you better distribute your brand’s video campaigns and live streaming in the public traffic pool of WeChat.

However, if you are a niche brand looking to enter China or at an early stage of your China expansion, it’s better to focus your marketing efforts on other channels such as Red (Xiaohongshu) or Douyin.

The post WeChat Channels: is it worth your attention? appeared first on WalkTheChat.

There are two advertising schemes provided by Tencent.

1. “Subscription Messages” ads

If subscription accounts exceed 100k followers, they can apply to be “ads displayers”. Other companies can then display ads at the bottom of each of their messages

However, subscription account ads show poor return on investment for the accounts displaying the ads (so a lot of popular WeChat accounts are not using the WeChat advertising scheme at all) and most users don’t actually notice or click on them (click through rate is therefore extremely low).

For advertisers, the attractiveness is also questionable. These ads enable some targeting: you can pick your “target”’s gender, age, geographical location, and the category of accounts on which your ads will be displayed. However, cost per follower is rather high (10 RMB or so) and the metrics for targeting remain very rough.

2. Moments ads

Moments ads are much more visible but a much more pricey option (upward of 5 million RMB) to promote your brand. They are restricted to large companies and advertising groups.

WeChat moment ads are also extremely expensive on a per-follower basis: studies show that one follower costs about 50 RMB  (for a very low level of targeting).

3. Why none of them work

At the end of the day, you are left with two options to place your ads:

• Subscription account ads: a poorly targeted platform with average prices, low visibility and low conversion rate
• Moments ads: a very poorly targeted platform with extremely high prices, very high visibility but low conversion rate

The comparison is summarised in the table below:

So, if Tencent ads don’t work, how to advertise on WeChat?

The power of Key Opinion Leaders

There is fortunately another way to advertise on WeChat: key opinion leaders.

Key Opinion Leaders (KOL) are other WeChat accounts which are influential in their specific niche and which are willing to talk about a certain brand in exchange for money or other perks.

KOL are a terrific ways to advertise because they are a trusted source of knowledge and advice for their followers. Advertising from KOL can be completely disguised as a product review or “coup de coeur”, or include discounts to incentivize conversion.

There are other ways to collaborate with KOL. We talked during a previous blog post about Jiutian, an influential fashion blogger who sometimes gives away products from brands in “viral campaigns”: a great way for said brands (here an eyewear brand) to push their products forward, and an efficient way for Jiutian to make her account even more attractive.

Price for a message on a good KOL usually ranges from 5k to 50k RMB (depending on the number of average views and followers, position of the message, time when it is sent, and amount of promotional content within the message)

How to find Key Opinion Leaders

Finding KOL’s is not easy. There were over 9 millions public accounts registered on WeChat as of early this year, and the number is growing fast. How to find the right account to talk about your brand?

A few channels are available:

• The search function from Sogou enables you to look for the most popular WeChat accounts in your industry and potentially reach out to them
  address: http://weixin.sogou.com
• Some companies such as wemedia.cn aggregate and run accounts in specific industries. They are a good option for a first screening
  address: http://wemedia.cn
• Some independent agents work with a variety of accounts accross many industries. Creating a good network of agents is a good way to build industry-specific database of WeChat KOL
• Finally, personal network might come handy when it comes to extremely niche accounts: simply figure out which accounts people in your target industry are following, and get in touch with these accounts

Agencies like WalktheChat would usually use a combination of the above channels, using aggregators, Sogou and agents to narrow-down to a few dozen accounts, and then conduct proper due-diligence in order to select the best value for money for clients.

The problem of fake Key Opinion Leaders

As you start using the methods above and building your KOL database, one problem will soon become obvious:

Fake WeChat advertising accounts.

Fake KOL are sometimes surprisingly difficult to detect for two main reasons:

• They have great content (because they steal it from other accounts)
• Most of their articles have a lot of views, because they use robots to click

The problem is aggravated by the fact that as the marketing value chain gets more complex (company => PR agency => specialised marketing agency => agent => account) there are a lot of incentives for some players to cheat.

