--- title: "Riding the Cycle: Becoming a 'Retention Brand'" description: "On April 6, at the main forum of the 2023 (8th) China FMCG Innovation Conference, New Distribution specially invited Qiang Guangliang, Director of Brand Operations at WeChat Pay. WeChat Pay has established an open cooperation network for the industry, focusing on the connectivity of the WeChat ecosystem. Qiang and his team led the development of solutions for modern and traditional channels, leveraging WeChat Pay's offline merchant network to help brands grow and service providers achieve win-win cooperation." author: "强光亮" publisher: "New Distribution" email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com" telephone: "+8615854817671" published: "2023-04-19" language: "en" canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/riding-the-cycle-becoming-a-retention-brand-a7084619/" markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/riding-the-cycle-becoming-a-retention-brand-a7084619.md" original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/3gq3oOFihOxbd9QxN3uBLg" translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E7%A9%BF%E8%B6%8A%E5%91%A8%E6%9C%9F-%E6%88%90%E4%B8%BA-%E7%95%99%E9%87%8F%E5%93%81%E7%89%8C-a7084619.md" attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/riding-the-cycle-becoming-a-retention-brand-a7084619/" usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt" --- # Riding the Cycle: Becoming a 'Retention Brand' > On April 6, at the main forum of the 2023 (8th) China FMCG Innovation Conference, New Distribution specially invited Qiang Guangliang, Director of Brand Operations at WeChat Pay. WeChat Pay has established an open cooperation network for the industry, focusing on the connectivity of the WeChat ecosystem. Qiang and his team led the development of solutions for modern and traditional channels, leveraging WeChat Pay's offline merchant network to help brands grow and service providers achieve win-win cooperation. On April 6, at the main forum of the 2023 (8th) China FMCG Innovation Conference, New Distribution specially invited Qiang Guangliang, Director of Brand Operations at WeChat Pay. WeChat Pay has always focused on the connectivity of the WeChat ecosystem, building an open cooperation network for the industry based on the characteristics of different business formats in the FMCG field. Qiang Guangliang and his team led the development of the "Integrated Brand Shopping Guide Solution for Modern Channels" and the "BC Integrated Marketing Solution for Traditional Channels," leveraging WeChat Pay's offline merchant network connectivity to help brands grow their business and service providers achieve win-win cooperation! At the conference, Qiang Guangliang delivered a keynote speech titled "Riding the Cycle: Becoming a 'Retention Brand'." The following is an excerpt from his speech (partially abridged). Adapt to change? Or hold on to what remains unchanged? Today, everyone is sharing various changes—economic, cultural, social, and so on. I would like to share what remains unchanged. Because the best way to adapt to change is to hold on to what is constant. This year, when communicating with many brand owners and distributors, a common topic is how to view the relationship between brands and consumers. The first layer is the customer relationship, where the brand's strategy is to distribute products widely, making them easier for consumers to purchase. The second layer is to establish a communication bridge between the brand and consumers, even building a friendship that allows for continuous interaction. How does a brand navigate its business cycle? Facing this question, brands with different focuses in digital operations have their own answers. However, in practice, brands have reached a consensus on operational mindset: traffic does not equal sales. The old traffic-driven approach of "paying for water, highest bidder wins" is no longer effective. Instead, the key to a brand's survival across cycles is the "retention" service of "digging your own well, free water." In his sharing, Qiang Guangliang categorized brands into two types: traffic brands and "retention" brands. 1. Traffic brands: The "traffic" here refers to flowing water. These brands have several characteristics. They are like nomads, moving to wherever the grass is lush to do business, riding on traffic. But when more and more nomads crowd together, they suddenly realize that the distribution of traffic is not in their hands. Therefore, they have to pay, and when traffic is scarce, it becomes "pay for water, highest bidder wins." 2. "Retention" brands: For "retention" brands, their interaction with consumers is not a "one-off deal"—it's not just a single sales relationship, but rather focuses on how to form a fixed, two-way interactive relationship with consumers. Building such a relationship often requires a long period of hard work, much like digging a well. But they will find that once the well is dug, the water is free. So, "digging the well is expensive, but the water is free." Multiple tools in the WeChat ecosystem work together. Here are a few small tools from WeChat Pay. The first tool is the digital shopping guide tool for modern channels. We pay attention to this role because it plays at least three roles offline. First, it is a preacher, because the shopping guide conveys not only product prices but also product functions, usage scenarios, and even brand connotations and corporate values. Second, it is a bell-ringer, meaning the influencer who pushes consumers to make the final purchase decision. The shopping guide can identify the consumer's shopping characteristics and habits and selectively recommend suitable products, coupons, etc. Third, an excellent shopping guide should be a router, not only focusing on the immediate transaction but also helping the brand or distributor build a bridge to connect with consumers. How can brands better identify, connect, and ignite this key role? WeChat Pay's answer is a small QR code. This QR code serves as a coupon code, membership code, and friend code. In the past, when scanning codes to receive coupons, brands only knew who scanned and redeemed, but lacked understanding of the scenario—they didn't know how the user came or where they came from. Now, with the brand smart shopping guide tool issuing coupons, while consumers enjoy brand discounts, brands can more accurately track shopping guide performance and enhance their motivation through reasonable incentives. We have had face-to-face communications with some shopping guides, and their feedback is that this tool allows them to see that every effort has tangible returns—every sale, every display, every new customer acquisition... every effort is seen and recorded. This is one of the important values of enterprise digitalization: it can activate every individual in the organization. Another small tool is called "WeChat Pay Has Discounts," a mini-program. Its core gameplay is based on the number of WeChat Pay transactions; users can receive corresponding coins and exchange them for merchant coupons, ultimately guiding users to various brands' own e-commerce mini-programs to promote transactions. Essentially, we are providing user benefits. Based on satisfying user benefits, we simultaneously build a distribution chain for interaction with various brand mini-programs. In the future, WeChat Pay will continue to support the digital operations of brands in the retail and FMCG industries, using rich product capabilities to help brands connect with shopping guides, distributors, small shops, and other roles, activating partners in the business chain to jointly navigate the business cycle and create "retention" brands that consumers are willing to stay with. _PS: For those interested in the on-site speech content, please follow the recent posts on the New Distribution WeChat official account. We will compile and publish all speakers' speeches for readers._ _Click **Read Original** to see more highlights from the 8th China FMCG Innovation Conference..._ --- ## Copyright and AI use This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL. Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671