E-commerce marketing on Chinese social media is the primary strategy for businesses to attract new consumers. Social media platforms are launching new features to help companies achieve sales goals. For example, in-app online store management, perform direct conversions from the social media contents, and engage with consumers more effectively through interactive activities.
Due to the global pandemic, the number of e-commerce market users are expected to have a 6% to 8% growth to 987.5 million in 2021. Based on our research,
The online shopping demographic has expanded from young people to the entire population
Social e-commerce has exceeded the retail ecosystem’s geographical limitation.
Customers can engage in real-time e-commerce interactive live streams and share their purchase experience with user-generated contents
Social media has created new expectations of personality and relatability in brand storytelling that enables the consumer to be open-minded in the product discovery process
Our team aims to design an effective e-commerce marketing strategy for your brand in 2021.
This report introduces new features available on some Chinese social media platforms and analyses the consumers buying behaviour shift to eCommerce, then we'll use our Black Friday campaign and influencer marketing campaign for Pacific Fair as an example to demonstrate how to utilise them for better performance.
Media Platform Feature Updates for Better E-Commerce – WeChat, Weibo, RED (Xiaohongshu/Little Red Book)
The Chinese social media platforms are heavily integrated with the most popular eCommerce websites, i.e., Taobao, T-Mall. Innovative functions like linkage within displayed ads, mini shop program and live streaming commerce simplified the consumers purchasing journey with the direct landing page of the products on online stores.
This phenomenon turns the traditional Online-to-Offline (O2O) purchasing journey into omni-channel online shopping on social media. We have summarised the following social media feature updates for your reference.
WeChat Features Updates
WeChat Channel:
Public short video channel that effectively drives large scale traffic and expands your brand-consumer base through broad exposure to more than 1 billion WeChat users
WeChat Mini Shop:
Businesses could manage sales transactions and landing pages with the in-app free mini program
Weibo Features Updates
New Display Ads Functions:
Updated algorithm that enables consumers to watch images or videos at the same time as they are browsing product websites, it also analyses user preferences practically
Weibo Store:
The in-app function that provides a full set of e-store management services, while supporting e-commerce live-streaming. Retailers and brands would be able to manage inventory, analyse operation statistics and process all transactions with one program.
RED Features Updates
Linkage available on Live Streams:
Brands or KOLs could post the link of their RED e-commerce online store or their official offline store to achieve transaction conversion and offline diversion
Hosts live streaming collaboration
Co-branding and cross-promotion between brands with live streaming. There is added real-time interaction that allows audiences to ask questions about products which streamers can directly answer regarding the product
New product launch videos linkage:
Allow consumers to check-out the product display and the purchase link with one scroll on the same page
Photo credit: Chozan
Lucky Draw
Encourage interactive activities to build a relationship with consumers and reach a border consumer group with a post-sharing function.
Photo credit: Chozan
Consumer Buying Behaviour Analysis to Re-design Marketing Strategy
In 2019, online eCommerce made 20.7% of the total retail sales in China. The percentage had increased from 18.4% in 2018. According to Statista, revenue in the eCommerce market is projected to reach US$1,260 billion in 2021.
Given the physical constraints resulted from the pandemic, Chinese customers have been more willing to try new stores and new brands. They are now seeking a more convenient buying process, and more reliable benefits in their purchases regardless of geographic limitation.
Therefore, brands need to engage with their consumers on social media to build a genuine relationship with them for positive feedback. The happy consumers would then generate contents as the source of brand information in other consumers’ research and discovery process.
Being the world’s fastest-growing e-commerce market, Chinese customers use social media to discover new brands and products, validate the product quality through reviews, comments and feedback purchase directly through a social channel and write a review about their user experience.
Brands should engage with the customers digitally throughout the end-to-end buying journey.
Regarding PwC’s retail research result, 79% of Chinese customers indicated that positive interactions with brands on social media had driven them to endorse the brands more; and 71% customers have spent more as a result. Hence, brands are recommended to open their official accounts on social media platforms and interact with their customers’ frequently to build strong relationships with them.
Moreover, social media brand recommendations, especially those from key opinion leaders (KOLs) have brought brands to mass-market customers' attention, further expanding the brand's consumer base.
According to McKinsey's China Digital Consumer Trends Report, 50% of e-commerce consumers use social media as a source for brands information and buying decision-making in 2019.
Since 2017, there has been a significant growth in digital media contents impact on building brand awareness to making the purchase decision. Product reviews and user-generated contents are valuable 'word of mouth' in driving sales revenue.
Factors which lead to our success in Chinese Social Media E-Commerce Marketing
Make use of the latest data analysis statistics to refine consumers targeting
Launch multi-channel content marketing to engage with consumers and build trust along their purchasing journey
Utilize the lucky draw feature for discounts and products-winning campaign to maximize ad effectiveness, and accelerate sharing
Work with brand KOLs to sell products with short videos or live streams to spread the “word of mouth” and actively catch consumers attention with diverse contents
Our Pacific Fair Campaigns
Campaign Platforms: WeChat Account Management and KOL Influencer Marketing
Our talented team designed and developed the interactive layout to display the Pacific Fair Black Friday deals with short videos and interactive activities promotion. Users can scroll down, swipe horizontally & tab on buttons to discover products and deals, making it really interactive and fun to read.
This post has outperformed other weekly content by 400% and within the first 24hrs of its publication, the article was shared over 110 times.
On top of that, the QR code of KOLs’ RED profile could be included in WeChat articles, which allows customers to browse brand promotional contents on both social media platforms.
Our team also utilized a mini program on WeChat to help run a Pacific Fair Lucky Draw in the first article to increase the account traffic. The participation rate was quite high, with 30% of all readers joined the lucky draw.
If you're interested to learn more about marketing to the Chinese market, follow us on LinkedIn.
If you're interested in finding out more about our services, you can check out our past projects or contact us.
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