Offline business is tough, and online customer acquisition costs are high—a reality all brands must face. Since the pandemic, brands have been building private domains, hoping to create a repeatable, convertible user traffic pool they control. But for FMCG brands, private domains are not simple. On one hand, due to long-term offline focus and lack of digital experience, they may invest heavily but find limited value, unable even to calculate ROI. On the other hand, according to industry research, over 80% of merchants say that private domain costs have risen by an average of 40% since initial setup! Reducing costs and increasing efficiency is the core priority now. What brands truly need to think about is how to build a digital operation position that connects online and offline, and integrates public and private domains—not just layout a private domain. In this regard, WeChat has been continuously making efforts, using various tools to empower brand digitalization in an ecosystem way, extending from coverage to operation, turning traffic into retention, helping enterprises reduce costs, increase efficiency, and achieve long-term operation. In the current context where the pandemic is not yet over, this is increasingly important for brands!
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Offline to Online, Digitizing and Tracking Guide Promotions
Channel fragmentation, high customer acquisition costs, and the pandemic have led to declining offline traffic, intensifying operational pressure. How do your products and channels fit? How can you improve ROI? Everyone is turning attention to private domains. But many FMCG brands are digital novices, and the first problem they encounter in private domain layout is not knowing which path to take. Oral care brand Cold Sore Ling (冷酸灵) is one such case. As a national brand with over 30 years of history, Cold Sore Ling has a vast offline resource base, so in the early stages of the private domain project, the brand first thought of diverting offline consumers online, but when they did, they found it wasn't that simple. Chen Ning, head of the brand marketing department at Cold Sore Ling, said that the sales team is best at traditional offline business and tends to use a "traffic harvesting" mindset for private domains. This caused problems in the cold start of the private domain. Precise targeting is crucial! Cold Sore Ling focuses on the anti-sensitivity segment, needing to find people with anti-sensitivity needs—they are the high-value users. With the help of the WeChat Pay team, these issues were quickly resolved with good solutions. For example, through WeChat Smart Guide, each offline guide is issued a dedicated badge and configured with redemption coupons for key new products. Because rewards are credited in real-time and costs are controllable, the average daily redemption per store increased by 6 times! Moreover, guide promotion actions are now digitized and trackable, solving the black-box problem of past expense investment. Especially noteworthy is "WeChat Pay Offers" (微信支付有优惠). This is an official mini-program launched by WeChat in 2020, where users can earn coins after paying with WeChat Pay and exchange them for brand coupons on this platform. Using brand coupons to purchase products can directly jump to the brand's official mini-program mall, providing an excellent traffic entry point for brands. Because users on the "Offers" platform are characterized by high loyalty, high purchase frequency, and youthfulness, they are more receptive to new products. By exchanging product coupons through "WeChat Pay Offers" and then completing transactions in Cold Sore Ling's private domain mini-program, Cold Sore Ling gained access to users that might have been difficult to reach through other channels at great cost. Online validation of new products can feed back into offline business. Private domain precise communication can help improve public domain ROI. WeChat Pay can provide effective support not only to digital novices like Cold Sore Ling but also to FMCG brands with rich online experience.
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Online-Offline Integration, Public-Private Domain Joint Operation
Through "WeChat Pay Offers," Be & Cheery (百草味) gained a new way to acquire effective traffic in WeChat's public domain. "In over 2 months of cooperation, we achieved a win-win of member accumulation and sales explosion," said Qiu Shi, head of smart retail business at Be & Cheery, about WeChat Pay. Be & Cheery is an FMCG brand specializing in leisure snacks, originally starting offline but beginning its online journey in 2010. In 2017, Be & Cheery returned offline, exploring the offline market through direct-operated and franchise stores. It was also in this year that Be & Cheery began building its private domain system on WeChat. By 2020, Be & Cheery achieved online-offline member integration, using tools like official accounts, mini-programs, communities, and video accounts within the WeChat ecosystem to build a complete closed loop from customer acquisition to operation, conversion, and repurchase. But cooperation with WeChat Pay still brought new possibilities to Be & Cheery's private domain. Qiu Shi gave us a set of data: First, 85%. Of users converted through the "Offers" activity, 85% were new customers to Be & Cheery's mini-program. Second, 10%. The activity brought 10% of total sales, though only 10%, but it was all incremental, and it is a very important sales resource for Be & Cheery's private domain. With the support of the WeChat Pay team, Be & Cheery's "1 yuan flash sale for peach crisps" activity entered the "Offers" official account article, which received over 100,000 reads that day, not only driving sales growth but also bringing more new customers to Be & Cheery. Be & Cheery is actually a very good case of the WeChat ecosystem empowering brands to achieve online-offline integration and public-private domain joint operation. It's important to know that channel fragmentation and diversified shopping scenarios are a huge challenge for brands. Consumers are still the same consumers, but they can shop through different channels. Can brands create omni-channel, multi-touchpoint consumption scenarios so that consumers can experience your services at any time? This is crucial! Of course, achieving this depends on rich digital tools and an ecosystem that can connect online and offline, integrating public and private domains. In fact, currently only the WeChat ecosystem can take on this responsibility.
