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Wechat Marketing tipsComments OffMaximize your impact by putting your marketing effort on the right APPs is key to your success.
The potential of Chinese market is not to be demonstrated anymore and adapting your tactics to the Chinese culture is worth…
As of December 2015, WeChat reached over 650 million active users (more than 88% of those users are chinese).
Its direct competitors, Skype, Whatsapp, Viber and Line reach just over 300 million, 800 million, 100 million and 560 million.
Worldwide, WeChat ranks in the top 2 most popular social networking-messaging applications, based solely on active users.
From a China perspective, WeChat is by far the single most popular application.
– Unlike WhatsApp, Wechat is not just a mobile phone messaging application, it also out-competes RenRen (the equivalent of Facebook in China) by having more active users.
– Unlike WhatsApp, WeChat is also China’s default messaging service on PCs and Tablets. Knowing that CTRs are higher on PCs and Tablets, this aspect brings greater visibility and higher CTRs for advertisers.
– It is also the default video chat app in the way that Skype is to users within the United States.
WeChat is truly the dominant social media in China.
Considering non-Chinese users only, WeChat’s total active users will not be representative of its popularity in English speaking markets such as USA, Canada, Australia etc.
Like Whatsapp, if the user were to lose their phone or change their number, they would be able to transfer all their contacts and messages onto a new phone. WeChat shares all the important features of Whatsapp such as Group Chat, Text Chat, Voice Chat, Web Chat, sending photos and videos and sharing location.
Thus, it combines the advantages of social networking offered by Facebook, the mobile phone usability of WhatsApp and video messaging popularity of Skype all in one single platform.
If you consider to engage the Chinese market from a long-term business standpoint, wechat is a MUST.
WeChat offers greater usability and several features which outdo its current competition.
WeChat Users, what you need to know
Looking at the demographics of Wechat users in China, we realize WeChat looks like Facebook in United States in the mid-2000s, meaning
it’s primarily used by youth and trendy segments in major cities of China.
Age: Only 15% of WeChat users are aged over 35, and of these, Chinese natives constitute an even lesser percentage. Therefore, if your product/service targets elder or middle aged native Chinese population, RenRen is probably a better solution.
Gender: female users represent under 35% of wechat users.
Cultural differences in China
In order to be successful in China and compared to western countries, here are the general culture differences you should consider:
Chinese people are very community-oriented: Don’t explain the benefit of the product to 1 consumer directly (i.e. “our product will enable you to….” OR “you will no longer have to….”). Advertising in China emphasis on “we” and “us” (not “you” and “I”). Chinese consumers are using these apps to feel part of a community and to interact with or make friends.
Status is very important in China : Treated your customers like a VIP and show them they are important (for both Chinese men and women). The westerners’ successful brands in China are high-end clothing brands. Chinese love to buy brands (Hugo Boss, Versace, etc.) and will not compromise by buying a cheap duplicate.
Business environment
a) TV or radio media, heavy regulation impedes foreign parties from entering China’s online content arena.
b) Scale and differentiation: Although the Chinese advertising market is busy, only few brands are fighting for the Share of voice. If your product offers some kind of differentiation it will capture customers attention especially on Wechat.
Guidelines for organizing a WeChat Marketing Strategy
Even if most of the tactics we use with Chinese APPs do not differ greatly we do on WhatsApp or other platforms, there are some key differences to keep in mind when you organize a WeChat Marketing Strategy:
– Use QR codes: QR codes are very popular in China and WeChat offers in-built functionality to quickly read or create a QR code, then Users can easily you and integrate your community.
• Knowing Chinese people love to be part of a community, having a large online community (followers) the greater impact you will have in convincing your potential buyers. The social reach offered by having a lot of followers is very important in China.
• Don’t forget WeChat is not just a messaging APP (like Skype or Whatsapp), it’s also a social media platform similar to Facebook. Ensure that your marketing campaign is warm and welcoming.
• Engagement comes first (before sales): Chinese people are frugal. You will win them them by offering something different make them feel different, you need to turn them into your brand evangelists instead of just offering them more value for their money. For instance, you can offer free content such as webinars, ebooks etc or you could hold contests and special events.
