Do people buy on WeChat? What do they buy? How to run a successful WeChat e-commerce? We looked at a few successful WeChat e-commerce stores to answer this question.
1. Kidsbookmama (童书妈妈市集)
- Wechat account: tongshuchubanmama
- Product: Children’s book, toy & related product
- Platform: Koudai
- Monthly Revenue: RMB 500,000
- Success Factors:
- Credible account owner
- High quality content – Engaged community
- “Scarcity” by limited editions and shop opened only part of the month
- Efficient customer service
- Website: http://wd.koudai.com/?userid=162406514&wfr=c
A well known account and store among parents with young kids, managed by a publisher & writer of children’s book, this WeChat account has high quality content covering relevant topics.
Parents come here to seek knowledge and advices and share experiences in the comments area with other parents. The account hence manages to build a strong and engaged community.
As for the shop itself, 3 characteristics make it stand out:
- Limited number of items displays a “almost sold out” inventory and incentives buyers to buy as soon as they can
- The shop itself is only open about a week each month, adding to the impression of “scarcity”
- Customer service is quick and efficient in answering parents’ questions
2. Loujisiwei 罗辑思维
- Wechat account: luojisw
- Product: Varies (Books, classes, experiences)
- Platform: WeChat
- Success Factors:
- Leveraging social aspect of WeChat
- Limited quantity / time
- Creative products introduced by story
Luojisiwei is one of the most popular WeChat accounts in China. It relies on a simple idea: sending a 60 seconds voice message at 6:30AM every day. 3,500,000 WeChat followers, 30,000 paid members. The content of the message varies from stories about historical misconception to comments about social phenomenons. You probably won’t think of Luojisiwei as a WeChat shop, and that’s the beauty of it: Luojisiwei is selling in a creative and “unbranded” way, and only the targeted customers access the WeChat store.
Luo leveraged the social aspect of WeChat by turning WeChat sales into a social game. Mooncake campaign is a great example. It was launched just before the Moon Festival, a time people give expensive mooncakes to friends and co-workers. In it’s WeChat store, you can do two things: 1. ask your WeChat friends to pay for your mooncakes, 2. buy mooncakes for your friends. And there is a score board of users getting the most mooncakes. The campaign lasted for 10 days, and more than 2,700,000 people participated in it.
Content marketing is another key factor for Luojisiwei’s WeChat store. Before selling a limited edition book, Luo would tell a related story about this book, and make it clear that his account is the only channel you can get the book. When promoting for events about private dinning, he also packages the promotion in a very compelling story about private dinning chefs.
Combination of creativity, social, and limited product availability made Luojisiwei one of the most successful WeChat shops.
3. WIS Professional 维希
- Wechat account: WISVIP
- Product: youth skin care product
- Platform: WIS own platform (started with Koudaitong)
- Success Factors:
- Successful e-commerce evolution & conversion strategy
- Clear branding & positioning
- Good customer service
- Website: http://newcrm.wismall.com/shop/default/index/token/547bcb48040a7.html
Established in 2011, this Chinese brand targeted young people’s skin issues: acnes, black head, oily skin, scars after acnes, etc, with price young people can afford.
This company is e-commerce only and proved successful at capturing each crucial opportunity / stage along China’s e-commerce evolution from Taobao to Weibo, then to Wechat – using celebrity effect & gifting its own products to build a huge fans base at Weibo (3 million), then very successfully converting Weibo followers to Wechat (300,000 followers within 3 months).
Their conversion tactics included offering gifts to their Weibo fans who started following their WeChat account, flash sales to keep followers alert and sales event during various holidays.
The store also leveraged a sense of community by mixing health-related content (doctors addressing health-related questions) and more “fun” articles for sharability.
4. Aun Socks 爱优恩
- WeChat Account: AUN socks
- Product: Anti odor/germ socks
- Platform: JD.Com
- Monthly Revenue: (within 2 months of the opening of the Wechat store, online sales revenue jumped from RMB 100,000 to RMB 300,000)
- Success Factors:
- Leverage word of mouth
- Very focused on one product (socks)
- Turned individual Wechat user into their sales rep
- Aggressive market entry promotion (gave out first 5000 pairs to improve brand awareness)
- Website: http://wq.jd.com/mshop/gethomepage?venderid=38747&PTAG=17048.1.1
Started with only 1 SKU, this store remained lean and focused, with only over 10 SKUs today.
The most important factor for its huge success is the adoption of the Renrenws selling system, enabling its followers, or any interested Wechat users, to sell its product, thus leading to its exponential growth. The account also uses different sales chat groups to manage the individual sales reps, aka individual Wechat users, and give out awards to top performers.
However, a big challenge the account is facing is the management of this network of sales representatives to ensure consistency in its customer experiences. Tencent is also getting more strict with cracking down any illegal sales pyramid systems, and it is unclear to which extent such “distributed sales model” might lead to the deletion of the account.
Summary
Learning about these stores, you may notice the following patterns & traits that attribute to their success:
- Focused on one product or a very little number of SKU’s
- Clear target customer, branding & positioning
- Excellent customer service
- Successful e-commerce evolution strategy
- Creative campaign leveraging mobile specific functions (social, touch screen, WeChat groups)