Unrealistic KPI’s may also lead to cheating: if your marketing manager’s bonus is indexed on the number of new followers he or she gets to your account with a super-tight budget, there is clear incentive for misbehaving.

How to identify a WeChat KOL with a high ROI? 

We’ve been running sales-focused campaigns for our clients in the past 3 years. And lately, we are consistently getting 300%-500% ROI on WeChat campaigns. Given most of KOL (key opinion leader) campaigns can hardly breakeven, this is an impressive result.

And as always, we are open to sharing our criteria for selecting the KOLs to maximize our clients’ ROI. 

Note we mostly promote niche premium fashion/cosmetics brands

Data, data, data

Yes, data could be fake. But in reality, no one bothers to creates the perfect fake data. You just got to do thorough due diligence.

Is the cost reasonable? 10k – 80k RMB

The cost per article view for high-quality WeChat KOLs is usually 1- 2.5 RMB. We tend to work with KOLs who charge between 10k to 100k RMB per article. Below this range could indicate low-quality or an industry with lower prices (for example sports news compared to fashion or cosmetics).

A cost per view above 2.5 RMB often means an overpriced KOL, which would negatively impact ROI.

Article view 5,000- 80,000

To maximize the ROI, we specifically focus on working with influencers with article views between 5,000-80,000 for the first-article views. Smaller KOLs with high ROI are harder to identify, and high-quality KOL with views above 80,000 tend to charge over 100k for posting one article.

Most of our clients prefer to work with KOLs in the middle price range that can bring high ROI. 

Open rate >1%

Open rate (average view/total follower amount) is a good indicator of followers’ loyalty and stickiness. For example, WalktheChat’s open rate is between 6% to 15%, since we are a small WeChat service account with niche but active followers. 5% is a high open rate for a WeChat subscription account. Ideally, you want to work with KOLs with an open rate between 1% to 10%. 

>0.1% like rate

Above 0.1% like rate (Number of likes/number of article views) is a good indicator of a highly engaging account. 

Other than the article likes, also pay attention to the top comment like. The most liked comment can usually receive around 0.05%-0.3% likes compared to the article’s number of views.

If you see an article with a lot of article likes but no likes on the comments, the likes are most likely fake.

Pay attention to the comments 

Fake comments tend to look similar, while genuine comments usually are quite diverse in content.

A good comment rate (comments amount/views amount) is 0.1%-0.01%. For example, an article with 20k views with 10-20 comments is an excellent engagement rate. 

If an account with over 10k view but don’t have any comments, it’s likely a fake account.  

Ask for conversion data

A KOL that cares about the quality of his/her content should be able to give estimates of conversion rate. Some KOLs may refuse to share their conversion rates due to a lack of understanding of their own campaigns or because they’re trying to hide low performance. In this case, it’s best to test the KOL’s quality, starting with a seeding campaign.

KOL seeding means gifting your products to the KOL for them to try out. If the KOL likes your products, they might be able to mention it in blogs, thus brings free exposure. You can then measure the performance of the KOL by analyzing first-hand data.

Ask for WeChat backend analytics screenshot 

If the KOL is not able to provide conversion rate estimates, does not agree to seeding, and you are not able to tell if the traffic is real or not, then you can ask for a screenshot of their WeChat Official Account backend. 

Traffic source

Good content can have a lot of re-shares, from different channels. For example, re-shares from friends, WeChat moments, history message, and “Liked by friends” section. Unless the article has gone viral, the traffic source should be coming from all of these sources.  

If one of the sources takes up the majority of the traffic, it is a warning that the account might be buying fake views. 

Check to see the percentage of the Official Account followers who read the article. This is an excellent indicator of the stickiness fo the account. 

Ask for the hourly view report 

This is a typical article view by the hour.

The maximum view will be within 2 hours of the article push, then its views will decrease gradually. The initial view amount during the first hour could usually indicate loyalty from the account followers. 

A typical fake view report looks like this: 

A sharp increase in a specific hour, and almost no view afterward. 

Did users read the article all the way to the end?

