The Best Guide to WeChat Advertising in China in 2021

Intro

WeChat(Weixin) is a Chinese multi-purpose messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. Chinese people use it to send text messages, voice messages(hold-to-talk), share photographs, videos, locations, and provide broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, etc. In China, WeChat is a lifestyle, almost an app for everything.

Furthermore, 2021 is the eleventh year of WeChat and the ninth year of the WeChat official account. On May 20, Tencent released its 2021 Q1 financial report. According to this report, the combined monthly active accounts of WeChat was 1.241 billion, a year-on-year increase of 3.3% and a month-on-month increase of 1.4%. The WeChat ecosystem is still active under the common composition of official accounts, video accounts, mini-programs, and corporate WeChat, and user stickiness continues to grow.

In recent years, an increasing number of international brands have actively used social media in China-WeChat. Through the WeChat official account, merchants communicated with specific groups of text, pictures, voice, and video on the WeChat platform. They formed a mainstream online and offline WeChat interactive marketing method.

There are already many companies and individuals who have created a WeChat official account to promote growth in sales and grow their business. With such a huge number of active users and official accounts, global merchants undoubtedly want to use this platform to enter the Chinese market.

On the road of digital exploration, how are the big brands doing WeChat marketing?

There are many aspects to WeChat marketing. In this guide, Enlybee will take inventory for you about the WeChat advertising strategy of some famous brands who did well, and there are also contents about the WeChat advertising budget.

We believe this will be useful for any brands, including those in the Education Sectors considering entering the Chinese market with online advertising. (For the Education sector, see our earlier blog about recruiting Chinese Students via WeChat : https://bit.ly/3ysbSQu)

Chanel: Strengthen the Brand Concept Through Storytelling on WeChat

Storytelling is the basic operation of many famous brands when they do WeChat advertising and marketing.

In addition to telling stories about their products in articles, the WeChat accounts of many brands also introduced brand development history, founder philosophy, and other news developments through storytelling. For example, Tiffany introduced the history of the brand in an article on the WeChat public account. Dior connected the history of the brand heritage with a small link of thumbnails, and Chanel introduced a well-designed H5 interface, The legendary life of Chanel, and the memorabilia of the development of the Chanel brand. At present, the Inside Chanel column of the Chanel official account has updated 32 chapters to introduce the history, philosophy, and related stories of Chanel’s different products.

Even telling stories reflects in the clothing matching information and beauty tutorials of these luxury brands. For example, at the bottom of Chanel’s WeChat official account, they opened a video area in the brand story column in 2015 and launched the Chanel Beauty Talks. In the video series, each episode is by its brand’s global creative makeup and colour designer, Pica, together with a Chanel ambassador to provide the audience with tips on using cosmetics.

At present, Chanel’s official account no longer has a video column, and there is a new WeChat video account. It released videos cooperating with famous dancers, psychologists, writers, and other celebrities from all over the world, passing Chanel’s brand concept and culture. At the same time, the account also publishes Chanel product information and brand latest news, which is also a good way to promote their products and gain potential customers.

Coach: Efficiently Attract Traffic Through Moments Ads

WeChat Moments ads are native ads displayed in the user’s Moments in original content forms. While performing precise targeting based on the characteristics of the WeChat user group, they carry out interactive communication through social relationships. The closed loop based on the ecological experience of WeChat’s native functions can maximise the value of advertising and create a unique new social advertising model in China.

The precise placement of advertisements can become an efficient traffic portal.

As a natural advertising traffic portal that can accurately target audiences, Moments advertising has naturally become another “marketing position” that many brands are willing to pay for. Currently, the information stream advertisements presented in Moments mainly include “text + image + link” and “text + video + link”. Among them, in the part of diversion to external links, it includes the familiar and popular H5 and other external links.

Zhang Xiaolong the founder of WeChat, once said, “20% of users go to the subscription account to select content, and 80% of users read this content in Moments.” And H5, which has its own social communication attributes, has also become a major “secret weapon” for many big names in WeChat Moments ads. According to statistics, luxury brands like Cartier, Chanel, Coach, and Lancome, have all appeared in Moments with new products in a unique and simple style.

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For example, Coach, which is keen on digital platforms and social media, has made a good case in the #MyFirstCoach UGC marketing strategy launched on Mother’s Day in 2015 using WeChat Moments advertising. Users can directly jump to the H5 interface produced by Coach by clicking on the link displayed on the Moments advertisement.

In addition to enjoying a warm advert specially created for Mother’s Day, everyone is also invited to participate in the “Upload a picture of mother and daughter” UGC activity by adding Coach’s official WeChat account.

More than 100,000 WeChat users gave this Mother’s Day WeChat Moments information stream advertisement a “like”, and the number of subscribers to the Coach official account also increased by 35,000, which brought a lot of response. In addition, Louis Vuitton Klein has also chosen WeChat Moments ads to match its #myLouisVuitton marketing strategy.

What are the Advantages of WeChat Advertising?

Users with one billion+ monthly active users are between fifteen to forty years old, with 93% coverage of core user groups in first-tier cities. Twenty million+ high-quality official accounts have opened, and the number of images and texts on the WeChat official accounts platform has reached three billion+.

For advertisers, the WeChat official accounts platform has four unparalleled advantages.

1. Mass users: almost all Chinese mobile Internet users are covered.

2. Accurate reach: They base all orientations on people, effectively reaching every target user.

3. Systematic delivery tools: The platform provides complete and visualised effect evaluation data to help advertisers track and analyse the delivery situation.

4. Closed-loop ecology: Based on the platform ecology, it provides closed-loop solutions such as official accounts subscription, card, and voucher issuance, LBS, and mini-programs.

