WeChat marketing series: Difference between WeChat subscription and WeChat service account

There are so many WeChat marketing introduction articles online, finally, here we are. Instead of writing a basic introduction, We would like to dig deeper, basically use our experience to give you a big and completed picture about WeChat marketing.

This is the first series of “WeChat marketing”.

Wechat marketing

Your first question might ask what is WeChat marketing, why we need to do it if we want to grow the Mainland China market.

Here are some basic facts to start with. According to a recent statistic from www.didown.com, in 2016, there are more than 549 million WeChat users, with the majority of the users working in business enterprise, self-employed and freelancers, followed by students. 57.3% of users use WeChat to get to know new friends or connect with their old friends.

What’s a typical day of WeChat users is like?

WeChat marketing

There are two different types of WeChat accounts: WeChat subscription and WeChat service account

What are the differences between the WeChat subscription and the WeChat service account?

In our opinion, the biggest difference is that WeChat subscription account is more effective in building readers and followers and later converting them into customers, while WeChat service account is rather aimed at servicing customers, particularly useful for B2C companies which want to establish an official and established company image to sell product, and offer pre-sales and post-sales services to customers (Think of it like a mobile commerce platform you can sell product and do customer service at the same time). Servicing is the starting point to develop word-of-mouth and spread to potential customers. However, since there are only 4 pieces of posts per month available for WeChat service account, so opening a WeChat service account won’t serve as a lead generation tool.

Then, you might ask shall I open the WeChat subscription account or WeChat service account?

Opening WeChat subscription account is good at attracting, acquiring fans, and converting them into new customers if the content is done well.

WeChat marketing

Of course, the content created shall be relevant to your customers, whether it is solving their problem, building an emotional connection with them, and be creative and useful enough so that it sparks social share, therefore, creating localized, original, relevant, authentic, useful content is not as easy as 123.

Chinese content marketing

Of course, We help different sizes, industries and products/services from different companies would have a different way to create relevant, localized content that is relevant to their customers and users. See our next article on how some small and medium-sized companies (SEM) from China on creating authentic and popular content.

Depending on your target audiences, below you can find what they usually read in WeChat:

If you are targeting a mature, older, sophisticated generation, the 60s, 70s, then life/business motivational content would work the best, while if you are targeting the new generation (Gen X & Gen Y), then celebrity gossip, hot trends, buzz words, etc would grab their attention more. However, there are a lot more Chinese content marketing strategics more than that, there is no one size fit all solution. We will talk more about that in our Chinese content marketing series.

On the other hand, for WeChat service account would allow you to sell the product directly on WeChat, as well as offering pre-sales and post-sales service to customers, ideally for B2C business. For example, some small and medium-size companies which are running a food business from China (they don’t have physical retail store yet, they rely on e-commerce and m-commerce channel instead) heavily used WeChat as a service point to share upcoming food product to customers, as well as offering food product trail as a way to reach potential customers. Since their quality and taste of the food are good and the price is competitive, these Chinese small and medium-size companies leveraged their Tmall and Jd.com with WeChat subscription and service account to grow a large number of customers and earn their trust.

Quite a lot of the Chinese entrepreneurs running small and medium-size companies from China told me that they used WeChat a lot to add their prospect as a friend, send their prospect message. Since they found that it was not as easy to reach wider or mass customers, so here comes with the WeChat subscription account – developing relevant, useful and creative content would help you to stand out, and reach the right audiences.

However, the prerequisite of attracting fans and customers is also based on the fact that you have a good product and right pricing that meets the need of the market, which is the basic step of setting up a business. Sometimes, it is not a marketing problem, it is the business problem if things are not done right before marketing.

How could western companies apply for the WeChat subscription & service account?

There are two ways to open WeChat subscription account:

For WeChat subscription account

Personal registration: Using the agent’s Chinese citizen ID with the Chinese mobile phone to register and verify the WeChat subscription account.

Company registration: a Using company registered in China to register and verify the WeChat subscription account.

WeChat marketing

For WeChat service account

Using Chinese citizen identity is not available for the company to register the WeChat service account. The company should have a registered and legitimate company, a person in charge, and a bank account in China to verify to register a legal WeChat service account. In Taobao, you might find that people sell Chinese shell (empty) company for brands to register WeChat service account, however, We won’t recommend that because it is quite dangerous and hard to foresee any future’s hidden risks and consequences.

Depending the type of company, industry, product and service, Red Digital China will first consult and understand the customer group, and base on the resources that the company has, Red Digital China will listen to clients’ requirement and give suggestions on a series of Chinese Content marketing creation, distribution, and promotion, using a core part of the channel – WeChat account (subscription and service) opening, visual design, management.