WeChat the future of mobile-marketing?

WeChat is an instant messaging and social media app developed by Tencent in China, first released in January 2011. WeChat meets many functionalities from the best known social networks in the same platform. Now the app is available over 100 countries in over 15 Languages.

WeChat has 600 million users, including 500 million of Chinese. Which make it the biggest social media in China. With 40% of its users between 20 and 29 years old, WeChat is the best way to target young Chinese costumers.

Comparing to its competitors, WeChat is more focused on sharing between closer connections, in 1 to 1 or one to many. Even if the average users might only use WeChat as they do it with Facebook, the app combine a lot of functionalities in order to keep in touch with friends and family, share life moments and make new friends.

Aside from all the functions we're used to, like creating group chats, sending photos, music files, and voice notes, WeChat introduces some functions never seen before in similar messaging apps. Indeed, WeChat has the advantage of being flexible by being connected to 85000 other applications. This eco system allows companies to develop features that are specific to their brand in order to expand their customer base.

Here are some of its most important features:

-       Voice chat and Walkie-Talkie

This function make conversation more immediate and fun, although only one person can speak at a time. Moreover, it’s more convenient for Chinese people than to tap. In few taps you can start a group conversation and a live voice chat.

-       Wallet

By connecting your bank account to your WeChat account, you just have to scan a QR code or a bar code to pay in a shop in China. You can also make online shopping, group-purchase, gift, movie tickets, dining payments, taxi reservation etc...

-       To create content

Companies can share a lot of content on WeChat by creating application. Tesla created an application that provides information about the different models, interactive map to find dealerships.

-       To « Shake» its phone

 The user can « Shake » its phone to find someone around him who is doing the same. By making partnership with ad agencies, WeChat propose to brand to use this function to offer interactivity in order to promote a brand or an event.

Nowadays WeChat is the best marketing solution in order to promote a brand in China.

Maxime Vaudin & Loic Rencker

Sources:

http://www.journaldunet.com/ebusiness/expert/62720/wechat-le-present-et-le-futur-du-marketing-mobile-en-chine.shtml

http://www.brand-karma.com/case-study-how-one-brand-rocked-wechat-to-engage-with-mobile-users/

httphttp://www.bysoftchina.com/blog/trends/brands-get-busy-on-the-powerful-instant-messaging-apps-wechat/3246://fr.slideshare.net/cbaker19/wechat-analysis-for-brands

http://www.nanjingmarketinggroup.com/blog/social-media/everything-you-need-know-about-wechat

Pictures:

http://chinese-tourist.blogspot.fr/2015/09/agency-advices-you-how-to-use-wechat.html

The most common mistake we all make on Twitter !

This article deals with most frequently errors made by companies in Twitter. Companies aren’t totally aware of all the potential of twitter. Indeed generally they just start an account, follow a bunch of people, send a few tweets about their business. But two significant features are replies and mentions because they build strong relationships. The principle is that you join a conversation on Twitter by replying to others and mentioning them in your tweets thanks to @username then the person will get a notification and it will be seen on timelines of both followers. Twitter allows companies to provide remarkable experiences no matter the industry. Human connection is a key factor: companies shouldn’t wait for a crisis to just respond but help personally consumers.

Many people now see social media, especially Twitter, as their best hope of engaging with their favorite brands. On twitter companies can make consumers feel valued and appreciated in surprising them. Nowadays good customer experience isn’t enough you should create a “ wow” experience. 

 © Gary Vaynerchuk

To achieve this goal twitter has a great advanced search functionality which allows to find next customers, keep tabs on brand keywords or measure satisfaction of current customers. For instance using L or J after search phrase allows to filter positive or negative Tweets. Moreover the ‘Places’ filter on Twitter’s Advanced search page allows you to filter Twitter by location. So it is useful if you’re looking to find people who are talking about your brand in a certain location. You also shouldn’t forget that Tweets are a lot more conversational that Google search terms.

To conclude here’s four top tips very useful on twitter:

- be more conversational that jumping right in for the sale at the first Tweet

- try to get back to people who mention you as soon as you can (Research tells us that 42% of consumers expect a 60 minute response time on social media)

-  add a personal touch

- follow up

Géraldine Caenen & Clara Terol

Sources : https://blog.bufferapp.com/twitter-mistake 

http://www.mckinseyonmarketingandsales.com/for-customer-loyalty-only-the-best-will-do

http://fr.slideshare.net/vaynerchuk/140722-human-sideoncm?ref=https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/cm-investment-slideshow-657352430.html

THE GROWTH HACKING: A POWERFUL E-MARKETING TOOL

Initiated in US, this kind of marketing is democratizing and is now considered for many as the marketing of tomorrow. It’s hard to clearly define what’s growth hacking. We can say that this is the setting up of a strategy to get a strong growth in a cheap and effective way. Most of specialists believe that growth hack is exclusive for Marketers who know developing. But this system is democratizing, and most of us are now able to set a growth hacking strategy.

