Influence Marketing: How to improve your KOL strategy on WeChat ?

October 13, 2017
It is common knowledge that the Chinese market is full of innovators and marketing noise. When it comes to making purchase decisions, chinese customers are more inclined to following the people they trust to make this decision. Word of mouth therefore, is an important purchase quotient for customers in the Chinese market.
KOL means Key Opinion Leader and this is an important factor right now in the Chinese market space. With the increase of use of social platforms like WeChat and Weibo, there has been a steady increase in influencers or KOL’s in these social media platforms.
The influencers consist primarily of bloggers, celebrities, socialites and columnists.  Most of these influences have a strong base in travel, magazines, journalists, business and so on. There is also another category of influencers called Wanghong which when translated means a web celebrity in Chinese. They are primarily into beauty and lifestyles, dubbed as ‘beauty gurus’.
Influencer marketing in itself is a much popular method to bringing awareness to your product in today’s time as more and more people disregard traditional methods of advertising. These KOL’s not only deliver their influence to the product or brand but are also involved in contributing their creative ideas in the process. A shout-out from a huge influencer is sure to bring new followers or awareness to the brand.
Let’s say you have engaged a popular web celebrity to bring awareness to your products. What do you do from here? There are many options for influencer marketing to meet your objectives. Here are the most popular ones:

1. Sponsored Posts:

A sponsored post is probably the most common method of engaging a KOL to bring awareness or to promote your product or brand. The brand offers their product or services to the KOL who then uses this to create engaging content on their platforms. Sometimes, the brands may also provide the influencer exactly what to say for them to post it.

2. Reviews

Word of mouth is one of the most trusted ways of product decision and this method combines this together. The influencer uses the product from the brand and provides a review on it so its users can understand more about the product and it can influence their purchase decision.

3. Giveaways or Contests

 

The KOL can host a series of competitions on behalf of the brand on their competition, or giveaway certain products of the brand to raise more traffic and awareness to the product. This is a great way to make a content go viral as the user has something to gain at the end of it too.
As we see the rise of active users of social platforms, we can only expect influencer marketing to be on the rise in China!
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5 Steps to make viral content on WeChat

September 28, 2017
WeChat is an important way of life in the Chinese market currently. With more users joining in an exponential rate, it is also a place where marketers come together to sell their products and business in this online marketplace with minimal restrictions. Every day, 12 million articles are written by brands on the platform and every month readers read an entire novel worth of articles by brands. With this competitive edge, how can brands ensure that their content stands out amongst their competitors ? The answer is simple!
To understand this, we must first understand what kind of articlers, users share the most. What makes them viral in nature, where users are mass recommending them to their friends. Understanding this can help us arrive at a guide on creating the best and viral content on the platform.
 

1. Evoke an Emotional Response to the Content:

Often the content that is the most viral, has a personal touch to it. It has the user feel immersed in it, enough for them to share this experience with their friends. Users love to send their friends content that expresses their personal points written in the most efficient and effective way. A great example of this is an account well known for its reviews and movie shows, launched a campaign that created a stir in the mainstream media, The company gave away 100 free tickets to participants who arrived at any airports or Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou within a few hours of it being published. This brings us to the second point:

2. Don’t be afraid to think out of the box

Often marketers are unable to push the limits of their thinking and are confined in a box. Sometimes, the content that goes viral the most is content that does not accept the social or traditional norms and rises up amongst the clutter. Users are more susceptible to share content that they are certain, their friends would have never seen. The ‘wow’ factor is extremely important to create viral content in the WeChat space.

 

3. Focus on storytelling 

 
Each piece of writing must have a story based approach to best explain your brand to the audience. Have one objective and write your stories based on that objective, ensuring not to stray away from the topic. This may confuse users if not done correctly. The content must always be vetted keeping the end user in mind, their feelings, their beliefs etc.

