WeChat: commercializing the function “Channel”
As China’s biggest communication and social media platform, WeChat now has 1.288 billion monthly active users (MAU). Focusing on acquaintance socializing, WeChat has a competitive advantage in helping brands develop a private traffic domain. Many brands use WeChat Groups to keep customers they attracted from public traffic. In this way, brands can keep a closer relationship with their consumers.
Besides the private traffic domain system supported by WeChat Group, WeChat also provides brands access to public traffic through functions such as WeChat Official Accounts and WeChat Mini Program.
Recently, WeChat has developed a new function named Channels, a short video platform on WeChat, similar to TikTok/ Douyin. The latest news is that WeChat has decided to commercialize Channels by inviting brands to join and giving them access to live-streaming functions, which demonstrates WeChat’s ambition is to build a new “Douyin” in WeChat. Consumers can directly place orders during live streaming on Channels.
Although WeChat’s live-streaming business is in its infant stage, the first batch of brands that grabbed this opportunity has already achieved great results. The data from WeChat shows that their GMV doubled on the first day of live-streaming with 40% new customers.
Making use of the huge user numbers, WeChat’s new function now is a new opportunity for the market.
Douyin: helping brands access more consumers
As one of China’s biggest short video platforms, Douyin has retained the lead in live-streaming e-commerce with over 600 million daily active users (DAU).
On Douyin, users who are related to beauty content can be divided into three groups, core group, active group, and broad group.
Core group: about 30 million users. They have a high demand for beauty content and beauty products.
Active group: about 150 million users. They are active in the beauty channel. They like to share and comment on beauty-related short videos and watch beauty live-streaming.
Broad group: about 450 million users. These users have interests in beauty-related content.
Based on this classification, Douyin suggests that different brands can apply targeted marketing strategies to access different kinds of groups.
Little Red Book: use the marketing platform to develop products
As a social media platform in China, Little Red Book (RED) is famous for its strong ability to promote products to consumers. Many consumers like to search for relevant information on RED before making a buying decision, making more and more brands attach importance to marketing on RED. Now, over 110,000 brands have RED official accounts.
Besides traditional promotion strategies, such as inviting celebrities on RED to promote products, RED now has developed a new cooperation system to work with brands. Brands and RED will work together on product development, ace product selection, and product marketing test.
RED shared an example of a shower gel product on CiE. Based on the search index provided by RED, this brand found that whitening and fragrance are two aspects that consumers pay more attention to when purchasing shower gel. The brand quickly developed a new product with the whitening function and good smell. After launching trail products in the market, RED helped this brand promote many posts about this new product to collect consumers’ opinions. Then, the brand upgraded the product and launched the second version based on these opinions. This new product quickly became an ace product. Its search rate on e-commerce platforms increased by 173% MoM, and its total sales reached 200,000 units.
Bilibili: what Chinese Gen Z are interested in?
As one of Chinese Gen Z’s favorite social media platforms, Bilibili now has 294 million monthly active users (MAU), 86% are under 35 years old. According to Bilibili, these users mostly live in high-tier cities with high educational backgrounds. They are willing to pay for their interests, high-quality content, and products with genuine feedback from other consumers. This platform has become a new marketing platform for every beauty brand that intends to touch young consumers.
