WeChat for business | How much you should invest

When you start to have more Chinese customers for your business, you will get to know more about an app that you have never used before——WeChat. You might even have some customers suggest that you should get one so you can get more Chinese customers. So you went on and signed up, but then what?

Here is an ultimate guide for you to recognize the best WeChat solution for your business.

For small/local business owners

If you start to have about 20%-40% Chinese customers and you can see there is a potential of growing this segment, while you don't want to invest too much on marketing, here is you best solution:

1. Sign up a WeChat personal account

2. Add your Chinese customers as your friends on WeChat.

3. Set up a Group Chat and put all your existing customers in the group

4. Start posting your latest product/service info in the chat every day, including special discounts for customers in this group chat.

5. Start posting your service and product on your WeChat moments.

The most important things you have to do is enlarge your WeChat group members. For example, you can use small gifts to incentivise your current group members to invite more people into the chat. The small gifts should be relevant to your business. For example. if you are a local vintage clothing brand. The small gift could be a scarf or a pair of gloves that you have.

As soon as you have reached 100 or even 200 in your group chat, while you are keep posting your product and service in the group chat, you can expect a substantial growth of sales.

This method of having a personal account + group chat have proven to be very efficient for most of businesses that does not have enough budget to invest in running official accounts, such as small businesses like salon, bakery or even restaurants.

How much does it cost

For this particular method, if you have any in-house employee that's already running Social media or sales in general, he or she can master this with a little training. It will be definitely helps if your employee is Chinese but English-speaking employee is also capable of operating this method.

Therefore, your cost will only be the training fee provided by an agency or provided by you, which means giving your employee an opportunity to learn how to earn customers by running personal accounts and group chats.

For large corporations

If you have more than 50% of your customers are Chinese or you have a bigger budget to invest in Chinese Marketing, a WeChat personal account won't be sufficient or efficient for you.

A WeChat official account, on the other hand, will be a great fit for you. It acts like a facebook page that allows you to post articles that can explain your service or product in details. Along with a handful amount of useful information for your customers that will keep them engage.

Let's use the example of a vintage clothing brand again. If the brand only has a combination of personal account + group chat, that means your ads and chat information might be lost in your customers' daily scrolling. Most importantly, the content you put on your personal account and group chats can only be found and read by people you have as your contacts (i.e. existing customers).

However, as you're able to have a WeChat official account, not only your customers will be notified every time you post. You might also be found by other people searching on WeChat. In this case, you are receiving traffic from both your own followers/contacts and general public.

How much does it cost

Since you are willing to take a step forward and outrace you competitors that hasn't recognize this amazing opportunity, you'd better do it perfectly so it will be even harder for them to catch up.

Therefore, the best way for your business to hire a marketing agency that specialize in Chinese social media and help you reach as many Chinese customers as you should have. There are a lot of them based outside of China that knows how to meets international clients' needs and have great account management so you know your Chinese social presence is in good hands.

If your team hasn't recruit any Chinese-speaking employee before, it won't be a great idea to hire someone in-house for this purpose. It will be difficult to manage as you can't tell the quality of the content or if the account is performing well or not.

If you would like to know more about which method is best for your business and save your money before going ahead to a large marketing agency, contact us at hello@c-opportunity.com