4. Encourage a Conversation

Great viral content is one that forces people to have an internal discussion with themselves. When the ‘dress’ happened on social media, people were torn amongst themselves trying to figure out if the dress was golden or was it blue? The discussions were rampant in office, at school and at the dinner table. Discussions like these are what make the content go viral, in a sense there should be an open ended interpretation sometimes to enable a good conversation.

5. Interaction in Key

Increasing the interactive ability of the content, will largely increase its chances of becoming viral. The content presented must be enjoyable and interesting to read for the audience to encourage their interaction with it. Interactive H5 pages often achieve millions of views in a short span of time.
There are other important points like being concise and to the point. However, these guidelines mentioned above are quite essential to create interesting and shareable content on WeChat!

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WeChat at work – 5 reasons why everyone is using it all wrong

September 11, 2017

Living and working in China for over 7 years, I consider myself to be an early adopter and an avid user of WeChat. And as a WeChat lover and marketer, I cannot keep myself from reiterating that WeChat is one of the most innovative, convenient and efficient instant messaging platforms in the world. Chinese and foreigners living in China are able to carry out plenty of tasks whether it is shopping, payments or interactions with friends and brands on WeChat, often spending many hours everyday on it.

 

However, with a platform so versatile, I am disappointed in the way workplaces are using it.

 

Here’s a summary from personal experience on how WeChat has negatively impacted work efficiency and how, as a company we are trying to change it for the best for our colleagues and our clients.

 

The points mentioned here are true for most messaging platforms, but the importance of WeChat at work in China makes it particularly more impactful given its usage in everyday life, than anywhere else.

 

Professional or personal ?

The reality is, most of the employees use their personal WeChat account for work.

The problem: The blurring of the frontier between personal and professional life is more obvious on WeChat than anywhere else. I know very few people that use a dedicated “professional wechat account”. As a result, client conversations are mixed with your friends’ discussions, and everyone is distracted by both personal notifications at work and professional reminders at home. This is lose-lose situation.

 

Additionally, it also raises concerns on the amount of professional data that can be stored/lost on a personal account,which the businesses have no control over. Let’s not even get started on WeChat names, profile pictures or moments sharing.

 

The solution: Use a professional phone number and WeChat account. It can be quite painful and difficult to implement at first but this is a much required step to increase efficiency in the workplace. This may provide clients and employees a good work-life balance.

 

So many messages …

Let’s be honest, everyone mutes group messages unless they enjoy a life ridden with chaos!

 

The problem: At the end of the day, you can not follow all the group conversations you are in. After muting the notifications not to become insane, you will end up missing information as you scroll quickly through the hundred of messages you missed. This is a shame as people actually might think you have “read” the information.

 

The solution: Try to avoid large group conversation for work, and tell people that you are not reading 100% of what is written there. Instead, encourage a one on one, or small group conversation to effectively convey your points.

 

We don’t talk anymore

 

When was the last time you used your phone to call someone?

The problem:

 

If you want to have an interactive exchange, opt for a call or meeting to have a meaningful conversation. Chatting is a grey area between writing and talking. So, why do people love it ? Because most people in this age are quite lazy and love to have the feeling of what I call  “multi-task efficiency”.

 

With WeChat they can “chat” during meetings, while eating or sometimes when they are in the intimate space of a bathroom. As a result, we take less and less time for a proper call, as we have the feeling of gaining time on WeChat. The truth is “multi-tasking” is a great source of distraction, a loss of efficiency and source of mistakes because you are not fully focused on the task at hand.

 

The solution: Take time to have a call or a meeting to ensure a proper dynamic and interactive conversation rather than chatting. Don’t be lazy and use the call function when needed.

 

Project management nightmare

The truth: Managing a project on WeChat is not only difficult, but can easily escalate into an impending disaster.

 

The problem: WeChat group conversation are not structured to manage a project efficiently. Group Names are most of the time generic, making the “object/subject” of the discussion not clear, all tasks are mixed-up, buried in layers of conversation and never properly  “closed”.

