When it comes to social media there’s a lot of opportunity for companies in China but WeChat is one of the channels offering the most potential right now.
This was the subject of a workshop delivered by UMS General Manager Jessica Miao in Shanghai last week, as part of the annual Kiwi Week event.
Speaking to a room of senior executives for New Zealand companies, Jessica showcased the range of opportunities that WeChat offers to brands.
“While other platforms, such as Weibo, are still hugely important, the vast potential and opportunities that WeChat offers to brands – plus its 806 million users – makes it crucial for marketers,” said Jessica.
“Many brands get on WeChat and use the channel for broadcast but it is so much more than that. Brands need to be having two-way conversations with customers and fans.”
“By engaging in two-way conversations, brands can gain access to a vast amount of customer data.”
Jessica shared examples of how brands could customise the user experience of WeChat by creating engaging welcome journeys, conversations, emotional connections and location-based conversations.
“By creating more engaging experiences, marketers are able to converse with fans and gain more data and information about the customer.”
She also discussed WeChat’s Developer platform and the opportunities it provided for companies to build rich customer profiles and create personalised features such as navigation menus.
“Applying these strategies helps brands to collect usage data and capture fans determinant attributes. Marketers can then use these rich user profiles to confidently implement segmentation and content retargeting.”
Jessica said these techniques would help brands to better understand who their customers are and what their specific needs and desires are, which in turn helps ensure better and more efficient brand communications and campaigns.
Jessica was also joined for a round table discussion by China Skinny’s Mark Tanner. Together the two answered questions about budgets and provided tips to help New Zealand brands navigate the unique and challenging social media landscape in China.