5 Basic Tactics to Promote Beauty Brands in China on WeChat

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

In this article, we will discuss the 5 basic tactics to promote beauty brands on WeChat, the biggest Chinese social messaging app. We will accompany that with some case studies to let you better understand the functions and apply them to different marketing campaigns.

1) 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. Samples are a good incentive to boost the number of followers.

WeChat users just need to follow L’oreal Paris’s WeChat account to become a member of the brand’s network. WeChat followers can scan L’oreal Paris’s QR code to find the official account, and after the user follows, a virtual member card collection page pops up. Users need to submit their cell phone number to complete the collection process. They can enjoy membership discounts afterwards. To further improve reach, L’oreal Paris also uses traditional media, online media and Weibo to promote this campaign.

2) One-to-One Product Promotion

The trend of personalization and interaction between people is getting more and more important. The personal and interactive texting functions on WeChat make it a good tool for communicating with target 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 creates articles with interesting topics, such as how an irregular lifestyle or radiation from the computer or smartphone can make your skin look dull. These topics enhance the user’s’ awareness of whitening and moisturizing skin care procedures, which the brand leverages as a way to recommend related products to the users.

The above stories are published on popular women’s media platforms, such as yoka, pclady and onlylady. At the end, Chando can compile all the media coverage and send it to their followers via WeChat. This campaign helps draw follower attention and improve brand image through media coverage.

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

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

4) Online Shopping Via WeChat

WeChat provides many interactive buttons for brands to use, and continues to develop these features. One example is WeChat payment, which is compatible with the e-commerce activities of beauty brands. Users can make online payments directly on the WeChat app, which helps enhance user engagement and the purchase rate of the brand’s promotion.

The T-Mall shop of Chinese beauty brand Inoherb positions their WeChat account as an e-commerce platform. They share their online store marketing activities via WeChat to increase the traffic to their online shop on T-Mall.

5) One-to-One Communication With Customers

Privacy is one of the advantages of WeChat, as the one-to-one texting function between brands and users allows users more privacy than other social media platforms. Users can send enquiries or feedback to the brand’s official accounts without disclosing their concerns to the public.

L’oreal Paris provides something called a “Q&A private chat.” Every month, they gather the most frequently asked questions from customers and post the answers Q&A style to help followers with their skin problems via WeChat. This campaign is followed up with gift giveaway where 5 followers can win prizes. This campaign not only helps the target customer learn more about the brand and their products, but it also boosts user loyalty.

You can find the original version of this article here.

Megan Fang – Guest Contributor Megan Fang is the International Marketing Director at OKOMP. A well-seasoned marketer, she’s been helping companies build up brand, engage with consumers, and enter new markets successfully for more than 10 years in the UK and China.

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