The interview of Olivier VEROT, founder of GMA, digital agency in China.
“With WeChat, all you need to know to reach Chinese consumers!”.
Let's discover together 4 ways to sell on the Wechat messaging platform and attract Chinese distributors
With more than a billion active users per month, Wechat represents a veritable Swiss army knife and offers an "All in One" offer in which Chinese people can communicate, play, search for products, buy or pay from their mobile. By creating your official Wechat account, users will be able to subscribe to your account to follow your news, receive "push" notifications, but also be redirected to your e-commerce site.
All Chinese distributors are using wechat EVERY day
Develop your visibility on Wechat, to be found by Chinese distributors
In China, Wechat is part of the daily life of Chinese Internet users. A real personal space, the social platform does not adopt an aggressive advertising strategy since it chooses to expose its users to only one sponsored content per day. This means that advertising must be as relevant as possible.
To make you aware of its users, Wechat provides advertisers with two advertising formats:
banner ads (or "Banners Ads") that appear at the bottom of articles written by an official Wechat account. They consist of a logo, an account name, a title and a "Call to Action".
When the user clicks on the banner, he is redirected to a page with additional information on a brand or product. As for the “Call to Action” button, this sends the user to a landing page. Charged at CPC, this format is preferred for long-term campaigns and in order to acquire new subscribers.
Moment Ads is not good for B2B, better to reach consumers
“Moments” (or “Moments Ads”) ads that appear in the “Moment” news feed of Wechat users. Commonly used by advertisers, this CPM-billed format promotes your brand. This advertisement consists of the brand name and a profile photo, a description of 40 characters in Chinese, a link to an html5 page and photos (6 maximum) or videos.
Total retail distribution on WeChat :
Retail sites totaled 7,180 billion Yuan (955 billion Euros) in 2017, according to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.
WeChat : how to sell on crossborder to China ?
Cross-border consumers are expected to constitute more than 50% of Chinese digital consumers by 2020.
Cross-border sales of E-Commerce in China are not subject to any taxes.
Customs taxes in certain categories have been divided by more than two for products purchased on foreign websites.
There are fabulous opportunities for foreign companies to sell their products to Chinese consumers through a Wechat store. Take advantage of the growing Chinese E-Commerce sector and increase your sales!
Promotional on WeChat works well !
Okay, now that we have a Wechat account, it's time to showcase our brand.
The hard part here will be to make sure that enough potential consumers receive this item.
To be informed, Wechat users must follow your company page.
A very appreciated and very effective technique consists in organizing a promotional event in a specific place during a given period (1 hour for example).
In order to increase your number of subscribers, you will advise your customers to follow you on social networks to stay informed of all promotional sales.
Advertising on Wechat
- Advertising on the newsfeed
- News feed is Wechat's most popular feature.
Users can update their status, share photos, short videos and articles with relatives and friends.
Businesses can pay to appear on the feeds of targeted users. These ads are usually in the form of text, images or videos. If the reader is interested, he can click on the "Learn more" button which redirects the reader either to the product highlighted, or to the brand's official account or to the brand's official website.
Direct Advertising on WeChat
Another possibility for brands is to use direct advertising, which appears in the form of a banner at the bottom of Wechat articles. When the user finishes reading the article, he sees an advertisement.
Open an official store and link it to your Wechat account
One of the popular ways to sell on Wechat is to open an online store where the user can directly view and purchase the products.
in China branding first, then distributors will find you
Finding a quality distributor in China is a notoriously difficult task, especially for a new brand with little reputation and low levels of brand awareness. Distributors will be incredibly selective & want to see products and brands that have already made some kind of an impact.
Develop landings pages in HTML5 to attract distributors
With Wechat, it is possible to sell your products through the creation of landing pages in HTML5 within your official account, so as to offer a personalized experience to users of the platform. Quick and easy to develop, this format is suitable for actions limited in time or to highlight a subset of products. It is suitable for example for specific actions or the launch of capsule collections as the luxury brand Dior was able to do in 2016. Chinese distributors love beautiful H5 page
https://www.wechat.com/en/
Connect your JingDong store to Wechat
On Wechat, it is also possible to integrate an existing JingDong store (京东) into your official account. In this way, the management of your sales and transactions is carried out directly through the JD.com platform. As for the JD store, it automatically adapts to mobile navigation, without the need for further development.
If this store allows you to get started quickly and take advantage of the JD.com platform, the user experience is more reduced since it is standardized and therefore less customizable.
Develop e-commerce tool to allow distributors to resell and get a commission
The Wechat social platform also gives you the possibility of integrating your e-commerce site via APIs. If you wish to choose this option, however, be sure to respect the following: language, currency, payment method (Wechat Pay), or even adapt your site for mobile…
If you do not want to go through an intermediary store like JD, you can also create your own store. Completely developed for browsing on Wechat, this alternative offers the best experience for users of the platform since it perfectly matches the uses of Wechat. Regarding investments in development and integration, the amount will vary depending on demand.
after it is the problem to get commission on wechat store and how to manage and engage your distributors
