Imagine one app where you can message friends, read the news, call a ride, send money, pay bills, and even run an online store without ever leaving the platform. For hundreds of millions of users in China, that app is Weixin (WeChat).

The initial principle of social media marketing is straight forward: understand your audience. Weixin was not attempting to serve them all at the very beginning. They identified a definite narrow down target, which was the young, urban smartphone users in China, and allowed that target to guide every decision they made. And this is precisely what we have been taught during this course regarding the creation of meaningful audience personas. Specificity is power.

“If audiences can get all they want from one platform, why bother finding other options?”

Features That Belong in Real Life

Problem solving products are good. Excellent products make one forget that there was an issue in the first place. This is what Weixin used to do obsessively, which was to eliminate any form of friction by which the users were being exposed to in using the app.

It is tedious and exhausting to type Chinese characters using a small phone keyboard. Weixin’s solution? Press one button, say what you want to say, that is it. News links are opened within the application instead of having to open an external browser thus one does not lose his position or feel interrupted. With a few clicks, it is possible to open an online store.

This is directly related to what we have learned about self-efficacy in digital behavior. You do not simply like an app, you rely on it when you are confident that it can help you to do anything, fast and without problems. Dependency becomes habit. Habit becomes loyalty. Weixin had purposely planned that cycle.

Tapping Into Culture at Exactly the Right Moment

This was the point where the strategy of Weixin turned really brilliant. Just prior to Chinese New Year 2014, they unveiled the Red Envelope (Qiang Hongbao) campaign a digital recreation of the long held Chinese custom of giving money to people they love around the time of the holidays. They have not simply digitalized the tradition. They slowed down the process by making it exciting through giving out money in random amounts to recipients, which is the introduction of real suspense to each envelope opened.

Chinese New Year — the cultural moment Weixin turned into a marketing masterpiece.

Close to 5 Million people played and some 20 Billion virtual red envelopes have been dispatched. However, hidden within this cultural holiday was a genius business idea millions of users connected their bank accounts to Weixin the first time in a history and transformed a culture-old tradition into economical ecosystem. This is what makes the difference between good marketing and great marketing; the possible ability to appeal how your audience feels, and promote your business at the same time.

The Bigger Lesson: Become Part of the Routine

In 2014, Weixin was listed as containing over 300 million active users and this times its parent company Tencent was valueless in the Hong Kong stock exchange to the tune of 100 billion dollars. Such growth does not occur because of a large budget and a stroke of luck. It is based on a single serious belief, the need to appear in every place your audience is already, and calm their life with making it truly worthwhile, and relating your product with the things that already hold significance in them.

Weixin’s growth – reaching hundreds of millions of users and helping its parent company Tencent become one of the most valuable companies in China was not just luck. It was built on a clear strategy:

• Know your audience deeply
• Remove friction from the user experience
• Connect your product to culture and emotion
• Become part of people’s daily routines

Weixin’s exact success may be difficult to replicate in other markets, but the marketing principles behind it apply anywhere. When a brand becomes genuinely useful in everyday life, it stops being just another app—it becomes a habit.

References

wechatcourse. (2024, January 14). WeChat Hongbao: The Digital Revolution of a Cultural Tradition. WeChat Course | Chinese Marketing ELearning Classes. https://wechatcourse.com/wechat-hongbao/