How do you attract Chinese customers? After the wide spread of Covid-19, the UK’s education industry has gradually revisited its former prosperity. Recently, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) conducted a survey showing that, up to June 30, Chinese applicants to the UK undergraduate programs have peaked in the past 10 years. Following the growing number of Chinese students in the UK, the Chinese market is increasingly significant to PSBA companies. How to attract Chinese students and gain Chinese market share has become a debatable problem worth to be solved. Just as how Twitter, Instagram and Facebook use in the UK, China also has its own social media platforms with wide popularity and powerful influences on marketing. Today, we introduce the largest Chinese social media platform, WeChat, to help you understand Chinese social media platforms and how you could promote your brand via WeChat.
What is WeChat？
WeChat is known as the top messaging app in China. Similar to WhatsApp, the app provides services like instant messages and voice calls. Technically speaking, there are no UK apps comparable to WeChat since WeChat support multiple functions other than messaging, such as digital pay and mini-programs. The reason why WeChat could become a powerful platform for marketing is its huge number of clients attracted by WeChat’s various functions. As reported by China Internet Watch, the monthly active users of WeChat are now around 1.228 billion, more than 2 times of MAU on Weibo. Due to WeChat’s large user base, WeChat could play a vital role in increasing brand awareness and enhancing the brand influence.
Due to the wide popularity of WeChat, UK universities also use this social media platform for student recruitment. Zhu (2019) researched the degree of social media engagement in Chinese international student recruitment. According to the research result, up to 2018, around 50% of UK higher education institutions (HEIs) opened official accounts on WeChat. The mean total reading numbers were 4,101, with the most popular articles being read 37,142 times. The percentage of UK HEI having official accounts on WeChat is lower than that on other social media platforms (Weibo: 73%； Twitter: 90%), implying there is still capacity for developing and utilizing WeChat marketing.
Additionally, Zhu (2019) also demonstrated a positive relationship between the number of articles published on UK universities’ WeChat accounts and the number of Chinese students’ universities recruited. The study suggested that an additional 100 reading times of WeChat articles in 2018 is associated with student recruitment of 5 students.
How do you attract students on WeChat?
Regarding the wide popularity of WeChat, PSBA companies cannot miss the opportunity to start digital marketing on the WeChat platform. We here suggest a few ways to make your first move on WeChat marketing.
1. Set Up Your WeChat Subscription Account
The major way of promoting via WeChat is to make use of the WeChat Subscription Account and Share them via moments to increase the exposure of advertisements. As MarketmeChina (2018) reported, WeChat has updated its official account policy and allowed more than 100 non-Chinese countries to open a WeChat official account through an overseas business licensing scheme. By setting up WeChat official accounts, PSBA companies could not only reach prospective customers like Chinese students but also get in touch with students’ parents, who financially support students. Therefore, marketing via WeChat official accounts could help PSBA companies build brand awareness among prospective customers and reach a broader range of potential clients.
2. WeChat advertisement
Now there are four types of paid advertisements available on WeChat, moment ads, subscription account ads, mini-program ads and channel ads. Different WeChat advertisements are designed for various marketing strategies, and prices vary.
WeChat moment ads are displayed in moments in the form of a friend post, like a video post. Moment ads support promoting brands, offline stores, business products, official subscription accounts, video channels, etc. The target audience of moment ads is selected based on users’ ages, domicile, gender, interests, degree and other attributes. Making good use of moment ads could help the company build its brand image via WeChat.
WeChat subscription account advertisements are usually shown in the WeChat official account with three different display positions, bottom ad, in-article ad, video ad and mutual selection ad. Prices of bottom ads vary in terms of the expected ad’s exposure, clicks or displaying time. The video ads on subscription accounts are charged by ad exposure, while the mutual selection ads are priced at exposure and clicks. Prices of the mutual selection ads greatly depend on the exposure of the subscription article itself.
Mini-program ads are typical advertisements displayed on WeChat mini-programs, a new function created by WeChat providing services like delivery and online shopping. The exact positions of mini-program ads are decided by clicks and exposure to mini-programs. WeChat video channel ads are explicitly designed to promote WeChat channels and contracted brands.
WeChat advertising is an effective way for PSBA companies to increase brand awareness and establish a brand reputation. Customising a WeChat marketing plan is still unfamiliar to overseas companies. In this case, an experienced Chinese marketing agency could offer you guidance on your WeChat marketing and optimize your marketing plan in terms of your business needs.
What can we do for you on WeChat?
As a digital marketing expert, we provide a one-stop service for you to start digital marketing on social media platforms. Regarding your marketing objectives, we offer customised and various sets of service packages to ensure your needs can be satisfied. Here are the currently available services we provide for social media marketing:
- Account Set up
- Account Verification
- Content Translation
- Content Creatives
- Video Creatives
- On-site Live Streaming
- Customer Promotion
- Reputation Interaction
Apart from the services mentioned above, we could make customised marketing plans based on your personal goals and make corresponding adjustments per your business requirements. We have rich experience in helping overseas companies explore the Chinese market. We are confident that we could provide you with the unique industry insights to achieve your final business objectives.
About Rollzoom
Rollzoom is one of the leading marketing service companies with rich experience in helping PSBA companies explore the potential Chinese market and build company brands among Chinese students. We offer complete services for the social media marketing channel, including setting up your social media accounts, creating high-quality content, producing video/audio content, and so on. We aim to help customers achieve business goals, initiate and implement marketing plans and support your every move in the Chinese market. If you are ambitious to expand your PSBA business in the Chinese market but are still confused about how to make the first step, choose Rollzoom as your working partner and build your personalised business plan. In the past few years, we have become reliable partners for many PSBA brands, such as aparto, Unilife, and Collegiate. We will devote ourselves to providing you with the most satisfying experiences and exceeding your expectations. Feel free to contact us if you want to learn more information. We are always here and looking forward to seeing you.
