Since WeChat, unlike most other social media platforms, is not a discovery network, getting WeChat followers doesn’t work in the same way either. On the other hand, what really matters is not the quantity but the quality of followers which is the main strength of WeChat as a marketing tool.

In general, WeChat followers tend to be more interested in actually following the updates, consuming posted content and using account’s other features. In other words, the higher engagement level with the followers is what makes WeChat marketing so effective.

Currently, there are only 3 primary ways to subscribe (follow) a WeChat account:

1. Follow the account from the link when it is shared by WeChat friends;
2. Scan its QR with a smartphone;
3. Search for the exact WeChat account name from within the app;

The 3rd method of following the account is not something that is often used as it is somewhat cumbersome to users. Although it is always a good idea to pick a memorable account name, it is unlikely to be contributing to getting WeChat followers.

Essentially, acquiring WeChat followers comes down to the first two methods.

30 ways of getting WeChat followers – part 1:

#1: Creating shareable content

Easier said than done, sharing content is what can potentially get you the most followers. Writing volumes of standard content that doesn’t get shared isn’t worth much. However, just one post that goes viral has the potential of bringing hundreds of followers virtually within hours.

The best approach is to invest in a research and learning about people in the niche that you are targeting. Once you can figure out what they really care about – stay focus just on that.

#2: Getting KOLs (key opinion leaders) to share your content

There are thousands of KOLs on WeChat that would distribute your content (for a fee) to their followers which often reach tens of hundreds of thousands. More followers they have – higher price they charge: top KOLs with millions of followers can be very expensive to engage.

KOLs promotions are mostly effective in fashion, cosmetics, entertainment and similar areas. This is why this channels is not suitable for everyone.

#3: Integrating with WeChat Pay

WeChat Pay is quickly becoming one of the primary payment methods in China, both online and offline. Integrating WeChat Pay with WeChat account not only enables receiving payments but also automatically connects every paying customer to your WeChat account unless they specifically choose to unsubscribe.

#4: Promoting via other WeChat accounts

If your business owns multiple WeChat accounts, you can use them to promote a new one. This way you can get some of the existing followers to subscribe to a new WeChat channel, especially if it offers related but different content.

The same way can be used to cross-promote WeChat accounts through accounts of your partners – they post links to your content and you reciprocate.

#5: Leveraging employees networks

One of the simplest ways to get followers quickly is to encourage your Chinese employees to follow the account and periodically share the content with their friends. This method, at least at the beginning, can get your account a quick boost in the number of followers, some of whom may one day contribute to getting your message to a wider audience.

#6: Develop loyalty program

Loyalty programs are increasingly getting incorporated into WeChat accounts. They often come complete with points accumulation system and a virtual membership card. Running such function with WeChat will help attract new followers as well as retain the existing ones.

#7: Offer customer service on WeChat

If you sell a product or service that requires customer service, why not to use WeChat as one of such channels? Some of the responses to standard inquiries can even be pre-programmed into the system while other may require an actual human interaction.

Getting customers to communicate with you via WeChat offers another opportunity to engage with them and even capture their exact location to gain better insight. Several 3rd party platforms offer powerful platform extensions that enhance its functionality as a customer service channel.

#8: Leveraging other social media platforms

Other social media platforms can also go a long way in getting WeChat followers. While straight up publishing WeChat QR code on Weibo is not allowed (they are competitors), you still can post WeChat account name, so visitors can search for it.

Also, sometimes you can even get away with incorporating WeChat QR code into graphic background design.

Keep in mind however that simply duplicating the content between the platforms wouldn’t give enough incentives to your Weibo followers to go to another network. Therefore you should consider offering something different on both channels.

#9: Offering practical value in terms of discounts and coupons

This is another way to make WeChat content more relevant, practical and shareable. Coupons and discounts could be time limited to create a sense of urgency – an effective marketing trick. They can also be designed to be used online or within the same WeChat account as a part of O2O campaign.

#10: Lucky draws and quizzes

People love winning prizes which makes lucky draws and quizzes an effective strategy of getting WeChat followers. WeChat account’s basic functionality can be enhanced with 3rd party extensions that are designed to handle such promotional campaigns.

Stay tuned for our second part of the list coming next week.

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History

WeChat Pay is a relative newcomer among Chinese payment systems but it managed to gain traction almost immediately, surpassing AliPay in the number of registered users, although not in total transactions volume.

The vast majority of WeChat users, the number that is quickly approaching one billion, are also WeChat Pay customers as long as they have linked their account to their banking. WeChat Pay has gained additional momentum with the introduction of the “red envelope” feature – a cherished Chinese tradition of gifting money to friends and relatives on special occasions. During holidays, this feature of WeChat is by far the most popular one with transactions volume running into billions within hours.