• Status and exclusivity are important in addressing Chinese consumers. They look for luxury products/services, trends, exclusive offers, LTOs, etc… Chinese people like to feel special.
• “viral” marketing is even a stronger phenomenon with Wechat because it allows users to find and message strangers. If your campaign should have a viral element such as encouraging people to develop a network and spread your message.
• Don’t spam your followers: WeChat allows you to mass message followers. Although this is very useful to advertise updates, offers and new products, it is bad practice to spam your own followers. Use the broadcast message functionality of WeChat sparingly. source Wechat Marketing Agency
Summary
If you want to target the Chinese market and engage the 18-35 age group, Wechat must be a a key element of your marketing campaign.
WeChat is the single most popular social media application in China, has great functionalities and is growing at a fast pace.
In order to be successful using Wechat in China, you do need to consider cultural differences. Chinese people greater consider communities, privileges, exclusivity and luxury. Your value proposition doesn’t need to focus on price and value but more on exclusivity and differentiation.
Engage your potential buyers before trying to sell selling to them.
Maybe, there won’t be such a thing as a free “Weixin” (WeChat)Comments OffFree or paid Weixin ?
If you plan to save money on texting and video communication domestically or internationally, the first idea jumping into your mind could be “let’s log on Weixin” and touching down the grey button to chat with your friends, because it is totally free and convenient. However when the head of government announced that they are taking into consideration to charge a small fee on Weixin, will you still continue to use it as a daily communication tool or completely delete this fresh green icon from your smart device?
During the Tomb-sweeping Day, the discussion on whether Weixin will be charged became hot. On one hand, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the regulatory institution which is in charge of the Internet and telecommunications sectors, is planning to require users to pay some fees to Chinese telecoms. On the other hand, Ma Huateng, CEO of Tencent, made a response to the public saying that Weixin will still provide free services to all users. The huge discrepancy between these two sides irritates and upsets netizens in Chinese cyberspace. With such a measure, whose Interest is harmed?
Due to the large data bandwidth which is highly and frequently used, Chinese telecoms operators such as China Mobile Ltd, China Unicom and China Telecom Corp, are seeking a way to charge users for this app to make up its loss on their international calls segment, message texting, and Internet use. If we take a closer look at the revenues of China Mobile, it can be found out that the growth of voice services still exhibit a rate of 7.8% but its market share is declining from 69% in 2010 to 65.7% in 2012. At the same time, the Internet use has been keeping surging and increased by 187.6% from 2011 and 2012, with a growth rate of 53.6% as for the turnover of the industry.
Amazing growth
Over the same period of time, Weixin, created by Tencent, has become a leader in its sector and is widely used among Chinese Netizens. As opposite to those anxious telecom operators, Tencent places great expectations in the app, which was positioned as the next promising cash cow for the future of Tencent. Let’s look at some figures to be convinced of the importance of Weixin. Since Weixin was launched in January of 2011, it only took 14 months to Tencent to get 100 million users. After this astonishing growth, the pace boomed and went from 100 million users to 200 million users in only 6 months and from 200 million to 300 million users in only 4 months. If we compare the growth in user registration between Weixin from Tencent and Weibo from Sina (equivalent to Twitter and Facebook at the same time), which had to wait for 31 months (2 years and a half) to reach the same level of 300 million users, Weixin outperformed the previous emerging and bright SNS website.
Written by Limo from China Consultant of Daxue Consulting
WeChat: a success story !Comments OffWeChat: a success story !
WeChat in English or Weixin (??) in chinese means litterally « micro message ». This is a smartphone application developed by Tencent in China and launched in 2011 and quite similar to smartphone applications like Whatsapp, Line, or KakaoTalk. WeChat allows users to chat one-on-one and in-groups. It’s available for iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry and Symbian platforms. Many languages are supported.
The application is available in the App Store for iTunes, Google Play Store for Android and Blackberry App World for Windows Phones.
www.wechat.comWeChat also provides social networking via photo/video sharing, shared streaming content feeds and location-based social plug-ins (’Shake’, ’Look Around’, and ’Drift Bottle’) to chat with and be friend with local or international WeChat users. The app is now generating 700 million location-based activities each day.