03
"WeChat Pay, More Than Payment"
With the help of tools like official accounts, mini-programs, video accounts, and WeCom, more and more brands are choosing WeChat as a channel for brand promotion, online mall operation, and CRM. Among the many tools, of course, is WeChat Pay. In many people's understanding, WeChat Pay is just a payment tool, but WeChat Pay has always had a slogan—"WeChat Pay, More Than Payment." In the context of the WeChat ecosystem empowering brands to build digital operation positions, we can better understand its meaning. Bai Zhenjie, senior director of WeChat Pay, said: "By linking tools like official accounts, WeCom, and mini-programs, WeChat Pay can turn every user who consumes in offline scenarios into a digital ID, and then settle them as the merchant's own users within WeChat." In the current context of declining offline traffic, this makes online-offline integrated operation achievable and valuable for brands. In addition to online-offline integration, WeChat Pay is also helping brands with public-private domain joint operation. In the past, many people regarded WeChat as a private domain platform, pulling users from outside the WeChat ecosystem for long-term operation. But in fact, with the development of the WeChat ecosystem, an internal distinction between public and private domains has emerged. For example, video accounts and Moments are public domains, while WeCom and mini-programs are private domains. Many brands try to pull people from public domains to private domains for operation and conversion. "WeChat Pay Offers" is also public domain traffic, through which brands can import high-quality users into their private domains. Of course, as a decentralized ecosystem, WeChat mainly provides underlying capabilities and tools, relying on various service providers to develop personalized tools based on business understanding, so that brands can more efficiently complete user reach, identification, operation, conversion, and repurchase within the WeChat ecosystem. WeChat is an open platform, and more and more service providers are integrating into this ecosystem to help brands build a long-term operation position.
Weimob has been a service provider for nearly 10 years, always exploring the logic of doing business within the WeChat ecosystem. Wang Yuanyuan, head of growth operations at its enterprise development business group, said that since the pandemic, many brands have accelerated moving stores and guides online, extending business hours and expanding service space, which has brought about 25%-30% business growth. In the current environment, this is very rare. The WeChat ecosystem has evolved from the field most suitable for building private domains to a field where public-private domain joint operation can be carried out within this system. Here, every brand can build its own long-term digital operation position. In this process, some brands are ahead, some are slower, but every brand has an opportunity. Therefore, the WeChat Pay team defines this as the "Voyage Plan" (远航计划). It is not something that can be achieved immediately; "It depends on co-creation with brands and service providers, and we will continue on this path of brand digitalization together," said Bai Zhenjie.
04
Final Words
As the largest mobile internet ecosystem in China, WeChat's efforts and results in empowering brands and merchants are evident to all. Various product modules within WeChat, including WeChat Pay, are making their own efforts, joining forces with service providers to help brands build digital operation positions. In the past few years, platform e-commerce, O2O, social e-commerce, community group buying, live-streaming e-commerce... whenever a new channel appears, FMCG brands will try to cover it. Because wherever consumers are, brands need to be there. But brands must face a reality: consumers are fluid. They bought your product this time, but whether they come again next time is entirely up to the user. Brands are exhausted trying to achieve full coverage, but users are not retained, stickiness is low, and brand investment and output are seriously misaligned.
Therefore, connecting online and offline, achieving public-private domain joint operation, extending from coverage to operation, turning traffic into retention—in the era of stock competition, this is a topic all brands must face. Of course, because of the development of the WeChat ecosystem, this has also become an opportunity! We look forward to more brands making good use of WeChat and seizing this opportunity.