 

Iterations have a tendencies to strongly increase and validations are far from clear as not all groups stakeholders “follow” the discussions.

Also taking into fact that documents are stored for a limited amount of time and conversation history is easily lost if you have any issue with your phone.

 

The solution: Use proper management tools and push your interlocutor to use emails for key project milestone and validation.

 

Writing is thinking

 

The truth: You cannot write well on a WeChat discussion.

The problem: Seeing Donald Trump on Twitter may have given you the confidence that you can build your thinking on WeChat. Don’t. You can not write properly without a clear structure, including titles, paragraphs and alineas. And if you try do it on WeChat, you will definitely look like a weirdo. Some of us might try, by sending multiple messages but you are at risk having your demonstration being “cut” by another user message which we can all agree, is always unpleasant.

 

The solution: Use WeChat to send very simple messages/information, or even only to notify people. If your message is getting complex, write a clear email or build a document. When user will be able to write articles like an Official account my point might change, but until then don’t try to develop complex writing format on WeChat

 

Is there a WeChat workplace habit that drives you crazy too? There can be simple solutions to these problems. However, they can only be implemented with the cooperation of all parties to increase efficiency in the workplace. Maybe WeChat could opt to have different ‘modes’ for work or personal to separate the messages. We can only wait and find out what happens!

 

Aurélien FERRIE

In China since 2010, Aurelien FERRIE joined KRDS in 2013 as General Manager – Greater China. With KRDS, he is helping international clients (Air France, Club Med, Louis Vuitton) to grow their visibility on Chinese social media platforms. With a strong experience in sales and marketing, Aurelien quickly became an expert of Chinese social media platforms, especially WeChat, that he consider to be one of the most innovative platform in the world. His ambition is to keep growing his digital expertise and experience to keep offering the most innovative online solutions to brands in China

 

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WeChat Data Report – Summer 2017

August 18, 2017

From communicating with friends and performing complex payments, WeChat has been at the center of the digital revolution in the Chinese market. Each year, WeChat releases detailed reports on its performance and user behaviour with their analysis. Here’s a summary of the data in these reports.

 

Number of Users and Behavior:

WeChat has recorded daily active users to be over 877 million in June 2017 with over 20 million official accounts on the database. This is an increase of 21% from last year.

The app also recorded 600 million monthly active mobile payment users. Moreover, every day 50% of users use WeChat for an average of 90+ minutes. Another interesting point is that 30% of all time spent on mobile in China is on WeChat alone.

WeChat User Data 2017 China

WeChat User Engagement

We now know how many users visit the app everyday. It’s time to take a look at what they do when they are online. The last year saw an increase of 67% total messages sent per day on WeChat with an average of 8 calls per month with over 65 mins of calls per month per user. Apart from sending messages, users are also reading content from official brand accounts. Ever month users read official account articles the length of a novel!

Users also send each other 28 red packets per user in a month with ¥580 sent each month per user.

WeChat User Engagement

WeChat in Overseas Travel

Over the last year, 135 million outbound travellers from China spent over $261 billion abroad with top destinations that included, Japan, USA, Thailand, S Korea, Australia and the United Kingdom. This has been largely possible due to businesses targeting Chinese customers as they travel abroad by simplifying payments. For businesses, 40% of Mobike rides are initiated from their WeChat mini program (other 60% being from their own app) Anoother addition is that, Moments ads targeting Chinese tourists abroad are officially opening up to all businesses from August.

As WeChat sees an increase of users everyday, it will be quite interesting to see how the platform grows beyond its current capabilities to make it an integral part of business and life in the Chinese market.

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How to illustrate your WeChat articles perfectly ?

July 31, 2017

Visuals are an important part of creating quality content and delivering your message effectively to the right audience. The potential for an increase in audience interest and engagement is immense once you understand the intricacies of creating tailor made content for business.

Every day businesses are effectively utilizing the power of WeChat to connect with their Chinese audience better and as the market becomes more competitive, brands with great and visually appealing content are bound to stand out from the best.