Now more than 300 millions users!!!
WeChat reached 300 million users on Jan. 15, less than two years after its launch on Jan 2011. Let’s have a look on how WeChat succeded in that. First, Weixin was launched on January 21, 2011 and took over a year to reach 100 million users. Then it added another 100 million users, with international exposure in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, Japan, and the United States. Indeed the app went global in April 2012 when it picked up its catchy English name. At a recent conference Tencent CEO Pony Ma said that WeChat was set to surpass 300 million users in January 2013. He was right. Indeed While going from 100 million to 200 million took six months, the leap from 200 million to 300 million took only a mere four months. Most of new accounts comes from India where WeChat has been promoted via gaming website Ibibo. But the app is also doing quite well in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, the US, and across the Middle East.
Here is a visual that sumerize WeChat’s growth:
WeChat in the near future ?
It seems that far from hitting saturation point WeChat which is already the world’s biggest mobile messaging app is going to grow even faster than before. Tencent will continue to expand WeChat abroad and build data centers in the United States, in India and in Southeast Asia to speed up the user experience.
WeChat will also have to deals with the issues of transparency and private life protection. Indeed the media company Tencent communicate very few information about WeChat. Until now it’s hard to know precisely how many WeChat are in China and how many are foreign users. At least we can say that the total amount of WeChat users may be reliable. Indeed while registering on WeChat you are ask to provide you mobile number or qq number. This prevents the risk of seeing many fake accounts like what you can see with Sina Weibo. Last but not least a growing number of people are concerned about whether Chinese authorities in Beijing may have access to user data . Dissidents even are worried because they believe security services may use WeChat to monitor in real time the movement of some of its 300 million suscribers. Well we will see…
source Wechat
Tencent QQ launched QQ group shopping(0)Currently, only in Shenzhen city opened this businesss. Sina found that tencent used the 2nd level domain named QQ tuan. Login from tuan.qq.com, Sina found default page was QQ tuan Shenzhen site, while Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing etc. have no this business yet.
QQ tuan business model is no difference from other main stream sites, all trade large orders with low price. Insiders analyzed QQ tuan would develop users taking advantage of its low dataflow, but before the end of this article, QQ tuan did not seem to be very hot.
Furthermore, Ganji Net launched group shopping web navigation page. News said domestic life classified site-Ganji.com announced to officially enter group shopping market, launching group shopping sites navigation rss page.
It is known that, Ganji’s Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou portal all have “group shopping navigation” entrance, which can be used to view all group shopping sites and goods information in each city.
Netease IM(0)NetEase forced the staff to use Enterprise IM which means that Netease’s intention to enter Enterprise IM Tool is gradually clear.
On May 28th, Netease IM tools-POPO launched Enterprise Edition; NetEase POPO in-house staff is starting to bind original account with the Enterprise account. NetEase provides in-house binding of corp account and the original POPO account and transfer of contact list.
Yesterday, stafff found enterprise net did not support common popo login, instead a corporate mail account was required to log, which also means since June 24, staff can only use enterprise version POPO. Enterprise POPO can only be used for internal communication, which creates inconvenience for the jobs that needs connection with outside.
IResearch Consulting announced early in January of the ranking of instant messaging software, in which Netease POPO has dropped out of the top 10 in market. Netease POPO has limited market-share and has not found a suitable model, therefore, turning to enterprise market become strategic.
NetEase Microsoft MSN(0)Microsoft formed a joint venture with Shanghai Alliance Investment in 2005 to introduce MSN, an instant messaging platform and internet portal, to the mainland. But MSN has struggled to gain traction with Chinese users and compete effectively with homegrown titan Tencent Holdings? QQ platform.
Sohu IT news reported late yesterday, quoting investment community sources, that Shanghai Alliance had been looking to exit the joint venture since 2007 and that Microsoft was shopping around for new joint venture partners.
Microsoft and NetEase were close to completing a joint venture deal, sources told Sohu.
