Breakthrough to sell your product to China!

Breakthrough to sell your product to China!

Are you currently looking for a breakthrough to sell your product to China? If your answer is yes, well, you should definitely keep reading because this article is going to answer all of the questions mentioned.

Nobody can ignore the fast development China has achieved so far, and with no doubt it’s going to thrive till it becomes one of the most powerful. With its population of 1.376 billion people and the growing purchasing ability and need, it is a huge market and a great opportunity for you to take your business to the next level.

With the Internet-plus era covering all over China, the online marketing industry in China has been playing a vital role even more than before. Living in this century when everyone is spending more and more time online, it will be a wise choice to do marketing and sales online. Wechat would be a very good platform for you. Why is so?

As a core product from the Tencent Group, WeChat triggers substantial traffic in the Chinese social network landscape. Besides that, WeChat has been at the forefront of new phenomena in Chinese social media, with the creation of services such as WeChat commerce, WeChat payment, WeChat doctor appointment, WeChat taxi, WeChat booking, etc. This has won it the name of ‘all-in-one super app’. By the end of December 2016, WeChat had 889 million monthly active users and 10 million official accounts in the country. These figures are continuously growing both in China and outside of China.

Wechat started as an instant messaging application, however with the fast growing number of users, it has become the top one social media app and it becomes one of the most important part in people’s daily life, and the functions, in return, keeps growing and growing and now, it is also an Ecommerce platform for many business.

No matter you are a big company with 1000+ employees or you are an entrepreneur that is running all the business by yourself, no matter you are just looking into Chinese market, or you have developed your customer base in China, Wechat can be one of the ultimate tools for you to:

Get insight from Chinese market, find out what’s in the trend in China and what Chinese fancy
Develop and manage your Chinese customers and resell your products
Sell your products and service

Compared to Weibo, WeChat provides users with more privacy. Only mutually-followed friends can see each other’s posts. This unique feature explains why so many users prefer sharing on WeChat rather than on Weibo.

How to Advertise your product in WeChat:

1. Personal account

The most initial and also easiest way is to have an account and develop your customers as your friends, keep posting moments with your product information to keep reminding your customers.

Advantage: free, easy

Throwback: slow, closed, not suitable for big companies

2. Official account

Official account mainly consists of three types: Service Account which offers businesses and organizations more advanced interactions such as interactive web views, templated messages, and WeChat Pay to enable app-level capabilities; Subscription Account which primarily targeted towards media and publishers to offer a new way broadcast content (limited to one broadcast per day); Enterprise Account which is only available in mainland China.

Official accounts act as an information center where you can gather all your subscribers and easily publish articles and media to be sent to your users daily.

Chinese users are utilizing WeChat for more than just messaging and brands are using official accounts in new and different ways to make users’ lives easier every day.

3. Mini Programs

WeChat mini programs are basically mobile websites which will appear as embedded WeChat sections and play functions as product displaying, fans interaction, online purchasing and payment… Mini programs in Wechat is like apps in App Stores, users can easily install them within a few seconds and auto log in with Wechat accounts, this definitely enriched user experience on Wechat.

4. KOL(Key Opinion Leaders)

KOL marketing, through those who have influence in specific areas of the characters, is a new and yet popular marketing strategy to build the connection between your brands and products and the audience to establish contact, and to maintain interaction. If it works well, this marketing can bring credibility to the promotion plan, enhance the brand attributes, access to potential customers. However, the key to this strategy is to find the right KOL to work with. They don’t have to and usually are not super stars, but people who are professional in one area and have the ability to empower others.

Tips for promotion to Chinese market:

1. Mobile first.

In China, almost everyone is using smartphones, meanwhile, people spend a lot of time on their phones every day, if you are thinking of creating promotion materials or developing a website, always remember to put mobile version to its priority.

2. Chinese only.

Although English is very widely used all around the world, it is rarely spoken in China. When you publish your content in China, always remember to show it in Chinese.

3. Localized SEO platforms

Due to the fact that the mainly used social media tools are all banned in China(Google, tweeter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Youtube), while considering doing social media promotions, you might have to make a Chinese-specialized marketing strategy to fit the Chinese market.

Looking for an agency to help you with WeChat managing and promotion?

Article by : Liang Shuang
Marketing Division, Loons Lab