With the development of mobile internet and smartphones, users’ spending habits tend to transform to the mobile end. Companies utilized WeChat official accounts to promote products and brand. Most countries hope to reach potential consumers through WeChat OA according to WEMCB research.
China smartphone users were 519 million in 2014 accounting for about 30% of global smartphone users. The number is expected to climb to 574 million in 2015 and maintain a steady growth in the following three years.
The number of WeChat monthly active users reached 650 million as of Q3 2015. 93% citizens in tier-1 cities use WeChat where the market tend to saturate. However, WeChat users in tier-2 and tier-3 cities are expected to increase largely in the following several years.
Traditional adverting methods such as TV, newspaper and magazine are gradually replaced by new advertising methods. The growth rate of traditional media advertising has been declining and it dropped to -1.7% in 2014. However, online advertising market especially mobile advertising has maintained a strong momentum.
Social networks achieve further development in 2015. Weibo and Momo were listed early 2015 and a total number of social apps were more than 2,000 as of Q1 2015.
Among the top 5 most active social apps in May 2015, WeChat, QQ, and Momo are instant messaging apps. With users of 650 million, WeChat is the most active social app in China in 2015.
Due to large information flow and high active rate, social messaging apps attract more advertising input from advertisers in China in 2015, followed by video apps and e-commerce apps.
WeChat official accounts have exceeded 10 million in 2015 covering 400 million active users and linking companies and consumers together on the open platform. 29% WeChat OA users follow we media, 25% follow authorized media, 19% follow companies and merchants and 6% follow marketing accounts in 2015.
53% companies have invested in WeChat OA for advertising and marketing and 2% have put over 500,000 yuan on the platform. Through funds in OA, companies hope to reach potential consumers and publish product news. 45.3% companies project to transform to O2O through OA.
Among companies who have utilized WeChat OA for marketing, 20.5% have used for one year to two years. 45.2% companies have used WeChat OA for less than half year which means more companies promote through OA this year.
Companies have utilized related services to better serve for their projects. 73.1% companies open basic functions of WeChat official accounts such as official websites, H5 and customer service; 62.0% utilize active plug-ins to interact with consumers; 38.9% employ e-commerce related services such as coupons, group buying, catering, Q2Q and mobile payment; 18.9% exploit WeChat hardware such as iBeacon and Wi-Fi.
WeChat OA users mainly hope to get news and ease daily life through utilizing OA. Some 14% even want to get useful knowledge from OA. Considering for users habit, 9am to 11am and 6pm to 10pm are peak time for marketers to publish posts.
67% WeChat users shop on average of at least one good on WeChat in each month higher than 36% of Facebook. 45.6% WeChat official accounts are cosmetics in H1 2015 which means cosmetic brands pay more attention to WeChat marketing. 21.4% are food brands with 11.1 percentage points lower compared with the same period last year.
WeChat satisfies consumer demands including social communication, entertainment, O2O, news, e-commerce, finance, lifestyle and a series of services. WeChat increased City urban heat map service and friend-shared coupons and daily active users surged to 64% from 49% this year.
The penetration rate of WeChat is 76.9% in China in 2015 with the active rate of 64.4%. 55.2% WeChat users open over 10 times on average each day and use more than 10 minutes in total. 62.7% users have more than 50 friends. WeChat promote as high as 11 billion yuan consumption according to WEMCB.
Also read: The Value of WeChat Official Accounts