What is WeChat and what is WeChat marketing?
WeChat, an indispensable communication and social media software in the Chinese community, it has become one of the most important advertising channels in the Chinese market, we called it WeChat marketing.
Since WeChat has opening up more and more functionalities, and the WeChat itself has become more and more commercial, more and more of the advertising methods have come online to the WeChat platform. From official account marketing to WeChat sales, to WeChat moment marketing, to mini-program, to moment ads, it is not hard to tell that WeChat is also undergoing a gradual improvement process, and in its relatively mature state.
WeChat has given both domestic and foreign merchants a great business opportunity to take advantage of their huge traffic, all of the businesses want to take a piece of “traffic cake” from here, especially when the Chinese have relatively high consumption power. The questions are, is this piece of cake a good cake for foreign countries’ businesses? What are the pros and cons of those multiple WeChat marketing and advertising strategies?
Due to the restrictions on foreign countries WeChat marketing in foreign Chinese community can be divided into two categories:
- Advertisers give the money to WeChat (Tencent Company), including moment ads, banner ads and mini program ads.
- Advertisers do not give the money to WeChat (Tencent Company), where advertisers do not directly purchase the traffic through WeChat, such as private official account banner ads, private article banner ads, private group chat ads, private moments ads, private network, in this way the advertiser is buying the traffic from a private user/users who has a large number of personal traffic.
Lets see We can tell that both paid and non-paid WeChat ads have done it’s great job. Most of these WeChat advertising methods in North America currently charge advertising fees in the units of CPM (cost per thousand impressions).
Paid WeChat Advertising
The paid Wechat advertising is the WeChat company itself enabling the display promotional message on users’ moments and WeChat official account’s articles. The goal of advertisement allows the company to grow it’s branding, official account followers, traffic to the landing page and also generate app downloads and more.
WeChat Moments Ads
A WeChat moments ads is equivalent to a Facebook ads’s news feed placement, the moments ads will show in the moments placement section while users scrolling down and view the contents. There are two types of ads supported at a moments ads, image display ads and also video ads.
Moments Ads: Image Display Ads
1. Advertiser’s official account logo and name (same as Facebook ads page logo and page name)
Pull the logo and name from advertiser’s official account, when users click on it, it will lead users to advertiser’s official account introduction page.
2. Ads Description
Concise, friendly and easy to understand, a word limit of 40 characters and no more than 4 lines.
3. Image Creative
Images are used to illustrate ideas through rich visual elements, ads support multiple images 1/3/4/6.
4. External Link (Call To Action)
The external link for users to get more information when they click on it. The text link used to guide the user to the ads landing page, used for further communication and interaction to interested users.
5. Engagement Section
This section allows users to like and comment below the ads, allows users to engage in the ads (On WeChat, likes and comments can only be seen by user’s friends).
Moments Ads: Video Ads
1. Advertiser’s official account logo and name (same as Facebook ads page logo and page name)
Pull the logo and name from advertiser’s official account, when users click on it, it will lead users to advertiser’s official account introduction page.
2. Ads Description
Concise, friendly and easy to understand, a word limit of 40 characters and no more than 4 lines.
3. Video Creative
Through the video to convey advertising creativity, the video can be 6~15 seconds long with a video ratio of 4:3 or 16:9, click on the video with the follow actions:
a. short video -> full screen short video -> full video, limited to 5 minutes (optional: external link)
b. small video -> full screen small video (optional: external link)
4. External Link (Call To Action)
The external link for users to get more information when they click on it. The text link used to guide the user to the ads landing page, used for further communication and interaction to interested users.
5. Engagement Section
This section allows users to like and comment below the ads, allows users to engage in the ads (On WeChat, likes and comments can only be seen by user’s friends).
Moments Ads: Basic Type Card Ads
1. Advertiser’s official account logo and name (same as Facebook ads page logo and page name)
Pull the logo and name from advertiser’s official account, when users click on it, it will lead users to advertiser’s official account introduction page.
2. Image or Video Creative
a. Image: 800*400 pixel, smaller than 300kb
b. Video: 6~15 secs, 640*360 pixel
c. Jump Link: click on the grey area, lead to ads landing page or mini program.
3. Description Headline (optional)
A word limit of 10 characters and no more than 1 line.
4. Body Description
Concise, friendly and easy to understand, a word limit of 30 characters.
5. Engagement Section
This section allows users to like and comment below the ads, allows users to engage in the ads (On WeChat, likes and comments can only be seen by user’s friends).
Moments Ads: Tagged Card Ads
1. Advertiser’s official account logo and name (same as Facebook ads page logo and page name)
Pull the logo and name from advertiser’s official account, when users click on it, it will lead users to advertiser’s official account introduction page.
2. Image or Video Creative
a. Image: 800*400 pixel, smaller than 300kb
b. Video: 6~15 secs, 640*360 pixel
c. Jump Link: click on the grey area, lead to ads landing page
3. Description Headline (optional)
A word limit of 10 characters and no more than 1 line.
4. Body Description
Concise, friendly and easy to understand, a word limit of 30 characters.
5. Tags
Maximum 3 tags with 16 characters.
6. Engagement Section
This section allows users to like and comment below the ads, allows users to engage in the ads (On WeChat, likes and comments can only be seen by user’s friends).
Moments Ads: Action Card Ads
1. Advertiser’s official account logo and name (same as Facebook ads page logo and page name)
Pull the logo and name from advertiser’s official account, when users click on it, it will lead users to advertiser’s official account introduction page.
