WeChat Advertising – What you need to know

What do you call an app that has the capabilities of Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Uber, PayPal and then some, all rolled into one? WeChat. This one of a kind swiss army knife messaging app boasts over 1.056b monthly users and can do just about anything. Created by Tencent in 2011, this Chinese messaging/multi-purpose app has sent 38 billion messages every day and processed $1 billion transactions in 2018.

Things you can do on WeChat:

• Send messages, chat…
• A digital wallet (think Apple Pay)
• Make in-store payments
• Order a ridesharing service
• Transfer money to friends
• Order food
• Pay utility bills
• Donate to charities
• The possibilities are endless…

Let’s break down the anatomy of WeChat.

WeChat Moments

When you think of WeChat moments, picture something like a Facebook or Twitter feed. This is where users can post text, upload photos, share music, and post ‘likes’. Since 2017, users have linked their ‘moments’ to Facebook and Twitter automatically.

WeChat Messaging

WeChat’s messaging interface provides a variety of communication services like text and voice messaging, video calls, broadcasting, conference, and location sharing. Users are able to exchange contact with others via Bluetooth and are able to integrate with other social networking services like Facebook and Tencent QQ (instant messaging and software portal service).

WeChat Official Accounts

If you’re a real estate developer, you should pay attention to this. Official accounts are where businesses and users can sign up to begin advertising to millions of users. Currently, there are 3 types of official accounts: a subscription, enterprise, and service account. These accounts are able to push feeds to the subscriber and provide them with services.

WeChat Mini Program

Always looking at ways to innovate, WeChat launched a new feature in 2017 called the ‘mini-program’, which essentially is a mini-site within the WeChat interface. Companies develop these mini-sites to further communicate their brand values, company updates and provide an environment for customer relations.  The user can also purchase products (via WeChat Pay), access games, and much more.

WeChat Payment Services

WeChat Pay is a digital wallet that has 900 million active users every month. The setup is simple – all users have to do is provide bank account information and they can use the app to order goods and services, pay bills, transfer money to others and use in store if WeChat payment is an option.

How to get started on WeChat

If you are an overseas business – it can be a little trickier to get up and running but not impossible. Here are our recommendations.

Overseas companies require the following in their application to advertise on WeChat.

Requirements:

• Local business license/company number and country of company registration
• An operator passport number and issuing date
• Office address of the applicant
• Desired display name
• Desired name of the WeChat ID
• Email address for the purpose of registration
• Account type: subscription or service
• A short introduction to your business
• Profile picture
• Local landline phone number of your company (for a verification call from Tencent)

Types of ads:

• WeChat Moment Ads
• WeChat Official account banner ads
• WeChat KOL Marketing (key opinion leader) *think Influencer marketing.
  (Read our blog about influencer marketing here.)

Overseas industries excluded from advertising:

• Web portals
• Merchants (relates generally to advertising merchants)
• Healthcare
• Tobacco products
• Business services
• Legal services
• Personal overseas WeChat official accounts

There you have it – WeChat in a nutshell. Contact us if you are interested in getting started with WeChat advertising.