Here are some effective visual formats and examples to help you create the perfect WeChat article.

 

GIFs:

GIF is the best format to use to illustrate your WeChat articles and deliver the message in a visually attractive manner. Lighter than a video, they will load quickly and bring motion to illustrate your copy perfectly. You can find tons of GIF’s online. However, it is best to create and design your own with a motion designer, to keep the visuals in tone with your brand personality.

Credit: Shilla Duty Free

ILLUSTRATION:

Finding the perfect picture or visual asset for your brand content can be a challenge. This is where working with an illustrator can come handy to produce the exact visual you have in mind and effectively deliver your message.

   

Credit: Atout France

 

PHOTO MONTAGE

They say an image is worth a thousand words, well how about a photo montage ? A photo montage is the way to go to illustrate a more complex idea and bring it to life.

 

 

Credit: FRANKE

STICKERS

Stickers are an integral part of the WeChat world and a common way of communicating with today’s Chinese netizens. Don’t stay behind and start building your own custom stickers to communicate in a fun and branded way on WeChat

Credit: BNP Paribas

QR CODE, HEADERS & FOOTERS

Some marketers think that QR Code’s are not visually appealing, but they are an essential part of the WeChat world and the key for user to access your WeChat account. Make sure to add them in the footer of you WeChat article and keep it interesting with some designs! Also why not add a nice header in your WeChat article to welcome your reader properly?

 

 

 

 

Credit: FRANKE

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WeChat: How The Royal Edinburg Military Tattoo is planning to attract more Chinese tourists ?

July 18, 2017

The Royal Edinburg Military Tattoo is a much awaited global gathering that showcases the talents of musicians and performers across the world. The Scottish tourism highlight is often attended by members of the British Royal family too. The Tattoo is also frequented by many Chinese tourists in Scotland. Every year, performers from over 48 countries take part in the Tattoo, and around 30 per cent of the 220,000 audience each year are from overseas.

With the increase of Chinese guests at the Edinburg Tattoo, the Tattoo has decided to introduce the support of WeChat mobile payments platform for its guests in 2018. WeChat has one of the fastest growing user base in China and is one of the most popular and easy ways to facilitate payments in China. The introduction of WeChat at the Edinburg Military Tattoo is said to help Chinese visitors seamlessly pay for tickets, services and merchandise at the tattoo.

The decision to enable WeChat Pay is predicted to increase the number of tickets purchased by Chinese visitors which increased 89% between 2015 and 2016.

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5,000 followers on WeChat in 48h with no media nor influencers, how Groz-Beckert & KRDS did it?

June 29, 2017

Launching a new brand on WeChat is serious challenge. Specially when your client is strong B2B player but with little awareness in the general public eye.

So on June 6th, Groz-Beckert launched its official account. 48 hours later, they recruited over 5,000 followers without using any media, KOL, events or third-parties promotion.

How KRDS helped Groz-Beckert achieve such results?

Identify and rely on your strength

The short answer to this question is that Groz-Beckert was able to achieve this feat by relying on the people they trust best – Groz-Beckert staff and sales teams.

Before looking outwards for KOL or media solutions, brands must remember that WeChat is a customer servicing platform first that can be turn into an excellent and effective marketing tool. Therefore, to be successful on WeChat, you must ensure you are actually recruiting your clients first. The rest will come much easier, as your clients have the most authority spreading your brand message among their community.

So, the questions is, who better than your on-site sales people and staff that can successfully interact with your clients and welcome them on WeChat? No one.

Will they do it out of the blue? No. Sales people are busy and if you do not create the right tool and incentive to push them to promote your company they will not do it. Period.

Build the right tool and campaign

To answer this challenge, we created a WeChat connected APP where every Groz-Beckert staff could log in easily to generate a unique personal QR code.

This unique QR code was connected with each staff which enabled us to live-track how many followers they recruited individually making sure they are unique users.

To spice up the competition, a penalty was also given if the user unfollowed the account later.

