HOW TO REACH A BILLION PEOPLE WITH ONE APP

In 2012 after only being available for two years, WeChat (aka Weixin, or 微信, as it’s known in Chinese) took over from QQ as the second most popular chat application in the world. It now boasts over 1.1 billion registered accounts, with 100 million accounts coming from outside of China.

But WeChat is so much more than just a chat application; it encompasses facets of Skype, Facebook, PayPal, Snapchat and Twitter as well as being used regularly for everyday tasks, such as ordering a taxi or splitting a restaurant bill. Due to its meteoric rise and ever-evolving advertising platform, companies are still getting to grips with how such a powerful channel can be used effectively for B2C and B2B sales but clearly the potential is huge.

Here are 10 interesting facts about WeChat from a recent study:

1. 570 million people login daily (that’s 41% of the Chinese population).
2. 70% of WeChat users play WeChat Games daily.
3. 82% of users are aged between 18-36.
4. A business can advertise on WeChat only after they have 100,000 followers.
5. 200 million WeChat users have a Credit card attached to their account.
6. There are 8.5 million public WeChat accounts for Organizations, Businesses or influential people.
7. WeChat has recently started an office version of the app, which resembles LinkedIn, called Maimai; this currently has 800,000 registered users and is constantly growing.
8. 29% of all global Internet users use WeChat.
9. WeChat is currently available in 20 different languages.
10. There are currently just over 10,000 WeChat advertisers.

At LAW Creative we are constantly looking at new media channels such as WeChat and studying how they can be used to strengthen branding and sales. We’re currently excited by the qualities of a number of new channels, including the live-streaming capabilities of Periscope and the pure simplicity of new social network platform Peach. However, it’s Chirp that has caught our attention the most.  Chirp is an application that allows users to share content via a two-second robotic bird song, which appears on a user’s feed straight away; it’s an incredibly fast way of sharing information and data. Its huge marketing potential was shown recently at London Fashion Week when a Chirp was played over the public address system, giving everyone e-commerce links to purchase the clothes and make-up. It works in a similar way to a QR code, but your phone merely needs to have the Chirp application for the data to be transmitted to your phone, giving companies many opportunities to market to potential customers.

There are always new media channels offering fresh advertising opportunities and we believe it is imperative for an agency to frequently analyse which ones will give clients the best possible return. For more information on the latest and most powerful media channels, or for help with any marketing projects, please contact brett.sammels@lawcreative.co.uk.