promote beauty brands in China on Wechat

For Chinese cosmetic consumers, word of mouth and user experiences highly affect the purchasing behaviour. WeChat provides a platform for the cosmetic brands to communicate with consumers one to one. WeChat also acts as a community for the consumers to share, even show off their cosmetic shopping and user experiences.

In this article, we will discuss the 5 basic tactics to promote beauty brands on Chinese social media WeChat. Also, we will explain with some case studies to let you better understand the functions and use them for different marketing campaign.

Incentives for followers on WeChat

Beauty brands offer samples or discounts to customers at the shops or beauty counters, They can do the same via WeChat as well. And the samples are the good incentive to boost the number of followers.

WeChat users just need to follow L’oreal Paris’s WeChat account to become their members. The method is user scan L’oreal Paris QR code to find the official account, after user click “follow”, a virtual member card collection page pops up. Users need to submit their mobile phone number to complete the collection process. They can enjoy member discounts afterwards. To enlarge the effect of the campaign, L’oreal Paris also use traditional media, online media and Weibo to promote this campaign.

One to one product promotion

The trend of personalization and interaction between people is getting more and more important. The personal and one to one interactive One to one texting functions make WeChat to be the good tools to communicate with targeted customers. Brands use this platform to showcase their products. They re-package the product information, features and functions with interesting themes, in order to encourage the customers to purchase.

Chinese cosmetic brand Chando create articles with some interesting topics, such as how irregular lifestyle, radiation from computer or smart phone make your skin look dull; the dry weather makes the skin dry etc. These topics enhanced the users to aware whitening, moisturizing skincare procedures, then the brand recommended related products to the users. The above stories are published on popular women’s media platform, for example, yoka, pclady and onlylady. At the end, Chando combined all the media coverage and sent to followers via WeChat. This campaign help to draw the follower’s attention, the brand image was also improved by the media coverage.

Discount announcement

Beauty brands announce sale information, discount offers, limited time offers and real time online purchase activities via WeChat which can attract followers as well.

L’oreal Paris official WeChat account announces the “sale information of next month” every month. Their followers can get the information earlier, then they can target their favorite products earlier, and go to buy the products when the sale is on. This action can increase the number of followers, also improve the user engagement rate.

Moreover, in every message that L’oreal sent out, there are share and press to buy buttons at the bottom of the message.

Online shopping via WeChat

WeChat provides many interactive buttons for the brands to use. WeChat keep developing their functions, for example WeChat payment. It compatible with E-commerce activities of beauty brands. Users can make online payment in the WeChat app, which help to enhance the user engagement and the purchasing rate if the brand promote via WeChat.

The T-mall shop of Chinese beauty brand Inoherb position their WeChat account as an E-commerce platform, they share their online shop marketing activities via WeChat to increase the traffic to their online shop.

One to One communication with customers

Privacy is one of the advantage of WeChat, the one to one texting function allow users to have more privacy than the other social media platform. Users can send enquiries or feedback to the brands’ office accounts and don’t have to disclose their concerns to the public.

L’oreal Paris provides “Q&A private chat”. Every month, they gathered the most frequently asked questions or the most concerned questions of the customers, and set up a set of Q&A information to help followers’ skin problems via WeChat. This campaign followed up with gift giveaway, 5 followers can get the prizes. This campaign can help the targeted customers to understand more about the brand and their products, at the same time, it can increase the users’ loyalty.