Heatmap graph is a new analytics feature released by WeChat last week.

Since most KOLs put an action call only towards the very end of the article, whether readers reach the bottom of the article makes a bit difference.

For example, the graph below shows that half of the users finished reading the article.

Other questions

Check out other brands promoted by the KOL

If you can find other similar brands also worked with the KOL, it’s a good indicator, especially if some of them engaged in repeat collaboration.

Is the KOL picky enough? 

A good KOL would be very careful to select the product they want to promote. Do not work with a KOL who says yes to any brand.

Does the KOL write original content for the ads? 

Only work with KOL that creates original advertising content. If the KOL agrees to re-share content provided by the brand, word by word, most likely it’s a poor quality KOL. 

Individual KOL

WeChat public accounts are not the only KOL out there. You can also ask influential individuals to share your messages on their WeChat Moment. 

This is another effective way of promoting your brand because the message which is shared by the individual KOL is one from your own account (as opposed to the Public Account KOL which writes a message with their account and adds a link or QR count to your brand’s WeChat account)

How to find KOL individual? 

Ideally, your customers are the best individual KOLs you can find, because they have experienced your product, and their friends are likely to be your potential customers. 

There are other options: start-ups like Launch Pilot can help you find the most influential students in your location to spread the message.  Other agencies like WeMedia can help you to ask small/medium size companies’ CEOs in your particular industry to share your message.  The price tag for sharing a message starts from 2000 RMB per share up to 10,000 depending on the profile of the specific individual. 

Conclusion

Tencent ad system is performing poorly, and Key Opinion Leaders are a great alternative to promote your brand. However, they should be handled with care. The number of fake KOL and the difficulty to detect real user engagement make it challenging to ensure a high return on investment. If in doubt, reach out to us for some advice!

The post WeChat advertising: the power of Key Opinion Leaders 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.

WHAT DOES IT DO?

WeChat e-commerce

Listing of products with WeChat-friendly UX

Payments

Let your clients pay in Chinese RMB and receive money directly in USD or other local currencies

Coupons

Incentivize your users to purchase more through discounts

Translations

Easily submit your content to be translated by professionals

Analytics

Track your follower growth in real time

Group buying

Give discounts when users buy with friends

O2O conversion

Convert in-store visitors into followers

Customization

Create your own pages to introduce your brand

Hosting

Optimized hosting for great speed in China

The post WeChat store: 5 ways to open a WeChat shop for free appeared first on WalkTheChat.

The post WeChat public accounts: what is the difference between subscription and service accounts? 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.

You can however increase your reading rate by having a killer title.

Newrank recently made an analysis of over 2,000 articles with +100,000 views and found a surprising fact: the average length of the titles are increasing year over year!

This study took the data on February 16th on the last 3 years, and compared the title length. Here is the data:

Longer WeChat titles

There is a clear trend of increasing number of characters in article titles.  The longest title recorded in the study is 61 characters (the most iPhone 7 screen could display are 32 characters). This is partly due to the ever larger mobile screen size.  The title itself becomes a story telling “Tweet” that attract users to click.

Here is an example of a title with 57 characters.

《取消从业资格证！2017年两会只有半个月了，群多的都转一下！让代表们听到3000万卡车司机的呼声！争取今年取消掉！》（ID:卡车之家）

Eliminate the Career Certificate! Only two month till the two meetings (NPC &CPPCC), share if you are in a lot of WeChat groups! Let the congress representatives hear the voice from 30 million truck drivers! Let’s eliminate it this year!  (WeChat account: Truck home)

Example of a typical title with around 22 characters:   

《4分钟微电影：没有一句台词，却感动了所有人！》 （ID:一读）

4-minute short film: not one word is spoke , but it moved everyone!

《邪教教主和他79个妻子，以及被洗脑的少女们》（ID:男人装）

The polygamist cult leader and his 79 wives, and those girls who have been brainwashed

《这家快递公司倒闭了？不要啊，我的快递还在路上》（ID:人民网）

This logistic company is out of business? No… my package is still on its way

You can tell these titles give readers significant context about a particular event and potential readers are likely to click and continue reading.