Usage

In terms of various uses, WeChat Pay closely follows AliPay. It can be used to pay bills, buy goods online and offline, order tickets, grocery deliveries, hail a cab and do just about everything else. In addition, WeChat Pay powers rapidly growing WeChat ecommerce ecosystem, making buying and selling products with WeChat online stores a smooth and secure experience.

Moreover, WeChat continues to expand its services to various financial products – from investment funds to insurance, allowing users paying for that with WeChat Pay and from within the app.

In offline settings, WeChat Pay works pretty much in the same way as AliPay – using system generated dynamic QR code. In fact, both systems have become so popular, that it’s a common site to see WeChat Pay and AliPay QR codes next to each other at points of sale.

Supported devices

Since WeChat Pay is an integral part of WeChat app, it naturally works with every mobile device the app can be installed on. 90% of smartphones in China have the WeChat already installed, making WeChat Pay to be the most convenient payment system to use anyway.

It is a bit clunkier to use on a website – rather than following a link, users have to scan QR code with their phone in order to process the payment. However, since most people nowadays are surgically attached to their phones anyway, this doesn’t present a major inconvenience.

Transaction fees

Transaction fees structure with WeChat Pay is very similar to AliPay – it is free for most transactions. The fees of 0.1% start at withdrawals over 10,000 RMB as well as overseas transactions such as in case of cross border commerce.

An easy work around to avoid paying those fees is to buy WeChat various wealth management products and then move the money from there back to user’s bank account.

Acceptance overseas

Compared to AliPay, WeChat Pay is much less common outside of China, although recently, it’s been making inroads into new markets. It currently support 9 currencies (still short of 18 supported by AliPay). WeChat Pay has to comply with the same restriction faced by AliPay and imposed by China’s central bank on money outflow.

In recent years, WeChat has struck new deals with operators overseas, namely in South Africa, Philippines, Thailand as well as other countries to facilitate cross border transactions. They have also partnered with global payments technology company, Adyen, helping businesses worldwide to access new customers in foreign countries.

<< Overview of Chinese payment systems

<< AliPay

>> Union Pay

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Relying on traditional payment systems such as credit cards or PayPal is simply not going to work in China. In fact, if you are planning to sell anything to Chinese consumers, there are only three viable options.

In the next series of posts, we are going to give an overview of three main Chinese payment systems that dominate the market: AliPay, WeChat Pay and Union Pay. Integrating any of them, or, preferably, all of them to your website will give you an instant access to Chinese customers’ wallets.

AliPay and WeChat Pay together represent over 90% of payment systems market. Union Pay overlaps with the large part of that market by the virtue of being older, semi-official system that is linked to every bank account in China by default. In fact, Union Pay is closest equivalent to plastic in China.

Main Chinese Payment Systems

>> AliPay

>> WeChat Pay

>> Union Pay

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The rapid adoption of digital payment systems continues to transform Chinese economy and society in unprecedented ways. Nowadays, handling cash seems like a thing of the past with nearly everyone in China using one of the two main payment systems: AliPay or WeChat Pay.

When is comes to digital payments, China is, undoubtedly, the technological leader. Once Chinese payment systems have become the primary payment method online, brick-and-mortar stores started to adopt them for offline payments as well.

Today, practically every business in China, big or small, finds it much more convenient to settle bills via AliPay or WeChat Pay compared to traditional cash.

Several factors are responsible for such universal adoption of digital payments in China. The fact that it is backed by ecommerce giants such as Alibaba and the top tech innovator, Tencent, was the most critical component. Also, as it turns out, having digital cash is a much safer way to handle money in China – it is harder to lose, there is no problem with fake bills and there is almost always a recourse to get money back in case of a fraudulent transaction.

Another big reason for wide adoption of digital payments in China is the fact that those platforms integrate seamlessly with a bank accounts using real name authentication. This is another reason why the fraud with those system is rare and much harder for criminals to pull off (although it does happen).

Two if the largest Chinese payment systems are AliPay, backed by Alibaba and WeChat Pay, introduced by WeChat maker Tencent. Although, WeChat Pay was a relative late comer, it quickly catches up with AliPay in terms of market share.

In fact, most Chinese have both AliPay and WeChat Pay wallets and use them interchangeably. Other payment systems platforms have sprung up as well, achieving a fare amount of success, although nothing on the magnitude of AliPay or WeChat Pay.

QQ Wallet is a system used by QQ, an ecosystem of apps and digital products by the same Tencent. Baidu has it’s own system called Baidu Wallet which was launched even earlier then WeChat Pay.