Source : Konaxis
Tencent buy russian firm(0)Shenzhen-based Tencent, which popularized instant messaging in China and operates an online game portal and other Chinese Internet services, said it will invest about $300 million in Moscow-based Digital Sky, also known as DST. The companies plan to explore “new business opportunities” in the Russian-speaking Internet markets, said Tencent President Martin Lau in a joint statement Monday.
Digital Sky is known for its stakes in Russian Internet companies including Mail.ru, one of the country’s largest Web sites.
The step is the biggest commitment Tencent has made so far in taking its business outside of China, just as other Chinese online game companies are setting their sights abroad.
In addition to gaining entry to the Russian-speaking Internet market, Tencent may also benefit from Digital Skys stake in U.S. companies Facebook and Zynga Game Network Inc., the largest provider of online social games such as the games played on Facebook or on Apple Inc.’s iPhones. Last year, Digital Sky purchased a 3.5% stake in Facebook for $100 million, and has also invested $180 million in Zynga.
Through the deal, Tencent will get a roughly 10.26% stake in Digital Sky, as well as 0.51% of total voting power and the right to nominate one observer to Digital Sky’s board of directors.
Source : Konaxis
QQ to acquire AOL’s ICQ(0)Since its spin-off from Time Warner, AOL has been trying to remake itself and is currently selling its non-core assets, including ICQ.
ICQ, whose name derived from the homophonic phrase “I seek you”, has 42 million active users. Among them, 18.5 million are from Russia, said Wednesday’s Beijing News.
Tencent’s QQ service, a Chinese answer to ICQ, is known for its reigning popularity on the Chinese mainland, which is reported to have over 300 million registered accounts.
Source : Konaxis
Tencent QQ announced a breakthrough of 100 million current users(0)The important achievements by this Hong Kong-listed private enterprise in the field of instant messaging triggered a broad discussion inside the industry.
According to Tencent official data, on 19:52:58 of the March 5, 2010, the number of QQ concurrent users exceeded 100 million, and became one of the important tools for daily communication in China.Tencent today produced specifically feature to celebrate for this, and interviewed dozens of Internet industry people to make interpretation of it.
Tencent released the first version in 1999, called OICQ, and later changed its name to QQ, and in rapid development in the following later to bypass the competitors to become the first major instant messaging software in China, and in 2004 was listed in Hong Kong.
Currently the largest shareholder of Tencent is media companies in Africa-Naspers, which owns 35.2% shares of Tencent.
AOL has selected four buyers for ICQ: Tencent might participate in bidding(0)Several sources said, ICQ’s bidding price was about 200 million U.S. dollars, but only one potential acquirer’s bid was higher than this amount. AOL spokesman declined to comment.
In November last year, there was news that AOL transferred its attention to content and advertising business, the company was planning to sell ICQ. Subsequently it was report that the bid for ICQ was by the traditional way, that is, the potential acquirer submitted bid to investment bank Allen & CO and Morgan Stanley hired by AOL.
The sources indicated that the potential acquirer had completed quotes, and AOL selected 4 buyers. It is said that a number of bidders were international Internet companies. ICQ has around the world 40 million to 50 million active users, outside the United States markets, especially in Germany, Russia, Eastern Europe and Israel and other countries and regions it is still popular.
Industry insiders speculated international companies which might bid including Russia Investment Group, Facebook’s investor DST, China’s Tencent, South African media giant-Naspers, the largest Internet portal Seznam of the Czech Republic and Russia’s largest search engine- Yandex. There are also people who think that Google is a major ICQ bidder.
No matter what price ICQ eventually will be sold at, it will be much lower than the price of AOL’s purchasing ICQ in 1998. ICQ was once the Internet’s most popular instant messaging tool, and AOL’s price then was 287 million U.S. dollars, moreover, the terms of the acquisition also included the extra fees of 120 million dollars offerred to ICQ team.
However, ICQ in the United States have failed to catch up with Microsoft, Yahoo and Google’s similar services. In addition, Facebook, and Twitter are rapidly rising in the Internet communications. AOL’s AIM and the performance is better than ICQ, and was once the most popular instant messaging services in the United States.
ICQ was originally developed by an Israeli start-ups company called Mirabilis. ICQ’s current headquarters remains in Israel, having about 100 employees and be able to achieve profitability.
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