Ultimate Guide To WeChat Advertising & Growth

What do You Need to Know about WeChat? How To Grow & Advertise Your Business in the Smartest Way?

Tencent’s WeChat, as China’s largest social media platform with 987 million Monthly Active Users, has evidently developed a fascinating & lucrative model for growth in what has become a ‘WeChat Centric Society’. It is the bedrock of social communications in China & the platform you need to develop a presence on as part of any comprehensive strategy.

Here I want to explore the key features of:

1. Practical Advertising Strategy
2. How to Leverage WeChat as a Powerful Tool for Growth

The aim is to help you come to informed conclusions about China’s number one social network and how you can utilize it for growth in a pragmatic way.

WeChat Reached 902 Million Daily Logged in Users on September 2017, Up 17% YoY.

What is WeChat’s Vision?

Consider here a short
run-down of WeChat services

When advertising products & services on WeChat it’s vital to understand the e-wallet / WeChat payment system. This is a digital payment service linked to a users bank account for instant payment on the platform.

For advertising products this lends itself often to ‘Flash Sales’ or ‘Impulsive Purchasing’. The power of this payment is that it couples e-commerce with social networking. WeChat hosted stores can be utilized to drive traffic and generate sales all without leaving this platform.

Consider then that in-system ads drive traffic to an WeChat hosted store which allows for an in-built and instant payment. In many ways an advertisers dream.

The effectiveness of advertising on WeChat is that users do not leave the platform. This also means you must optimize content at every stage of the advertising process (HMTL5 Format for WeChat).

This is the key for any new brand or business on WeChat. It’s essential to understand that WeChat is a closed network, that is, users can only see posts & content if they are connected with you.

For content to be visible you need to develop and build that community around your account. I view WeChat as a key portal for not just sharing information but also engaging with users in Q&A, sending news-letters & ultimately providing incentives for followers to engage with your account.

The most powerful incentive is quality content; what unique offering, insights and education can you provide to the end user? What will keep them returning to your account and instil that much sought phenomena of brand loyalty.

• Keep Content Focused on Your Specific Niche
• Establish yourself as a native expert in your area
• Provide completely unique insights / offers that are only available from your account.
• Consider HTML5 content formatting for a far superior user experience.
• It sounds so obvious but remain highly social, re-post and re-share user generated content on your page, bring consumers into the conversation and reward them for your doing so.
• Quality content equates to shares on ‘moments feeds’, nothing is more powerful than P2P sharing amongst social groups.

So what you have is a chicken/egg situation, how do you grow your followers without that current base & social group.

Evidently you need content to be viewed outside of your network.

Organic growth on WeChat

Group Integration & Posting

Content is actively re-shared outside of your social network into targeted groups, the effectiveness of this depends on the target market in terms of group interest & engagement levels but a quality strategy involves having access to quality, high level groups that are less associated with spam but linked to active conversation.

Content (weekly or daily) can be posted in groups and then animated through conversation + relevant topic discussion. Spam groups are avoided and will not drive traffic to articles or posts whilst quality groups will. Regular discussions led my multiple members it the key (rather than one domineering one).

A smart strategy therefore utilizes multiple accounts posting covertly.

Once through to the article users can engage with the content, leave comments & reach a call to action to follow the account.

Hence still the phrase holds true, content really is king.

Re-Posting & Sharing

Organic strategies can
drive traffic to

One of WeChat’s defining traits is the development of it’s own eco-system. Users remain within the system for;One of WeChat’s defining traits is the development of it’s own eco-system. Users remain within the system for:

• Social communications
• Moments/news feed updates
• Web links (WeChat Browser)
• Mini apps/programmes optimized within this ecosystemShopping (via WeChat Stores)
• E-wallet payments/transfers
• Didi (taxi ordering application)
• Dating/Ticket Booking Third Party Apps
• Mapping/Location Sharing Services

And the list really does go on.. But what does this mean?
For advertisers you have an incredible amount of data on consumers.
WeChat actually has historically been a trickier platform for advertisers with higher minimum spends and fewer ad options than China’s second largest network ‘Weibo’.