The community of growth hacker agrees to say that the arrival of this technic appeared with Hotmail, Hotmail was at the beginning a simple start up but   This strategy had a huge impact: 3000 new address in a day and almost 2 million after 8 months were created following the beginning of this technic. The growth hacking became alive!

one of the developer get the idea of inserting at the end of a mail a simple sentence “ Ps: I love you. Get your free Email at Hotmail.” This is Growth Hacking.

This growth hack is still used today by many companies and everybody had at least once used this.  “ Send from my Iphone” of Apple allowed them promoting their iPhone on each email sent from their product. It’s free and then clients make the brand promotion for free!

Why making growth hacking?

During the creation of a website as during a startup launch, the most difficult mission is monitoring traffic and making something great of this traffic. The objective of growth hacking is simply making these things easier thought smart tools.

The 3 following companies (Dropbox, Twitter and Airbnb) would not know the same success if they didn’t use Growth Hacking.

Dropbox:

At the beginning, they faced traffic issues. Then, they established the following strategy: More you invite friends, more you get disk space free. Thanks to this growth hacking, they succeeded to get millions users.

Twitter:

Marketing teams of Twitter faced the problem that new subscribers used the Social Media at the beginning but stop their activity on the social media after few days. To rectify this, Twitter added to the subscribing process a mandatory section that induces users have to follow at least 30 persons. Then, they improved their loyalty ratio and the average use of the app because users always received tweets that might interest them.

Airbnb:

At their beginning, Airbnb established their e-marketing through a main strategy. Their strategy was that when a user posts an ad to rent its flat, it was automatically published on Craiglist. It improves the visibility of the company and make the flat rented faster. Then, customers were satisfied and promote the services to their friend. Logically, Craiglist set up many tools to counter this strategy. But developers from Airbnb worked and succeed to keep their ad published on Craiglist. Then, 80% of the traffic came from redirection from Craiglist.. Without this successful strategy, Airbnb wouldn’t know the same success.

At least, we can say that Growth hacking is now designing the strategy of startups and e-marketing tools. This e-marketing tool is without doubt the most effective one because this tool is designed to fit to business environment. We are convinced of that Growth Hacking can bring very interesting results for many customers and startups, compared to other e-marketing tools largely more expensive in terms of time and money.

Elio NICOL & Denys SAISSE

https://growthhackers.com/growth-studies/airbnb

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/dropbox-hacked-growth/

http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2014/05/28/9-iconic-growth-hacks-tech-companies-used-pump-user-base/

http://blog-web-marketing.fr/2015/03/26/dossier-le-growth-hacking/

Google and Twitter get back together?

Earlier this year Twitter officially announced that Google got the full access to the tweets. Let’s make it a bit clearer for us what changes this partnership can imply.

Image source: Recode

What does it mean?

In other words when you google anything, Twitter content may appear in your search engine results. You’ll get more relevant information from Twitter users especially in regards to the latest news and events. 

How does Twitter benefit from this?

Though being easy-to-use, fast and a lot of fun, only 19% of U.S. population ages 18+  use Twitter. It lags behind Facebook, being the leader, Linked, and younger social media platforms Pinterest and Instagram. 

 

Image source: PewResearchCenter

For Twitter this partnership can provide many advantages according to Neil Patel fromSearch Engine Land.  First, the traffic of users will increase, as the visibility in search results will go up. Second, the more attentions is driven to the tweets, the more ad profits Twitter will obtain. Finally, there will be more engagement from the side of users and new sign-ups. It sounds good, right?

What about Google?

One of the key strengths of Google is to provide users with the most relevant content and have all the information users may ask for. The tweets will fill the gap and bring more relevant content about the latest events, reactions and comments about them, what makes the search engine results even more valuable.

How businesses should take this news?

The tighter relationship between Google and Twitter means a lot for digital marketers and companies. If you’ve already been active on Twitter and did a good job – even better for you! You’re on the right track, though Twitter should take even more space in your overall online marketing strategy.

Also, you should be more consistent and smart about using #hashtags, as Google’s algorithms will be focused on that. #Hashtags become searchable and visible keywords. Learn how to use them and do it on regular basis. The more engaged you are, the higher the chance that your tweets will appear in search engine results as you provide valuable content.

Moreover, consider the use of images, but don’t overwhelm your followers with them as they scroll their news feeds. Images may drive the engagement, as the study shows. 

Most importantly, keep track of your data and measure how your social media activities influence your business. The key to success is to understand the developments going on in online media channels and implement right strategies in order to get the most out of them. Last but not least, as always make sure that your activities are in line with your company’s goals.

Even if you haven’t been engaged on Twitter, no worries! There is always time for you to become a part of it. However, it’s high time to stop procrastinating.

Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all formula. So, stay engaged, learn from best practices and definitely consider Twitter as an important part of your digital marketing. This partnership is a green light for Twitter and a new chance for businesses.

By Elena Arkhangelskaya and Pontus Tjernberg