It's quite common for B2B companies to question the effectiveness of social media for boosting brand awareness and generating leads. Specifically, there's curiosity around WeChat's efficiency as a tool for B2B businesses aiming to connect with potential clients. Many B2B marketers in China ponder over the utility of WeChat in their marketing strategies.

The concise response to this inquiry is affirmative—yes, WeChat holds significant value in B2B marketing campaigns.

Why is WeChat important?

Originally launched as an instant messaging app, WeChat has transformed into a comprehensive multi-functional ecosystem. It now encompasses a range of powerful features such as social media capabilities, payment services, official accounts, and mini-programs.

Dubbed China's "super app," WeChat boasted 1.34 billion monthly active users by the end of 2023. This figure represents half of Facebook's global monthly active users—a remarkable achievement considering the majority of WeChat's user base is concentrated in a single country, China.

WeChat's extensive user base is not its only strength. The app serves as a primary gateway for many users conducting quick web searches on their mobile devices. It features an integrated search engine powered by Sogou Search, another asset owned by Tencent, WeChat's parent company. Notably, WeChat Official accounts often achieve high rankings for navigational searches within the app.

Given these attributes, it's no surprise that virtually all businesses operating in China, along with numerous international companies, regard WeChat as an indispensable component of their marketing arsenal.

B2B WeChat Marketing Best Practices

Create the Right Content

At its core, social media success hinges on content. Crafting the right content attracts the right audience. However, the real challenge lies in gaining WeChat followers. The initial step is to understand the preferences of your target audience and ensure you're creating content that resonates with them.

A strategic approach to kickstart this process is to observe the content shared by your competitors on their accounts. This can serve as an insightful benchmark for understanding what engages your shared audience.

Encourage Sharing

WeChat Official Accounts offer functionalities for both one-to-one and one-to-group sharing. When your content is shared within a group that has interests aligning with your business, it significantly increases the likelihood of those group members beginning to follow your account.

Moreover, promoting content sharing shouldn't be restricted just to your external audience. Many businesses actively encourage their employees to share their official account's content. Given that employees typically have industry-relevant personal contacts, leveraging employee advocacy can be a highly effective strategy for expanding your account's follower base.

Paid Campaigns on WeChat are Essential to Success

For newly established accounts, it's quite typical to leverage paid strategies to give the account an initial boost. WeChat may not be the most effective platform for organic (unpaid) content strategies right at the beginning. In the realm of B2B marketing, paid campaigns are where the true value lies.

The most popular avenues include WeChat Ads, which will showcase your advertisements within the Moments feed of your target demographic, and collaborating with Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) for marketing efforts.

Join WeChat Groups

WeChat groups serve as hubs for individuals with shared interests to exchange ideas. These groups can sometimes include several hundred members.

By identifying and joining WeChat groups pertinent to your industry and sharing your top-notch articles, you can significantly increase your visibility. If your content proves valuable to the group members, you'll not only gain new followers but also benefit from shares that could further extend your content's reach to wider audiences.

Use Visual Content

Purely text-based technical content can sometimes become overwhelming. Visual content, on the other hand, often garners more engagement in the form of likes and shares.

Incorporating charts, animations, and infographics can make the reading experience more enjoyable, particularly when you aim to offer your readers a light and entertaining read from time to time.

Learn the Local Market

What's trending outside of China might not hold the same popularity within China.

It's crucial to closely observe the interests of Chinese companies, especially their challenges, and create content specifically designed to address their needs.

Set up Customer Support

Drawing from our previous experiences, we've observed that followers often prefer to contact a brand directly on WeChat after they start following it.

To facilitate this, consider incorporating your phone number and email address into your WeChat account details. Additionally, setting up auto-replies ensures that when someone wishes to reach out, your contact information is automatically sent to them, streamlining the communication process.

WeChat Mini-Programs

If WeChat articles aren't meeting your marketing objectives, it's worth exploring WeChat mini-programs. WeChat offers robust APIs that enable the development of fully-featured native applications within the WeChat ecosystem.

Offline

Each WeChat official account is associated with a unique QR code, serving as the digital "business card" for your account.

Smartphone users can easily scan this QR code to begin following you. These QR codes are versatile and can be utilized in various settings, including being printed on business cards, displayed on banners, or featured at exhibition stands.

In Conclusion

If you're in the B2B sector, don't overlook WeChat as a potent channel for your social media marketing efforts. Your goal is to engage not only current and prospective customers but also potential employees through your content. Given the extensive user base of WeChat in China, it's highly likely that your target audience is already seeking you out on the platform.

Consider implementing some of these strategies, establish metrics for tracking, and then evaluate the outcomes to identify which approaches resonate most effectively with your audience.

What are your thoughts? Have you integrated WeChat into your B2B social media marketing strategy? Which types of content have you found to generate the most engagement? We'd love to hear about your experiences and insights in the comments.