Opportunities for Brands to Use WeChat for Research

Here are three ways to use Tencent's popular WeChat mobile messaging platform to win over loyal customers for your brand.

WeChat has done an incredible job of creating social media functions for mobile. Users across China (and increasingly across the globe) are using WeChat for a wide range of regular communications. Time of use per day, by the 225-335 million monthly active users (MAU), is growing swiftly as WeChat adds more features and functions. In China, the total number of hours spent per month on WeChat now exceeds Weibo by almost seven times.

Given that most users are never, ever separated from their mobile phones, WeChat users are truly "always on" and accessible anytime of day. They are using networking functions like one-to-one and group text messaging, photo sharing, voice messaging, and walkie-talkie. They are following brands through subscription, service accounts, and signing up for brand loyalty programs. And, they are using embedded e-commerce functions for shopping. It’s a powerful combination of functions and really exciting for brands looking to link social media (sharing and word of mouth) together with e-commerce sales.

While the promise for social commerce is immense, one of the most immediate opportunities with WeChat is for customer research and insights. Given the "always on" nature of WeChat, research, surveys, and focus groups can now become much more linked to context - Q&A at the right time, right place. A coffee company can ask consumers about expectations and experiences between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. when people are looking for a daily charge of caffeine. A soap company can connect with consumers first thing in the morning or in the evening when daily bathing rituals are in full swing.

What Indian Internet Businesses Need: Article in CIO featuring Ritesh Raj Gupta

It is estimated that around 3.74 lakh tickets are booked on IRCTC in a day. Despite the reported sluggishness of the site, it is the best possible proof of the Internet’s growing popularity and dependence in India.  

India has around 150 million Internet users, and that’s just at a mere 12 percent penetration rate. Despite that, it is the third-largest Internet population in the world, behind China and the U.S. New online retailers are mushrooming virtually every month, and growth in Internet usage is mainly driven by mobile, social, and tablet usage.

Till now, Internet in India was just a numbers game. But that’s about to change.

E-commerce giants around the country are struggling to please an uber-demanding and price-sensitive market, while keeping a competitive edge. The general lack of infrastructure pertaining to logistics, distribution, and highly available and cost-effective bandwidth in India is soon set to make the business model unsustainable.

In the current ecosystem, businesses report high costs of logistics and servicing clients. Inadequate systems for online payment and transaction further hinder the experience for users. And finally, cheap and easy access to Internet is still a distant dream.

CIOs in the industry are increasingly turning to BI, analytics, and mobility solutions to identify the gaps in customer experience, and turning to IT to fill those gaps. But, in this game, the government of India is a very crucial player. And, as is evident from the growing numbers of IRCTC, it will alsagazineo be the biggest gainer.

The CIO magazine spoke to the CIOs of some of India’s leading e-commerce companies regarding what India’s Internet businesses need, and this is what they said:

Ritesh Raj Gupta, Vice President, AaramShop

“Internet-driven business is an opportunity that needs to be tapped into by every physical business. Internet has to be one of the key channels in a multi-channel strategy. For us at AaramShop, therefore, grocery retailing on the Internet is not the preserve of a few, but the opportunity which has to be made available to millions of retailers across the country and their consumers.”

Ranjit Satyanath, Customer Care Associate and Sr. General Manager, Solutions and Technology, Shoppers Stop

“Currently, people buy things online for convenience and discounts. While the former benefit should continue into the future, online players won’t be able sustain giving discounts for very long. They are now trying to differentiate themselves on assortment, user-experience and quality of service.

The challenge facing the industry today is the general lack of infrastructure in the country with respect to distribution and logistics. Add to that the Quixotic tax regime we have inIndia. Online retailers are also finding it tough to attract and retain talent because in our country, startups are generally perceived as risky career options and not without good reason—this is often reflected in the user-experience on Indian sites. I also think that Indian online retailers give more importance to features than to design and user-experience.”

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International Social Media Marketing – Different Places, Different Habits

No matter the country your target audience is from, if you want to reach them with the help of social media, Facebook won’t let you down. Or will it?

Facebook has indeed become the most popular social network in many countries, but the overall social media landscape is - even in countries where Facebook is no. 1 - way more colourful than that and Facebook shouldn’t always be the first choice. 

However, it’s not only choosing the right network that matters. If you want to improve your turnover with the help of international social media marketing, as well as increase your brand’s popularity, you’ll have to get acquainted with the culture of your target audience and take a lot of other things into consideration.

For example, you have to think about which foreign language is the most appropriate for your target audience and get informed on current global social media trends, so that you can adjust your social media strategies accordingly. Moreover, the cultural differences between social media users in different countries should also be taken into consideration. 

Facebook (almost) rules the world

Facebook has built its global dominance in the last couple of years; this can be seen in the global map of social media platforms on Vicenzo Cosenza’s blog.

While around June 2009 other networks dominated the American continent, in Mexico and Brazil, in December 2012 Facebook managed to be no. 1 in all of America. Other countries that had other dominant networks in 2009 were India, Japan and in Europe – the Netherlands and Portugal. Even so, by the end of 2012 it was Facebook that ruled there too.

And yet, in big markets such as Russia and China, other networks are more popular: Odnoklassniki in Russia and Qzone in China.

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