With more than 800 million users, We Chat is one of the most preferred social media messaging platforms for the Chinese. Though it resembles WhatsApp, Line, and Viber, it offers a lot more than just a messaging app. The designer of We Chat Tencent added many more features that businesses have been leveraging aggressively since 2014.

Though there are many social media sites like Renren, Pengyou, Douban, Youku, Jiepang, Sina Weibo, and Tencent Weibo in China, if your goal is to sell to China online, WeChat is one main channel you should not ignore. As you move ahead in this post, you will soon realize why we stress on this.

Why should you focus on selling on WeChat?

WeChat has immense popularity among the Chinese. Its main features being customer service and sharing of information within the groups, Chinese are increasingly doing their purchases on this platform for years. WeChat is more social in its features compared to Weibo. On WeChat people can form groups of up to 100 members with like interests.

A special feature that makes it easy for businesses to sell to China Online through WeChat is users can directly buy the products without needing to log out from their accounts. The database of users and their wallet amounts are streamlined for an easy purchase experience. This makes it comfortable for users to directly buy from the WeChat account as and when they see an advert about a product.

Four Effective Strategies to Sell to China Online using WeChat

Here are four simple and effective strategies to sell to China online using WeChat.

Promotional Posts

Businesses can let their customers know about their new launches, promotions, and offers through promotional posts on their business accounts. Examples of such businesses that made a boost in sales through WeChat promotional posts include the popular pizza and fast-food chain McDonald’s. The promotional campaigns can include articles, short messages along visual impact content.

Moment Ads

Moments on WeChat are akin to Stories on Facebook. Users can share it with their connections and friends. Businesses can use this feature to share photos and articles related to promotions. Successful campaigns that leveraged this Moment Ads feature include short videos, articles, and ads. However, brands have to pay WeChat for featuring their ads. This is a well-received way on WeChat and the ROI is proven in many cases in the past.

Account Ads

Account ads are those that appear at the bottom of the articles on WeChat. They are one of the most preferred ways to sell products on WeChat. The response is good for this strategy and many products including baby products to cosmetics have boosted their sales via these account ads.

Selling by directly creating an online store

On We Chat, businesses can create their online stores. The process may need time like many e-commerce platforms in China. But an advantage with this strategy is businesses can directly interact with their customers. This idea also removes the barriers of the complex arrangement of groups in WeChat where businesses cannot reach a huge number of audiences at once unlike on Facebook or Twitter.

Additionally, if you are keen to make the maximum use of WeChat, you should also explore Strategic Partnerships. Here, brands that are tied with the WeChat creators can gain upper hand in reaching more users through their partnership. However, since 2014, WeChat has eased its restrictions and now many brands are using this partnership feature to boost their sales.

With this, brands can get featured on WeChat wallets too thus attracting more reach and user base. Starbucks and Mobik are examples of some brands that explored the maximum potential of this feature.

Conclusion

WeChat offers immense potential to get closer to the target audience in realizing your dreams of selling in China online. An important aspect that you must understand here is to maintain frequent and immediate response to the audience’s queries and comments to sustain their confidence and increase your reach. On social media, it is the mouth of the word, that helps in widening one’s presence and by maintaining a proper communication with the audience, it is possible to gain the best from WeChat.