If cosmetic brand in China wants to have a better engagement rate and interactive relationship with Chinese customers, WeChat is the tool they need to use. The reasons as below:
1. WeChat has a very big user base.
In September 2015, WeChat announced their first user statistic. As of August 2015, Wechat reached one billion accounts and have a monthly active user 600 million. The penetration rate in China is 93%. The numbers are huge and still growing.
2. Beauty Brands has higher engagement rate on Wechat than other sectors.
As most people already know that WeChat is not only a mobile text and voice messaging app, it provides a wide range of functions and services to users. One of the most important functions for brands to market and engage users is social media functions like Facebook or Instagram. Users can update status, share photos within their “friend circle”.
From the data released by Wechat, beauty brands on WeChat has a much higher engagement rate than other sectors. In August 2015, the engagement rate (“likes” and “shares” ) of beauty brands on WeChat is 200% higher than other sectors, such as automotive, fashion, beer, sports clothing, watches & jewelry.
3. It is easy for beauty brands to give away sample products to potential customers and increasing loyalty.
Most of the beauty brands in China have WeChat official accounts. Besides sharing photos, videos, product trial reviews and promotion messages to their followers on WeChat. Lots of brands offer free samples for users to collect in store, and the incentives increased the loyalty and secured a better commitment rate than the other sectors.
4. WeChat is a closed social network, in which word of mouth is more effective.
For cosmetic products, word of mouth acts as an important part on the decision making process. And advocates from friends got the highest credibility and trustworthy rate among the others, such as key opinion leaders, unknown users. Thus, the function of “likes” and “shares” within friend circle make WeChat become a very effective marketing tool, which get higher engagement rate.
5. WeChat provides brand a chance to initial one-to-one conversation with customers.
One advantage of using WeChat to promote the brands is the one-to-one message. Users get push notifications once they received the promotional massages, which increase the engagement rate than the other social media platform like Weibo, Facebook or Instagram.
6. WeChat Shop and payment enables very easy shopping experience for customers.
Thanks to the payment function which developed by WeChat, users can purchase online easily and securely by the payment method in WeChat. For many beauty brands, the WeChat shop business model is a key element to the marketing of their products. In 2014, 80% of beauty products sold on WeChat shops were face masks.
Because of the high engagement rate, WeChat has became important for cosmetic brands to increase brand preference and boost sales in China. According to the forecast, by 2019, 80% of the global turnover of cosmetics industry will come from Asia, and China is 75% of the volume. The social media in China will be the key successful factor. In the next article, we will share some successful cases on WeChat.