Using this simple mechanism, the staff were able to recruit followers and the competitive spirit made them want to recruit more number of followers.

To aid this, a leaderboard was created that displayed the individual performance, and the top staff on the leaderboard will walk away with big rewards and recognition from Groz-Beckert.

Segment and collect data about your community

Furthermore, the structure allowed us to understand how followers were recruited through different staff departments and provided us more insight into the client’s interests,

This mecanism helped Groz-Beckert and KRDS to compartment and target specific audience to push relevant content to them in the future.

If you have been following KRDS closely, you would know that we shared the same success story with BNP Paribas a few months ago with a similar approach.

So the only question pending is when you will get in touch with us to help you implement a similar winning strategy for your brand on WeChat!

ABOUT GROZ-BECKERT

Groz-Beckert is the world’s leading provider of industrial machine needles, precision parts and fine tools, as well as systems and services for the production and joining of textile fabrics. All around the world, the products and services support the textile processes of knitting and warp knitting, weaving, felting, tufting, carding and sewing.

The company, founded in 1852, employs around 7,700 people and turned over about 665 million euro in 2016.

All of the threads come together at the headquarters in Albstadt, Germany. The family-owned company also disposes of other production sites in Germany, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Portugal, USA, India, China and Vietnam. Scores of sales affiliates and sales partners top off the international presence.

Groz-Beckert offers its customers a comprehensive partnership – without boundaries and on site in over 150 countries.

ABOUT KRDS

Incorporated in 2013, KRDS Shanghai, the social and mobile agency has been ideating and producing digital content and social media campaigns, on Weibo and WeChat, for many local and international clients, to name few Club Med, Louis Vuitton, Air France, BNP Paribas, Biotherm …

ABOUT AURELIEN FERRIE:

In China since 2010, Aurelien FERRIE joined KRDS in 2013 as General Manager – Greater China.

With KRDS, he is helping international clients (Air France, Club Med, Louis Vuitton) to grow their visibility on Chinese social media platforms.

With a strong experience in sales and marketing, Aurelien quickly became an expert of Chinese social media platforms, especially WeChat, that he consider to be one of the most innovative platform in the world. His ambition is to keep growing his digital expertise and experience to keep offering the most innovative online solutions to brands in China and in the world.

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Why WeChat Pay is a game changer for brands in China?

June 5, 2017

Mobile payments have shaped the way consumers spend online in the Chinese market. It has opened a new window to seamless and reliable payment methods and the technology improvements have greatly facilitated the consumer’s spending habits online. With the launch of WeChat Pay, there has been significant competition in the world of online payments with Alipay possessing just 54% of the market share as oppossed to a strong 80% share before 2015. By staying ahead of the mobile landscape and social experiences WeChat has emerged as the next big thing in mobile payments with WeChat Pay.

With WeChat’s increasing wins and an exponential rise in user base there are now multiple opportunities for brands to leverage WeChat Pay.

 

Stay in touch with your customer and collect relevant data 

One of the best advantages of opening a mobile payment portal is the connect you establish with customers during a purchase. The user automatically is added as a follower of the WeChat account once the purchase is made and is broadcasted latest news and developments directly. This is also great for brands to establish effective targeting for customers and bring them customized product recommendations. This will be great for the overall brand recall and will boost sales.

 

Drive recurring purchases directly in WeChat 

A simple and effecting user interface is key to driving sales in this era. To heighten the experience of the consumer, brands must be able to provide them the right user experience and flow which will in turn help in seamless online transactions in a matter of a few clicks. A great way would be to integrate the WeChat Pay into it’s WeChat store for better optimisation and convenience for the customers. A customer that is comfortable and happy navigating through the interface, is more likely to make a purchase.

 

Increase your online revenue 

WeChat Pay has opened a new door for brands to enhance their digital presence and offer their consumers a more reliable and simple way to indulge in online transactions in the comfort of their favourite mobile applications that they use every day. WeChat is growing its user base exponentially and the addition of the WeChat Pay and the integration of this in the WeChat stores of the brands is expected to boost sales rapidly for brands.

