A quick guide to using WeChat Business, the most popular social media app in China.
Why Consider WeChat for Business
If your company wants to increase its own brand awareness and encourage thedirect engagement For customers in the Chinese market, WeChat is the right tool. The entire Chinese audience, in fact, does not have access to WhatsApp nor to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and that's why it is possible promote it within this market segment only through thesocial app the one they love and use the most, WeChat.
If you already have one social media marketing strategy But if you want to penetrate the Chinese market, WeChat is an app you absolutely must consider. Below three reasons so start considering using it:
- very high coverage, with 1.09 billion users, most of which come from China. Recently, however, WeChat has also arrived in the United States and is slowly expanding to other countries as well;
- it's a single platform of its kind, in fact It is not correct to say that WeChat is the Chinese WhatsAppThis app concentrates several features such as the possibility of buy online, make payments, video calls and so on;
- the app innovates continuously and very often presents interesting features for connect brands to their customers.
Speaking of business features, particular emphasis deserves Shake functionThis allows businesses to interact with nearby mobile users and has been used by Burberry, on the occasion of the Chinese New Year, for launch a contest which allowed participants to win the limited edition Burberry Lunar New Year envelopes.
How to open a profile WeChat Business
Companies can activate three different types of WeChat accounts:
- subscription, similar to the Facebook Pages, which allow you to send only one broadcast message per day;
- service, with four messages per month, and one wide range of features such as WeChat Stores, WeChat Pay, instant customer service is GPS;
- enterprise, available only in China and reserved for internal communications.
To set up a company profile, you can open the official platform and click on “Register now” and choose the most appropriate account based on your business needs.
Now you will be asked to enter all the details about your company such as country, company name, email address, account administrator, and more. Under “Official Account Info,” enter the account name and write one short presentation of your business.
The last step is verification. You need to submit a list of documents such as a business license, an official signed and stamped application letter, a copy of the contact's ID, phone bills, and more (this process may be a bit complex). Once WeChat has verified the company, you will need to pay a verification fee. $ 99 per account per year.
NB: If the registration page is loaded in Chinese click on the drop-down menu at the top right, next to the globe icon, and select english to automatically translate the different fields on the page.
Take your Customer service to a PRO level
Today as today, if a customer wishes to do a question or complaint a company is expected to have a quick answerThis is why social networks remain the preferred means of communication.
What a user expects is that companies use their same communication channels and with WeChat, which can be considered as an all-in-one platform, you can implement your own customer strategy. Here three ways to take your customer service to the next level thanks to theuse of WeChat Business.
Assign a personalized contact to your customers
A successful customer care it is based on the personalization of the communication and WeChat allows you to do it by inserting up to 100 customer service representatives. When a customer has a question, he comes assigned to a representative who can respond to questions and concerns in real time.
Although not a Chinese brand, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines uses WeChat specifically to provide top-notch customer service. From seat selection to cancellations and reservations, users can submit any type of request via WeChat.
Use automated answers for FAQs
To provide a relevant customer service experience, companies need to be very reactive. One way to do this is to use automatic replies to some FAQs, a bit like what you can already do through Facebook Messenger.
In addition, WeChat allows you to set up welcome messages which are automatically sent to users when they start following your account. This feature also exists on Instagram, but to date it is not possible to activate it except through the use of BOT prohibited by policy. In short, a certainly complete tool to ensure that the user has a good service experience.
Keep track of history
No customer likes the idea of having to repeat their problems to various customer service operators. By integrating WeChat with the Corporate CRM, any brand is able to keep track of history chats with customers, assign regular representatives and thus offer a unique and seamless experience.
Promote on WeChat
WeChat, like all other existing social platforms, also offers brands the possibility to ADV through gods advertising banners that appear within the app. You can target by gender, age, location and specify the types of accounts on which you want your banner ads to appear.
The Call-to-Action There are many options available, and you can ask your audience to follow you, purchase a product, visit a landing page, download an app, or request a discount code. In short, nothing too complex or different from what you can do today on other social media platforms used daily.
Conclusions
WeChat is one very promising marketing tool and it is essential to push the Chinese-speaking consumers to interact with your company. With his growing penetration rate and the various promotional means available, the platform works for both large brands and for SMEs outside China who wish to start operating in that specific market