And every optimisation of platform product may provide advertising operators with excellent operating methods.

WeChat Advertising Types

First, the advertiser’s marketing goals determine the type of WeChat advertising service. So far, WeChat advertising provides eight kinds of promotion goals, namely: promote brand activities, promote my store, promote my apps, promote my products, promote my official account, distribute coupons, collect sales leads, and promote my mini-games.

And each promotion target has its corresponding advertising type to choose from.

1. WeChat Official account advertisement

The WeChat official account advertisement is an advertisement in four spaces in a form like the content of the official account article: the bottom of the article, the middle of the article, the mutual selection advertisement, and the video clip.

2.WeChat Moments Ads

WeChat Moments Advertising is a form of original content like those posted by friends that accurately locates the target group of users in WeChat Moments. It includes two product forms: regular ads and card ads.

1. Advertiser’s avatar and nickname: users can click to jump directly to the advertiser’s official account introduction page; 2. Advertising slogan; 3. Picture; 4. Text link; 5. Store logo (stores offline can display here); 6. User social interaction.

3. Mini-Program Ads

WeChat mini-program advertising is an original ecological advertisement based on WeChat mini-programs and mini-games, and the traffic owner of mini-programs determines the actual placement of the ads. It includes two types of advertising: banner advertising and incentive advertising.

The common display positions of banner ads are article page-end of an article, detail page-bottom of page, information flow-top of information flow, or between information flow.

The common display positions of incentive advertisements are points/gold coin rewards, unlocking new features, end of game round, game props experience.

4. WeChat KOLs Advertising

KOLs(Key Opinion Leaders/Influencers) are people that have more product information being accepted or trusted by related groups and a greater influence on their buying behaviour.

In the era of the information explosion, people’s attention has become a rare resource. On social media with complex information with attention from the audience of KOLs, the information they publish has greater exposure and is seen by more people. If the brand selects the right influencers of their fans on the WeChat official account, the advertising can help achieve effective results through the right audience reach.

Speak to the Enlybee team to find out more about your potential KOLs partners. https://bit.ly/2Vzcrtf

How to Manage Your Budget for WeChat Advertising?

WeChat has formulated different sales thresholds, pricing standards, and release time models based on different advertising content and placement locations. The minimum and maximum sales threshold is different based on the industry; the pricing standard is on every thousand exposure or clicks, and there are scheduled purchases and bidding according to the release time.

So far, WeChat advertising has launched four purchase methods: purchase according to the exposure schedule, exposure bidding, click bidding, and single article purchase.

How to manage your budget?

The following content can be more precise and clearer to understand the pricing.

How to charge: Put Moments ads through the MP self-service terminal(WeChat official account platform), charge according to the number of exposures, and price by geographical tiers.

• Core cities [2]

Beijing, Shanghai

• Key cities [20]

Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Suzhou, Chongqing, Nanjing, Tianjin, Xi’an, Shenyang, Changsha, Qingdao, Ningbo, Zhengzhou, Dalian, Xiamen, Jinan, Harbin, Fuzhou

• Ordinary city

Cities other than the above-mentioned core and key cities

How to purchase: Advertise Moments ads through the MP self-service terminal, and advertisers can choose between these two purchase methods:

(1) Scheduled purchase:

• Schedule 1-28 days in advance to lock in the target exposure (guaranteed)

• The unit price of CPM is executed according to the regular price of the publication

• Open to all cities

• The total budget for a single ad placement starts from about £5,000.

• Applicable to two types of advertisements: graphic and video advertisements

(2) Bid:

• Choose the launch date in advance to locate the range of target group (not guaranteed)

• advertisers set the CPM bids and can adjust in real-time based on performance

• Daily budget can start from £100

• Open to all cities

• Applicable to two types of advertisements: graphic and video advertisements

Do efficient advertising on social media

How to Launch a WeChat ad？

1. Clear promotion goals

(1) Brand activities, application downloads, or WeChat official accounts promotion.

(2) Choose the form of advertisement: graphic or video advertisement.

(3) Choose the purchase method of this advertisement: scheduled purchase or bidding.

The system will recommend suitable placement settings according to the advertiser’s different placement purposes.

2. Program review

WeChat shows that they will give back the review opinions within 24 hours but note that is within working days. Except for possible revisions and resubmissions for review, they require at least four working days in advance.

3. Advertisement goes online

After the review passes, you can feel at ease. Before releasing the ad, you can configure the preview to ensure that people can see the Moments ad and add their WeChat accounts to the background whitelist; for example, the project owner or whoever oversees the cooperation channels. There should be no more than forty people. In addition, the preview whitelist is limited to users in China who must submit a WeChat account. Mobile phone numbers or QQ numbers are not applicable. Preview whitelist users must subscribe to the official account.

4. Tracking effect

WeChat official account supports online real-time monitoring of various data: the number of exposures, detailed page views, image clicks, likes and comments, followers, and reposts.

During the advertising process, advertisers can monitor various data indicators online in real-time. Advertisers can view the report online within three working days after the end of the advertisement, fully understand the effect of the advertisement and optimise the subsequent advertising strategy on the data.

Conclusion

The above cases are only a small part of the value of tapping WeChat by some brands. For many international brands accustomed to Facebook and Instagram, WeChat in China still has many functions and methods far from being explored.

In Enlybee’s view, marketing on WeChat enhances the interaction and builds a better brand image for potential target customers. In the future, WeChat could be the key to widening the gap with the opponent. To hold this key in advertising marketing, Enlybee could be your perfect partner. Speak to our team now: https://bit.ly/3hIl6CG 

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