Out of non-Chinese payment systems, only ApplePay has reached some degree of recognition, although it enjoys much less popularity. Since it uses NFC technology, it often cannot be used with more popular Android phones. QR code based Chinese payment systems of AliPay and WeChat Pay are much more flexible as they don’t require any special reading devices besides a simple camera.

AmazonPay, PayPal and others remain relatively unknown and are unlikely to gain any meaningful market share in China. One of the issues with those platforms are high transaction fees when funds are withdrawn back to a bank account. AliPay and WeChat Pay don’t charge anything for the amounts that most people use them for (some fees start to kick off when a certain transaction limit is reached).

Here is the chart put together by Statista showing the market share of various Chinese payment systems:

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Up until the release of new search function, searching on WeChat was, perhaps, the most frustrating experience of the otherwise awesome app.

For example, unless you knew a specific official account’s registered ID and could input it precisely into the search prompt, finding it would be almost impossible. If you were searching for a specific topic or news, only the main keywords would return any meaningful results despite the fact that there could millions conversations on the same topic taking place on WeChat.

With the integration of the new enhanced WeChat search function things have changed dramatically. It is now, in almost every respect, a proper search tool, not unlike Baidu or Qihoo.

First, if you haven’t enabled WeChat search function with your app, here is how to do it: go to Settings -> WeChat Labs. Then tap on “Top stories” and set it to “enable”, then do the same for “Search” from the same WeChat Labs screen.

The new WeChat search function is still quite different compared to Baidu mainly because it only shows content that was published on WeChat rather than elsewhere on the internet. Therefore, for now, it can’t completely replace Baidu or other search engines with wider reach.

On the other hand, it is safe to assume that WeChat search function will continue evolving to become more of a traditional search platform competing head to head with Baidu and other search heavyweights.

Here is what we should expect from future versions of WeChat search:

Sponsored search and advertisement

Paid ads is the main moneymaker for search engines and social media platforms, so there is little doubt that WeChat is going in the same direction. Most likely it will be a gradual process for several reasons: WeChat has been cautious in introducing advertising in the past and is likely to roll out more advertising options slowly and carefully.

Expanding search results

Tencent is a major shareholder in Sogou, the third largest search engine in China. It means that, technically, they should be able to integrate traditional search results from wider internet with those that only cover content published on WeChat. Perhaps, this would allow them to become a real competitor with Baidu on the quality and reach of internet search.

Integration with ecommerce

WeChat search has an incredible potential to drive ecommerce traffic to thousands of WeChat stores and compete with the industry giants like Taobao, Tmall and JD.com. All the ingredients for a successful integration of a shopping experience into WeChat are already in place: ecommerce option for WeChat accounts and WeChat Pay system. What was missing is the tool for users to search for products – exactly what new WeChat search function should be able to address.

Highly customized search experience

Unlike other search engines, WeChat has unique capability to connect searches with real users which is much bigger feat for Baidu or other traditional search engines. Someone who is using Baidu doesn’t have to be logged in or even have an account. In those cases, for the purpose of tracking search history and behavior, Baidu primarily relies on cookies placed in users’ browser cache. This means that tracking users and connecting them to real people is much harder for traditional search engines.

WeChat on the other hand knows much more about their users including their real names and phone numbers (all accounts have to be verified with user ID in order to have access to most useful functions), real time location, shopping history, their spending habits and even their account balance. In addition, the type of content those users have been consuming and other accounts they are following completes the picture of their interests and habits. This wealth of data gives WeChat unmatched potential to tailor results to specific users that would be most relevant to them in place and time.

In conclusion, the introduction of the latest WeChat search function is going to be the beginning of the new era in WeChat dominance and, perhaps, marks a decline of some of the traditional search tools and platforms.

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#5: O2O campaigns to grow WeChat followers base

O2O, which stands for Online to Offline (or, sometimes Offline to Online) has been one of the hottest topics in marketing in the last couple of years. It has been identified as a trillion dollar opportunity by TechCrunch as well called the industry’s stupidest acronym by Tech in Asia. While some marketers still disagree on how the term should be used, O2O in China has been growing by leaps and bounds and is getting ahead of most other markets.

Basically, anything in the digital world that brings customers to the physical stores or makes them buy products and services that are traditionally sold offline can be classified as O2O.

WeChat has been one of the primary drivers of O2O in China with many brands designing campaigns that exploit this concept and rapidly grow WeChat followers base. For example, offering to WeChat followers a free gift that can only be collected in a specific physical store location is just one example of O2O and how it can be used with mobile.

According to the recent report by McKinsey on O2O in China, it has been growing the fastest in 3 areas: travel, mobility and dining services:

Here are the main reasons behind O2O popularity with China’s mobile users:

Sheer number of smartphones

Large number of smartphones in China is the primary reason for O2O services getting a strong foothold. There are estimated 563 million smartphone users in 2016 representing more than a quarter of users worldwide.