Question mark and explanation mark are used a lot more in 2017!!!?

Here are a couple of examples:

【提醒】这种车千万别买了！不合法！很危险！接下来或将严查！（ID：人民日报）

[Attention] Never ever buy this type of car! Illegal! Very dangerous! Likely to be restricted in the near future! (WeChat: People’s Daily)

Exclamation marks and question marks are used in order to structure a long title into short digestible chunks.

30% decrease in number of +100,000 articles

Interestingly the number of articles receiving +100,000 views (among the 2,000 accounts polled) has decreased from 1,190 to 727, a 38% decrease in one year! It seems that as the WeChat Official Account market matures, the views are concentrating on a few “super Official Accounts”  with more than 1 million active followers.

Types of WeChat articles

So how should you craft your titles? According to the  Newrank analysis, here are the 4 types of titles that are likely to increase the click through rate.

• Suspense (also called the “classic Buzzfeed hook”)

《寂静后的暴风雨，关于朝鲜的下一个爆炸性消息会是什么？》（ID:局座召忠）

A quiet moment before the storm, what will be the next explosive news from North Korea?

《别人都在聊的金正男，他为什么必须死？》（ID:李淼）

Everyone is talking about Kim Jong-nam, why must he die?

《蛋黄好还是蛋白好？答案原来是这样的……》（ID:丁香医生）

Which is better: egg yolk or egg white? Here is the answer…

《“不爱你的人，你为什么还不放手”》（ID:小北）

Why can’t you leave this person who doesn’t love you?

The bilingual speakers in our audience will appreciate the fact that Chinese headlines tend to breakdown in a 2-parts “Premise, Conclusion” structure, while Western headlines tend to flow in 1 single sentence.

• Creating a twist

《结婚多年，原来我才是小三》（ID:咪蒙）

Married for 3 years, turns out I am the mistress

《真正聪明的人，往往很少交朋友》（ID:拾遗）

The really smart person, usually have fewer friends

《有人问｜为什么他那么脏却又那么帅》（ID:gogoboi）

They ask | Why does he look so sloppy yet so handsome

《她脱了我的裤子，就为买一个包！》（ID:任真天）

She take off my pants, just to buy a bag!

Here again, most of the headlines are cut into a 2 parts “Premise, Twist” structure. The separation between the two parts is done with punctuation (, ! ?) or with a vertical separator (|), less likely to be seen in Western headlines.

• Exaggeration

《这个吃人的美女丧尸保证分分钟让你笑成傻逼》（ID:有部电影）

This beauty cannibal zombie will make you laugh within minutes

Exaggeration is a good way to attract reads (we’re using it quite a bit ourselves), but keep in mind that you have to stay within boundaries. Completely misleading headlines might be labeled as “false rumors” or break the terms of use of Tencent, therefore creating the risk of your article getting deleted or even of your account getting banned.

• Useful

《如何在工作压力超大的情况下，提高生活质量？》（ID:十点读书）

How to improve the quality of your life, when you are under huge pressure from work?

《点开看看，你的血脂正常吗？这么做，有效降血脂！》（ID:健康头条）

Click to check, is your blood cholesterol normal? Here is what you can do to decrease your blood cholesterol!

《关于分数线你必须了解的信息》（ID:肖秀荣教授）

What you must know about college exam scores

The safest way to write headlines is of course to get back to the core principle: usefulness. It is very subjective for us to decide what is exciting, tempting or funny. But it is fairly objective to figure out what is useful. For young accounts trying to get initial traction, focusing on clearly stating why your article will deliver value to users remains the easiest way to maximize open rates.

Conclusion

High click through rate is correlated with the length of the title. It doesn’t mean longer titles would guarantee a higher click through rate. The key is to give context to your followers and create a title that they can relate with. And sometimes, it is might even be okay to exaggerate a bit : )

The post How to create the best WeChat article title? The 3 rules that you should follow appeared first on WalkTheChat.

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