Wechat B2B Marketing in China

You may have heard that WeChat is an essential mobile application in China. It is used for everything from instant messaging to news to mobile payments.

However, in order to let everyone know for the first time the daily use of WeChat in China, I would like to share with you the personal experience of the application.

“I just had a Spring Festival in China. During this festival, the Chinese traditionally give each other a gift called “red envelope”.”

WeChat introduced the function of electronic envelopes three years ago, and many Chinese have turned to this simple and seamless way to continue this tradition. I was able to quickly send a red envelope to my cousins ​​and other city neighbors through WeChat.

Tencent, the parent company of WeChat, said my red envelope is only a handful compared with the 46 billion electronic red envelopes exchanged in the new year.

43.3% more than last year. WeChat has become a must-have application for the Chinese New Year, a way for WeChat to connect and simplify Chinese life.

China Internet Watch shows WeChat users use WeChat 53.3% daily, countless times, and the vast majority (87%) of users use it more than 10 times a day.

To learn more about WeChat, check out the WeChat platform and other popular social media applications I’ve posted before.

Today, I dig deeper into how WeChat can be used for your B2B marketing goals. The first suggestion is to create a WeChat official account.

What is the WeChat public number?

WeChat public account is the official channel for businesses and individuals to interact with customers and audience through the platform.

Registration is free; as long as you have a WeChat account, you can quickly register an official account, your personal identification card or business license.

Through WeChat public account management platform, companies can provide updates, enhance brand awareness, promote products and services.

When WeChat subscribers subscribe to your official account, you can interact with subscribers in a variety of ways: share content, communicate via text / voice, and even set up various features / services through the API.

3 WeChat public account

WeChat public account has three types: subscription account, service account and corporate account. Let’s see what makes each one different:

Subscribe to the account

Subscription accounts are like daily news feeds. These accounts can publish an update to users daily. An update can be a single post or multiple posts tied together; depending on your content productivity and market needs.

Although a subscription account can provide your followers with more frequent interaction opportunities, your profile is in the Subscriptions subfolder, and your followers do not receive any specific push notifications when posting.

As the screenshot above shows, your profile is competing with all other official accounts and your audience will have to find your information truthfully.
This type of account is best for publications or blogs.

Service Account

As the name suggests, a service account is mainly used for businesses and services. Limited in some areas; WeChat allows only four updates per month for this type of account. However, your profile will appear in the WeChat conversation timeline, and subscribers will receive a reminder when they post an update.

With less frequency, you can avoid annoying followers with lots of updates and you’ll have more time to produce better content.

In addition, there are many WeChat features (such as CRM, custom menus, payment integration, and mini-websites) that can only be used for service accounts.
For B2B companies or corporate brands, the service account is a good choice.

Business account

Corporate accounts are mainly used as internal communication tools for the organization. The information and management of these accounts is more secure. Since we rarely use marketing, we will not discuss much here.

B2B marketers face the challenge of WeChat

Although WeChat has great opportunities, there are also some challenges in using WeChat as an effective marketing tool.

Take a look at the following data:
• Overcrowding: WeChat public accounts exceeded 12 million in 2016 and will grow to 14.15 million by 2017 (from iiMedia Research).

• Using promotional tools: 75% of companies are using WeChat promotion (from CNNIC).
• High competition: 7 million articles published daily (from iiMedia Research).
• Limited user attention: 60% of official accounts keep updating content, but only 10% of official accounts continue to draw the attention of users (from iiMedia Research).
• Content Quality: 65.2% of Internet users cancel their WeChat official accounts due to poor content, 57

Nine percent of Internet users cancel their subscription due to infrequent updates (from iiMedia Research). What do these statistics tell us? Marketers need to break the noise, differentiate themselves from competitors, deliver high-quality content, and target their audiences.

Let’s take a look at what specific actions B2B marketers can take to overcome these challenges. Best Practices for WeChat Public Accounts CNNIC’s research found five important ways to search WeChat public accounts: keyword, QR code scanning, friend recommendation, circle of friends sharing, Weibo business account. B2B companies need to ensure that they can be found in five ways.

Choose your official account name wisely When users search for an official account, they put the keyword in the search box. However, to meet their needs and interests, your official name should not be too broad, too narrow, too narrow or even impossible to find.

So, how to name your WeChat public account is a tactical decision that needs to be made in China. People like to scan QR codes to receive information or contact people or organizations.

Businesses should include QR codes in their promotional materials: websites, catalogs, trade shows, and even business cards. Creating a Complete Content Strategy Content marketing is a key component of

WeChat social marketing

You need to conduct a thorough investigation of your target audience and develop a comprehensive content strategy before catching up with your official account. A few things to note: • Make sure your content is relevant and relevant to your audience.

Make your content visually appealing, interactive and engaging – people do not spend time on boring content. WeChat encourages and supports original content from official accounts; those that simply copy others’ articles, not original content, will have a lower exposure than articles that post original content.