If you're a Western business courting a Chinese audience, chances are WeChat is set to play a starring role in your marketing strategy. But how can you ensure that you’re making the most impactful and effective use of this popular Chinese social media platform?
In this article, we’ll explore five key ways that your Chinese audience benefits when you leverage WeChat Mini Programs – highly effective tools that sit within the social platform and facilitate direct customer engagement, creating productive sales funnels for your brand.
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More and more businesses are waking up to the power of WeChat Mini Programs, exponentially benefiting from the boost they can bring to conversion rates of leads generated through WeChat.
WeChat Mini Programs are designed to create friendly, efficient and consistent user experiences within the WeChat ecosystem. Let’s explore the five key ways that this is accomplished, enhancing customer loyalty and a brand’s reputation.
1. Simplified User Journeys
Mini programs sit within the WeChat platform, meaning that user journeys are streamlined and simple for the user. By negating the need to navigate away from the familiar experience of WeChat, the pathway to conversion is shortened, and the user experience is enhanced.
Mini Programs are not typically designed to be used in isolation as “apps in their own right” but rather to add functionality to the preexisting WeChat user experience. If a customer has already engaged with your brand’s Official Account, and now wishes to further interact by performing a specific task (filling in an enquiry form, for example) a Mini Program provides the perfect solution – allowing for a fully branded experience, which feels intuitive and in keeping with the rest of the user’s brand interaction.
Chinese audiences use WeChat more than any other social media platform – so the benefits of providing an engaging experience that doesn’t ask them to leave these familiar surroundings are significant. Everything is aligned and integrated to a familiar and pre-existing user experience.
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2. Ability To Access Your Mini Program Via The Web
Although Mini Programs sit within WeChat, there’s nothing to stop your brand from ensuring that their functionality extends well beyond this popular platform, by including access links directly from your website.
There are considerable benefits to leveraging the functionality of a Mini Program via your website. Most notably, as a brand, you’re able to capture Chinese visitors to your website as WeChatNot only does this help to boost engagement and sales conversion, by directing them to WeChat, you’re also demonstrating your familiarity with the preferences of a Chinese audience.
With VIVA CITY, you won’t have to worry about adding additional functionality to your website – our implementation-friendly widget allows users to simply jump from your website to your Mini Program in a scan of a QR code or click of a button.
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3. Enriched Customer Journeys
In addition to streamlining your customer journeys, WeChat Mini Programs can also enhance them. By offering access to an unlimited range of practical functionality, Mini Programs ensure that a wide variety of actions and tasks can be undertaken – from making payments through to exploring virtual tours, accessing translated menus or booking an appointment.
This is a huge boost for any brand seeking to improve levels of connection with its Chinese customers. Mini Programs offer the perfect opportunity to create opportunities for authentic engagement, creating satisfying interactions that trigger tangible outcomes for brand and customer alike.
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4. Convenience and Efficiency
The combination of a streamlined customer journey and an enhanced customer experience? The winning combination that all modern customers seek – convenience and efficiency.
WeChat Mini Programs are designed to deliver highly efficient single-task functionality. There’s no ambiguity – meaning that interaction through Mini Programs is both intuitive and productive. Tasks can be performed quickly and easily, which makes them ideal for repetitive actions (such as booking onto a weekly class or paying for a regular service.)
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5. Better Engagement And Brand Accessibility
Finally, it’s worth bearing in mind how easily accessible WeChat makes Mini Programs. If you’re already building your brand’s reputation on the platform’s various integrated marketing channels, adding a Mini Program places enhanced functionality right alongside this activity, adjacent to your customers’ existing activity.
Customers can access mini-programs through WeChat's drop-down menu at the top of the screen, and all Mini Programs are housed on Tencent's official servers, meaning their load speed and performance is quick and efficient.
Your WeChat Official Account can be linked to various Mini Programs, offering a varied range of functionality. Customers can search for them using WeChat’s internal search and post them on their WeChat Moments. In fact, Mini Programs are designed to be easily shared by WeChat users, either peer to peer, or in WeChat Groups.
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Meet Your Chinese Audience Where They Are: On WeChat
Chinese influencers play a significant role in Chinese consumer trends - Consumers tend to pay close attention to their peers. The Chinese consumer displays a distinguished skepticism which is why they rely on communities built around topics they are interested in to attain authentic, real world content.
KOL marketing is currently considered to be one of the most efficient kinds of marketing strategy on WeChat in 2023. You’ll need to identify key KOL’s related to your brand’s offering and then allocate a portion of marketing spend into investing into mobilising these KOL’s for brand promotion.
If your brand already attracts Chinese customers, finding and incentivising appropriate KOLs and KOCs can represent a rewarding strategy. UK Student Accommodation providers, for example, often build strong relationships with KOLs and KOCs that have a strong connection to the location of their properties. This helps create authentic, highly relevant social media posts on WeChat, which in turn ripple out to other platforms such as RED and Weibo. -
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