WeChat is the most used platform in China and it is essential for every company that wants to sell (or even just thinks about selling) in this large national country to have an official account: but which WeChat account can open a company that has not a legal entity in China and which is the more useful?
A brand can use a WeChat Official Accounts to:
- just “Exist” in China
- Create brand awarness
- Build a community of followers
- Send to end-user or prospect notifications
Unlike what happens in Western countries, the Chinese are now used to look for information on WeChat rather than on the Internet: WeChat is the place where a Chinese user can find everything he wants, it is the tool he uses to pay, book a service, to communicate with friends and users. For a Wechat user there is no reason to leave the platform: what he needs is there and for another, due to firewalls, he could hardly access a foreign website.
Then
A company that is not listed on Wechat,
it is a company that does not exist in China
Which WeChat account to choose?
There are three types of official accounts:
- WeChat Account Service: appear as friends in the “chat” section of WeChat. They are highly visible and have additional features compared to the subscription account (in particular WeChat login, WeChat payment, and geolocation). However, they can only post 4 messages per month.
- WeChat Account Subscription: it is a type of account reserved for companies resident in China, it is possible to send up to 1 push message per day and are grouped in a dedicated folder that appears next to friends in the “chat” section of WeChat.
- WeChat Corporate: This WeChat option is used for a company’s internal communication, simplifies collaboration, and improves efficiency. Any employee with a corporate email address can use a corporate account, and managers have access to third-party APIs to support a variety of executive-level tasks.
WeChat Account Service
It is the only type of account that a foreign company not resident in China can open by owning full ownership.
A WeChat service account is useful for promoting awareness of your brand and the marketing of your products.
It offers some very important functions for business, including:
- WeChat Pay
- E-commerce on WeChat
- Geolocation services
- HTML campaigns 5
- Ability to post 4 times a month with push notifications to their followers
- Ability to open Mini program WeChat
- Ability to offer customer service via chat
- Vocal recognition
- URL shortening
- Multiple QR codes per account
WeChat Account Subscription
A WeChat Subscription account is all about communication, which makes it ideal for community engagement and relationship building.
Every day, companies, media or influencers can publish 1 to 6 articles once a day at the time of each publication. The good thing about the Subscription account is that it prioritizes the most recent content which is placed in the top places by the WeChat search engine.
This account is typically the most logical choice for media or influencers or for those companies that focus on a strategy based on the education and training of a group of users, who want to encourage debate and are able to offer a lot of content.
The downside of this type of account is that it is only available to companies that have a “legal identity” in China, so it is not the right account for foreign companies. Furthermore, users to see the contents of the accounts they have become followers of must go to a separate folder (called appointments “Subscription”) and are not notified with a push notification when new content is published.
WeChat Account Corporate
As indicated, it is an account reserved for internal communication and therefore not particularly useful for foreign companies that want to communicate in China.
Which account is right for me?
From what has been described, it is clear that the WeChat service account is probably the best choice for a foreign company that wants to communicate in China: it is limited in the number of monthly communications that you can publish per month (actually 4) but it offers the possibility of expanding communication through miniprograms (de facto minisites), create e-commerce by obtaining payment directly with WePay which is the most used wallet in China.
On the other hand, if you already have a company registered in China, and you want to intensify the relationship, you could decide to choose a WeChat Subscription account and work to make your brand more engaging and active, perhaps also using the collaboration of influencers and KOLs.
So ultimately which one to choose? It depends a lot on your situation and your goals and for this we recommend that you get help from a Wechat agency that can guide you both in choosing and opening an account.