 

It is imperative that brands must leverage this opportunity and provide the best consumer experience to their audience in the WeChat application across China.

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Search, the WeChat way!

May 25, 2017

In order to understand how much positive energy is prevalent in the country, China watchers tracked the term “transmitting positive energy to society”  and the number of times it was mentioned in the chinese newspapers, especially People’s Daily the country’s top print.

 

This exploration was headed by David Bandurski, a researcher with the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong. He found that the term was taken into importance after it was mentioned by Chinese president Xi Jinping during a 2012 meeting with former US president Jimmy Carter, calling for more positive energy in the China-US relationship. He also used the term “transmit positive energy” when he toured state-controlled news outlets last year.

However the usage happen to decline from a peak in 2014 has resurfaced in the international stage resulting in the term appearing in 111 People’s Daily articles so far this year.

 

When exploring such research it brings us to understand how easy it is to find and track such content today in the digital world. Tencent recently launched a new feature ‘WeChat Search’ that will allow us to search content within WeChat (Moments, Articles and Official accounts). This feature has surely made WeChat a great threat to Baidu, the internet company that provides search engine services.

 

Baidu has been predominantly used for checking company’s background and reputation, while WeChat allows users to see the engagement of other users, the articles and the social comments in turn establishing the performance of the brand and its influence real time. With Tencent purchasing a 36.5% stake Sogou, the pioneer of search engine that is able to index WeChat content on their special section bringing the much need integration for WeChat.

 

Baidu’s slow growing revenue is no match to Tencent’s profits and revenues shooting upto 50% growth each year. The more the merrier can be the motto for the search engine industry, striving on mere existence of data, more of which enables better output upon the results. The popularity of WeChat brings in users, more users leading to more data which again leads to more users and it goes on.

 

WeChat has created quite the buzz in the digital space and it is surely taking the lead among its competition in the country.

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Wechat: Kitchens specialist FRANKE chooses KRDS Shanghai as its agency on record

May 22, 2017

FRANKE, the world leader in comprehensive systems for domestic kitchens and for professional applications in food service that promises to bring confidence, convenience and comfort into people’s lives through innovation and quality service. Headquartered in Aarburg, Switzerland, the Group employs around 9’000 people at 68 subsidiaries on 4 continents, and exports to over 100 countries. Having made a decision to enter social media to reach out to their followers better, they had their official WeChat account launched in 2015.

 

WeChat being one of the frontrunner in China’s social media environment and a platform service where brands create a unique relationship with followers, content has to echo users’ daily concerns and bring value to them.

 

This is why FRANKE chose KRDS Shanghai as its social media agency on record for the year 2017-2018.

 

FRANKE appreciated the high quality of the proposal which reflected KRDS Shanghai’s deep knowledge of chinese netizen habits, its ability to react rapidly and make sure the brand stays on top of social media trends.

 

“We felt very confident when we met KRDS team, we trust their expertise and we value the fact that they listen to us. We feel we are a priority for them” – Pansy ZHANG, Marketing Director, Franke China

 

Aurélien FERRIE, General Manager Greater China at KRDS added “We are very proud of welcoming FRANKE as a new client. Being in charge of their social media and digital strategy and its execution, is great responsibility and one more opportunity for us to keep demonstrating our expertise and the value of our proposition“

 

Besides being a social agency, KRDS Shanghai is also capable of producing designs matching FRANKE’s Swiss premium brand standards thanks to its award-winning studio. These designs will include animations such as gifs, cinemagraphs aimed at increasing engagement among the brand’s followers.

 

Incorporated in 2013, KRDS Shanghai, the social and mobile agency has been ideating and producing digital content and social media campaigns, on Weibo and WeChat, for many local and international clients, to name few Club Med, Louis Vuitton, Air France, BNP Paribas, Biotherm and the French International Soccer Team.

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