Smartphone as the primary internet access point

Another factor in favor of O2O in China is the fact smartphones has long become the primary device of getting online for the majority of Chinese, beating desktops and laptops 2 years ago. Since large part of O2O’s appeal is location, mobile is a natural fit.

Mobile payment systems

Proliferation of secure and convenient mobile payment systems such as Alipay or WeChat Pay has become the industry enabler. In this regard, China is well ahead of most other countries.

Everyone in China loves QR

QR codes can be used in many creative ways to facilitate O2O based connections and, incidentally, they have been extremely popular in China. While QR codes have been declared dead in the West on more than one occasion, they have been embraced in China and popularized by apps like WeChat.

#6: Coupons, discounts and free gifts

Offering discounts, coupons and free gifts is the most straight forward way to keep the followers interested and engaged. As with the previously described methods, these strategies can be incorporated into O2O campaigns by connecting digital offers to a physical point of sale.

In order to retain and grow WeChat followers base discount and coupons offers should be consistent, prompting users to check back often. It is especially effective around major holidays and festivals.

In addition, if WeChat account runs its own store, discounts and coupons can be redeemed directly.

#7: Exclusive WeChat sales

Ever since introduction of WeChat Pay, the built-in payment system, WeChat ecommerce has been growing at astonishing rate. It is now believed to be behind only two of the industry giants: Alibaba’s Taobao/Tmall and JD.com. The majority of WeChat stores are focused on fast moving goods, fashion and luxury.

In fact, some of the top luxury brands that already had strong presence on WeChat, are now selling exclusively on this platform. Most recently, Coach even went so far as closing down their main Tmall store in favor of WeChat platform.

Why are some brands narrowing their ecommerce presence rather than expanding it? The explanation is in brands’ drive to focus on exclusivity rather than reach.

Companies in other industries, such as popular cellphone makers, often run flash sales of new hot models exclusively on WeChat creating the same type of effect.

#8: Loyalty programs

One of the best ways to make sure your customers continue following your WeChat channel is setting up a loyalty or rewards program entirely based within the account. Such setup would allow members to use virtual card at physical points of sale, accumulate rewards, check the balance and redeem the points.

Smartphones with WeChat app are already replacing physical wallets for millions of users. Digitizing traditional plastic loyalty cards by moving them to WeChat is seen as the part of the process of ditching wallets.

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Chinese online shoppers also grew to trust online payments and the vast majority is quite comfortable using it to pay for purchases on the internet. Alipay, the most popular Chinese online payment system by Alibaba, holds the largest market share. It powers two largest ecommerce platforms, Taobao and Tmall and is extensively used in large number of third party applications and platforms.

Main Chinese Online Payment Systems

As of the end of 2015, Alipay accounted for almost 70% of the entire Chinese online payment market. It is fair to say that almost everyone in China with a cellphone and a bank account has Alipay account which is somewhere around 700 million.

Alipay transaction fees are also much lower than PayPal. In general, cross border transactions are the most expensive but it depends on the type of contract a merchant has with Alipay as well as the volume.

The second largest online payment system is TenPay developed by Tencent. In fact, TenPay also powers WeChat Pay, the payment system used by WeChat users. Thanks to this app’s explosive growth, TenPay was able to increase its market share quite significantly during 2015 to about 20%, primarily on the account of Alipay.

WeChat Pay is now extensively used for many types of transactions. With web payments, customers simply scan the QR Code on their mobile phone with WeChat to make a payment to a website. For mobile users, WeChat Pay is used for payment within WeChat Official Accounts to enable sales from within the app.

Both Alipay and WeChat Pay are increasingly used for offline transactions at traditional stores and restaurants in China and even abroad. A customer simply opens the app in order to allow the merchant to scan their QR code with a special scanner or, often, just another smartphone. As many phones now have fingerprint scanning sensor, placing a finger on it is all it takes to complete a transaction (otherwise, a customer has to type in their secret code on their phone). Alternatively, a customer can scan a merchant’s QR code to send the payment but this way is becoming less common at the traditional point of sale.

Since those type of transactions are free to customers, Alipay and WeChat Pay serve as substitutes for carrying cash or credit cards and offer both security and convenience.

Alipay and TenPay (WeChat Pay) account for almost 90% of current mobile payment with other players, such as Lakala, JD wallet, YeePay, 99Bill and others quite far behind.

As for foreign alternatives, PayPal was not able to get any meaningful user base so far and is unlikely to do so in the future. Apple Pay still barely registers in China mobile payment market, although it is still quite new.

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