Over the course of my summer internship in Loyalty Program Marketing, we heard the same complaint over and over again from our counterparty in the APAC region - our team's marketing strategy was NOT working in mainland China, where our largest customer base is outside of the United States.
Our regular promotion consisted mainly of Email deployments and Banner Ads in our internal websites, but they were not effective at reaching our Chinese audiences - "nobody in China reads Email these days, and our internal websites take 45 seconds to load," we were told.
So what does work? One word - WeChat.
What is WeChat exactly? Out of all of the English-language articles I've read that attempt to capture the essence of this Chinese"Social Media" app, the below article by Connie Chan is by far the most effective in conveying what is so different about WeChat compared to WhatsApp / Facebook / Messenger / Twitter / Instagram / etc.
When One App Rules Them All: The Case of WeChat and Mobile in China
In short, WeChat has the seamlessly integrated mobile payment functionality that allows transactions to take place within the "App-within-App" environment, without ever leaving the WeChat Ecosystem. Whereas Western Social Media tools stops at broadcasting promotional messages, WeChat actually provides the tools to convert that "like / share / retweet" into monetary transactions.
While most companies are still figuring out what to do with Facebook / Instagram / Twitter, these brands have successfully gained traction within the mainland Chinese audience with WeChat campaigns that are creative and interactive.
Top 10 Advertising Campaigns on WeChat
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