2. Image or Video Creative
a. Image: 800*400 pixel, smaller than 300kb
b. Video: 6~15 secs, 640*360 pixel
c. Jump Link: click on the grey area, lead to ads landing page.
3. Call To Action Button
Call to action button can be set to different text under different goals.
4. Description Headline (optional)
A word limit of 10 characters and no more than 1 line.
5. Body Description
Concise, friendly and easy to understand, a word limit of 30 characters.
6. Engagement Section
This section allows users to like and comment below the ads, allows users to engage in the ads (On WeChat, likes and comments can only be seen by user’s friends).
Let’s talk about the minimum charge in WeChat ads. The CPM in North America for the graphic ads are priced at 150 RMB per thousand impressions or $30 per CPM. The price per impression is $0.03. And the video ads are even more expensive than the graphic ads, the CPM of video ads is 16.67% higher than the graphic ads, with an average cost of $0.035 per impression. It may seem that $30 for a thousand impressions is a good performance and within their advertising budget, but imagine how quickly that $30 can be spent. How many people saw the ads and then direct swipe down, each swipe will cost you $0.03, and how many of them were real potential customers?
Let’s do a comparison, according to the lowest price, graphic ads at $30 / CPM and compared with other social media ads. The CPM of WeChat ads maybe 2 to 10 times that of other platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Audience Network, LinkedIn and other social media channels in North America. Their CPM can be as low as $2 / CPM.
Social media ads in North America also have better data and marketing strategies, they are in a better stage of advertising progress. In the case of using the same advertising fee, the total advertising fee you use in WeChat ads can obtain more exposure rate, exposure times and more accurate crowd orientation in other social media advertising platforms, such as geographical location, gender, age, occupation, income, interest, and etc.
WeChat moments ads is a relatively expensive form of advertising in the marketing industry, it is not suitable for enterprises with a small advertising budget. And because of its high price, it is suitable for the industry with strong liquidity and high advertising budget or for industries that only need to expose their ads to Chinese customers, they don’t have many requirements on the quality of impressions.
WeChat Official Account Banner Ads
Official Account Ads: Bottom Banner Ads
Ads appear at the bottom of the official account articles, in between article and comments section.
Official Account Ads: Middle Banner Ads
Ads appears in the middle of the official account’s article, in between contents. (The specific display placement will be determined by the account owner)
Official Account Ads: Video Banner Ads
Ads appears in the middle of the official account’s article, in between contents. Only displayed in Wi-Fi or 4G, and the video creative maximum 3 minutes.
WeChat Mini Program Ads
Mini Program Ads: Banner Ads
Ads appear inside the mini program, in between mini program’s content.
Mini Program Ads: Incentive Ads
Ads full screem pop-up, with a download button for apps.
Mini Program Ads: Pop-Up Ads
Ads pop-up on the screen, show ads with 1 image, ads description and a call to action button lead to a landing page.
WeChat Paid Ads Price Table
“Free” WeChat Advertising
Finishing the WeChat ads that give Tencent money, let’s talk about the form of advertising that does not give the money to Tencent and give it to the privates. Since this type of advertising does not belong to WeChat official, it is likely a private purchase of their private traffic. The price will be based on the number of their followers, reading volume, number of likes, and other related activities to judge the quality of their fans then provide a most reasonable price, in this way they do not have clear price data in the market.
WeChat Official Account Ads
When the topic comes to non-paid advertising, the first advertising form that comes to mind will be the WeChat Official Account Ads. Advertisers need to purchase from an official account’s owner, they should come up with a price quote based on their followers, popularity, market acceptance and the ads spot you wish to purchase.
According to the market research, there are four prices in different markets for the length of the post and the number of official accounts pushed post:
1. Cost of $ 5,000, duration 1 week.
Accept multiple advertisers with expected 415,000 impressions and requires 1 article. CPM ≈ $ 12.05
2. Cost of $ 17,444, duration 1 week.
Accept only 1 advertiser with expected 728,000 impressions and requires 2 articles.
CPM ≈ $ 23.96
3. Cost of $ 34,888, duration 2 weeks.
Accept only 1 advertiser with expected 1,456,000 impressions and requires 4 articles. CPM ≈ $ 23.96
4. Cost of $ 52,322, duration 4 weeks.
Accept only 1 advertiser with expected 2,912,000 impressions and requires 8 articles. CPM ≈ $ 17.97
This average price is nearly twice as low as the WeChat moments ads, but we all know that it is impossible for all followers to open the post, and not all followers are true followers. Especially after the WeChat revision, the probability that the official account post will be opened after WeChat folds becomes lower, and users who are not interested in the official account will hardly open it. This type of advertising is also not good at avoiding reading and impressions to show better advertising performance data. In this case, the CPM of this advertising strategy will not only be just double of the WeChat moments ads.
Private Network
Purchase ads from the private network, this happens when someone using their private account adding a huge amount of friends and chat groups forms a “network”. When advertisers purchase their ads by sending them ads content, these people will start sending ads out from chat groups and private moments. This type of WeChat advertisement is the cheapest among the types of advertisements mentioned in this article. It is priced by the number of friends and groups they have, so the price varies. But the disadvantages of this type of advertising are obvious, due to the blocking phenomenon on WeChat moments, you can’t judge whether their friends on the network have seen your ads or not. The data shows that for a large number of people who advertise, the blocking rate of their moment of friends is higher than 60%. Although the price is cheap, the positioning of the crowd is not accurate, and the performance of the ads is unknown.
For companies that want to advertise, we all hope for small costs and big gains, especially for small businesses with limited advertising budgets.
