How to use WeChat for marketing?
With big names in Australia, including Myers, David Jones and Chadstone, adopting WeChat as one of their major marketing channels, more and more businesses are trying to catch on the bandwagon. But how can you actually market your brand on WeChat?
Step 1: Register an Official Account
Having a WeChat Official Account to represent your business on the prominent Chinese social media platform is the fundamental entry to market your brand to over 3 million WeChat users in Australia.
An Official Account on WeChat is equivalent to a business page on Facebook or a business profile on Instagram. It acts as the official content outlet from your brand on WeChat. With a verified account, not only can you post product updates, holiday discounts or any other promotional material that are usually posted on other social medias, it also offers confidence to your followers as a trustworthy portal to contact your business.
In order to register an account under the name of your business, relevant documents are required to demonstrate the business registration and the ownership of the business. A remittance is also required by Tencent to complete the verification process.
Step 2: Setting up your Official Account
Congrats on finishing your first baby step. Yet, it is just the beginning of building your fully-fledged Official Account. One of the most common requirements are the name of the Official Account.
WeChat will assign a default name to your Official Account according to the business registration on your documents. However, the registered name might differ from the trading name of your company. In such cases, a change of name request has to be performed.
Other than name alterations, there are multiple operations that you can perform to enhance the customer experience of your Official Account. One of the notable additions are the implementation of “FAQ” section that can lead your customers to their answers before they have to consult one of your staffs.
Extending from the “FAQ” section, businesses can offer information automatically through their official accounts, including menus, digital brochures and more.
Step 3: Regular updates
Much like Instagram and Facebook, regular updates help to increase and retain your followers. Whilst the Official Account presents as the official news outlet from your business, the content that you can distribute through an Official Account is just as creative as you post on other social medias.
Yet, the most popular form of promotion used on WeChat is referred as “articles”. Contrasting to the general expectation of a mundane page of words, articles in WeChat are powered with unique features.
GIFs are highly incorporated in articles in WeChat to offer more attractive visuals among the words. The incorporation of moving images in WeChat articles has been the key to the popularity of the platform in marketing brands with a lively touch.
Step 4: Converting the followers
While a WeChat Official Account presents as a content creation and distribution platform, the conversion of followers relies on other aids. To develop WeChat as a holistic marketing platform, Tencent has developed the Mini Program platform to WeChat in 2017.
Working like an application within WeChat, Mini Program is renowned to provide an intuitive experience without the need of installation. The integration of WeChat Pay in the later stage has allowed in-app product purchase and extended WeChat into the eCommerce industry.
Other workarounds, like an H5 page, can also perform similar capabilities in order to encourage followers to purchase products or services from the brand to create a holistic marketing platform from earning potential customers to making actual sales.
