WeChat marketplace: how to set up a store and profit from the social media platform
With 180bn sales in 2015, 360bn in 2016 and expected growth in 2017, WeChat, although a social media platform, offers an impressive marketplace functionality. Its unique interface presents different opportunities for the prospective seller: its storefronts are something like PayPal, Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp combined and are easy and rapid to access, with a simple way to pay (WeChat Pay) included within the app. Crucially, as with Facebook, many users will treat WeChat as their primary point of access to the Internet, spending 3 hours a day on the app. This represents an unprecedented selling opportunity for merchants.
How can I be a successful WeChat merchant?
Successful sellers get users to engage with and follow the store for direct selling, suiting cosmetics and fashion brands especially who can use the aesthetics of their products to build up a fanbase - especially important when stores are limited to 300-500 products. Consumers can be also accessed through friend referrals, sponsored posts from key opinion leaders (KOLs) and so-forth. Merchants can also access an audience by creating a multi-function account which offers direct audience targeting, but word-of-mouth is really important as well.
The best approaches rely on strong editorial content, native advertising both on WeChat and on other media channels and word-of-mouth; but they can also embrace more innovative approaches such as the music playlists shared by speaker company Treelabs and incentives such as (virtual) loyalty cards, coupons for money off instore, promotions for followers who engage or rewards and gifts (such as Burberry’s virtual red envelopes). WeChat also offers a store-within-a-store functionality whereby users can become merchandisers - and if products they recommend to friends sell, they get commission.
How to set up a WeChat store?
Setting up a WeChat store presents some challenges. While the WeChat e-commerce market is rapidly expanding, there is as yet no native e-commerce functionality. Unlike Tmall which has a complete merchant backend, Wechat, more similar to Facebook, has neither an official WeChat tool nor a backend for users to open WeChat stores, although you can create a WeChat shop inside your WeChat App. In answer to this gap in the market, some third-party service providers are offering an operating platform to prospective WeChat merchants, from setting up the shop to operating and fulfilling orders and running marketing promotions (e.g. Weidian). Different third parties offer different services and levels of customisation, tailored to the needs of the merchant and maximising the potential of the platform. You may also then need a local partner to provide bilingual technology which integrates with the third party platform and WeChat, reporting for you in English and standardising orders and product information appropriately. It could also provide a system which supports multiple e-commerce platforms, one of which would be WeChat.
Depending on the required system integration, your store could be built in weeks. However, if the store requires backend system integration or full integration between the client’s systems and the local partner’s system, it could take several weeks or months. An initial team is needed to set-up the WeChat account and design the store; an operations team can then handle uploading and dispatching products, managing pre- and post-sales, day-to-day store maintenance, planning marketing and editorial, SEM and SEO, sponsorship, demographic targeting, cross-posting with other social media platforms such as Weibo, sales development and customer service.
With our local expertise and experience working in e-Commerce, Monrah can help you find the the right third party platform; identify the right local partner if we decide together this is necessary; decide and design the best marketing approach to use given your needs. Get in touch to learn more!