One reason for this is that Weibo boasts an ad structure more akin to Facebook whilst WeChat has adopted a different methodology.

One explanation for WeChat’s mass uptake on such a scale is the platforms determination to keep the user funnel relatively free of ads and focus on user experience before monetizing through paid promotions.

But international companies want to reach WeChat users. Therefore ad options are changing and becoming more accessible for registered accounts.

Moments Ads

Moments ads can drive traffic to

A normal Moments ad consists of the following elements:

• Advertiser’s name and profile picture
• Text: A short description of less than 40 characters
• Visuals: Up to 6 pictures or a short video that lasts up to 15 seconds
• Hyperlink: Link to a promotional article, a native advertising page, a list of previous articles from an official account, an app download page or external H5 pages.

Moments ads adopt the CPM (Cost per 1,000 impressions) pricing model. There are also two purchasing schemes: scheduling and auction.

• For the scheduling scheme (排期购买), advertisers can schedule a fixed advertising time during the following 2 to 28 days. The price also depends on where the ad will be displayed. The minimum budget is 50,000 RMB for one advertising campaign.
• For the auction scheme (竞价购买), it’s more suitable for advertisers who need flexible advertising times and constant optimization of the ad. It’s based on real-time bidding and the minimum budget is 1,000 RMB for one day.

There is now a greater degree of interactivity with companies such as Trip Advisor encouraging users to comment and interact with content. In an interview with social beta Trip advisor commented that they had ‘replied to 1000’s of comments’ (see below).

Advertising opting this social approach is very important in a unique WeChat ecosystem.

WeChat Moment ads are also far more focused on video content, and have developed a clearer format for an improved user experience. This integrates the content all onto a single ad banner & allows for increased company interactivity on ads.

Banner Ads – A More Targeted Reach

Banner ads can drive traffic to

Banner ads have also developed with a greater range of options

1. Footer ad (底部广告) – a banner placed below a WeChat article with a call-to-action button 

    

2. Video ad (视频贴片广告) – Pre-roll ads in a video

   WeChat also allows advertisers to place a pre-roll ad that lasts no longer than 15 seconds before a video* inserted in a WeChat article. The ad will show up when the video is played in a Wi-Fi environment. There’s also a “Learn more” button in the bottom right corner that takes users to another landing page for further information.

    

   *The video must be longer than 5 minutes.

For the standard footer banner ads, the primary pricing model is CPC (Cost per click).

• For the auction scheme (竞价购买), it’s more suitable for advertisers who need flexible advertising time and constant optimization of the ad. The advertising cost is determined by the number of ad clicks. It’s based on real-time bidding and the minimum bidding price for each click is 0.5 RMB.
• For the scheduling scheme (排期购买), it is ONLY open to account ads for the purpose of promoting the brand or a campaign. Advertisers can schedule a fixed advertising time during the following 2 to 28 days. The price also depends on the location where the ad will be displayed. The pricing model is CPM in this case and the minimum budget is 1,000 RMB for one advertising campaign.

In Conclusion

GMA Your Mainland Team

GMA are one of the largest & most reputable digital marketing agencies in Mainland China. They focus purely on Chinese digital strategy & implementation.

If you have a serious project in mind please contact us for more information.

WeChat is a core aspect of GMA’s Business:

We work extensively in:

• Mini/Micro Site Development
• Ad Campaign Management
• Content Promotion Strategy (Organic)
• WeChat Content Creation & Formatting
• Reporting & Analytics
• HTML5 Content & Account Development

Why Choose GMA for WeChat Development:

• We are Tencent Official Partner
• 5+ years of WeChat experience
• WeChat content & formatting specialists
• In-depth reporting & analytics
• An international team of 42 in China
• We manage all projects in-house