How can European brands leverage WeChat stores?

For most people, WeChat is it just a messaging App for daily uses, but actually, saying that WeChat is an ecosystem wouldn’t be too much. Its monthly active users (over 1 billion) is very close to the population of China and is literally a phenomenon in Asia, but not only.

In China, almost everyone uses the app every day for communication, social, entertainment, tickets and hotel reservations, public service, food delivery… and for brands, the Store feature of WeChat offers lots of opportunities to sell in China and that’s something that European brands might need to know to get exposure in the largest marketing in the world.

What is a WeChat store?

In China, WeChat is called “Weixin” in Mandarin, while “WeChat” is its official English name and the international version adapted by overseas countries.

First of all, WeChat doesn’t provide any WeChat stores directly. To put it simply, a WeChat Store is the simple version of any E-commerce website developed for WeChat.

It can be an HTML5 website designed for WeChat via proper optimization or a WeChat Mini-Program. A WeChat Mini-Program is powered by WeChat and easily accessible to everyone who uses WeChat on the App itself. It is a WeChat built-in store that was initially introduced in 2017 for brands or organizations to provide e-commerce services or any other kinds.

Advantages and disadvantages of WeChat Stores and Mini-Programs:

• Both WeChat Stores and Mini-Programs can be linked to your WeChat Official Account. while WeChat Stores give you more flexibilities to engage with your users with creatives.
• Both can be accessed without requesting App download and installation.
• Both can be shared with friends via WeChat.
• WeChat Stores can be easily synchronized to other channels like Weibo Xiaodian (Weibo store), while WeChat Mini-Programs are not available.
• WeChat Stores have more payment options, while Mini-Programs support only WeChat Pay.

Since WeChat has the largest monthly active users, having a WeChat marketing strategy is mandatory to sell in China. WeChat Store or Mini-Program can be used to reach all types of audiences within the App. As the cost to operate an E-commerce store is continuously increasing, for instance, Tmall and JD.com, and the sales conversation rate is decreasing, marketers are eager to find alternative solutions.

WeChat Stores and Mini-Programs offer an alternative sales channel to brands with lower budgets, allowing them to generate organic traffic through WeChat and its social network.

How to open a store on WeChat?

A WeChat store is one of the recommended platforms for entering the Chinese market or expanding your business through WeChat ecosystem. Although it’s might not be difficult for you to build a WeChat Store from scratch in house, it’s advisable to find a reliable 3^rd party provider for the best solution to adapt your current system.

There are a few tips for you if you would like to have more room to design your own store:

Step 1 – First thing you will need to do is create a WeChat Official Account with an e-mail account. It provides three options for you to choose from:

1. Subscription Account
2. Service Account
3. Corporate Accounts

Step 2 – Once you have an Official Account, the next is to do a user experience research of the local market for store designing.

Step 3 – Meanwhile, you will need another e-mail account to create Mini-Program Account on WeChat Official Account.

Step 4 – Active and verify your Mini-Program account, mostly important, set up the WeChat payment system (WeChat made it possible for overseas bank accounts).

Step 5 – Get it connected with your WeChat Official Account.

Step 6 – Pick a Mini-Program provider and do your design for the store.

Step 7 – Get your Official Account and Mini-Program Account verified, and get them connected.

Step 8 – Now, you are ready to get the Mini-Program Account accessed to your WeChat Mini-Program Store.

How to upload products to your WeChat Store?

After your WeChat Store is set up, the next step is to upload the products.

However, uploading products to the store can be a bit different, as it depends on how you set up your WeChat Store. WeChat Stores providers in the market are quite fragmented.

Choosing a WeChat Store provider that provides a friendly API integrated solution makes it possible for you to synchronize the products, orders, and inventory in real-time.

How to promote a WeChat Store?

On Mini-Programs (stores), consumers do not need to register a new account through an e-mail account or phone number. It gives consumers the access to login via their own WeChat account or different WeChat account.

There are mainly three ways to promote a WeChat store.

Through organic traffic (also known as “private traffic”)

• Article Content creation: It’s the best way to showcase your products with an easy sharable Mini-Program link, but you should make sure to include call-to-actions (QR code at the end of the article) for people to follow the account.
• Social Sharing: WeChat Official Account and Mini-Program are easily accessed to and shared through the WeChat ecosystem. Contents or products shared by their friends, to their WeChat, Moments, groups, and so on, are more likely to be accepted. This is more like the KOC (Key Opinion Leader) model.
• Re-targeting: Re-target users by messages through Official Account based on their behavior on Mini-Program or send them coupons through Mini-Program.
• Offline access: It’s been widely adopted in China to have your WeChat Official Account and Mini-Program’s code offline to generate new followers and traffic.
• Access to WeChat Official Account: Have your Mini-Program or any products’ click connected to the menu button. This will guide the users to the Mini-Program or the product page.
• Generating traffic from 3rd platforms: It’s necessary to add the QR code of your Official Account as well as the Mini-Program code on the websites. It would also be practical to post WeChat article content via other social media, such as, Douban and Weibo (Alibaba is one of the investors, so it will be a bit complex).

WeChat Display Advertisements

• WeChat Moment Ads: They are displayed as a post on users’ Moments. It can be a creative or video. Daily Min. budget is 1000 RMB. It’s relatively expensive, but brands can have more exposures to find the target audiences and drive sales.
• WeChat Banner Ads: They are banners ads. It can be a creative or video. They are displayed in the article or at the bottom of the article via 3^rd party WeChat Official Accounts. It’s cheaper (Min daily budget from 50-200 RMB), but don’t have the same performance in terms of conversion.
• WeChat Mini-Program Ads: They are promoted on 3^rd party Mini-Programs. It can be a general banner or auto-played video display ads, or a WeChat Mini-Game.

Influencers

• 3^rd Party WeChat Official Accounts (large or less numbers of followers): a type of cross account promotion. It can be flexible to work with different Accounts in terms of the type of audiences or the numbers of fans. The budget varies. It can be a certain amount of the Ads’ fees or a commission of the sale value. It’s negotiable.
• KOLs: this is a straightforward campaign. And Mini-Program makes it easy for KOLs to showcase and promote the brands or products on their own WeChat Official Account. It can be your Mini-Program link on the menu, or a product recommended on the article. Or it can be a short video promoted on “Channel”.

Finally, you are all set to leverage your store to drive more traffic and sales. It’s convincing to say that keeping pace with the trend is half success.

Of course, a well-planned Social Media Marketing Strategy usually plays a decisive role. And you will need a bi-lingual Chinese and English team to manage the local market.