WeChat Channels activates a new incentive plan to push WeChat Livestreaming further: reward traffic coupons to merchants who drive followers to WeChat Livestreaming from external channels, according to Newrank.
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What is WeChat Livestreaming
Livestreaming is a powerful tool to engage directly with potential customers and drive sales. Sales assistants from physical stores or even CEOs can participate in the company’s live streaming to promote the brand. There are mainly two ways to host live streaming on WeChat.
WeChat Mini Program Livestreaming
Brands and businesses can add a Livestreaming module or component to WeChat mini program. For example, brands such as Perfect Diary, Forest Cabin (in Chinese: 林清轩), and Prada have held live streamings through WeChat mini program for sales or events.
Most of the viewers of mini-program live streaming are already followers or have used the brand’s mini-program. Brands can send notifications to followers and drive traffic organically to mini-program live streaming. If it’s an important event, brands can also promote live streaming through additional WeChat Advertising.
WeChat Channels Livestreaming
The Traffic Coupon we are talking about is for live streamings on WeChat Channels.
WeChat Channels is a short video feature integrated within the WeChat ecosystem. WeChat launched this feature back in 2020 in response to challenges posed by Douyin, the Chinese Tiktok. Up to early 2022, WeChat Channels have reached 450 million Daily Active Users, a 50% increase compared to early 2021. (source: CBN Data)
WeChat Channels Livestreamings are more visible to the public audience compared to mini-programs. For example, people browsing content on WeChat Channels may enter live streaming of a brand they didn’t know before. Trendy domestic brands beloved by young people, such as Pop Mart, Luckin Coffee, and Hey Tea, have made their debut on WeChat Channels Livestreaming.
What is WeChat Traffic Coupon?
According to Merchant Incentive Plan launched by WeChat, “for every new user a merchant brings to WeChat Channels, the platform will give back a user from public traffic in return.” (source: Newrank) Brands or merchants can use this “Traffic Coupon” to “purchase” public traffic.
How to gain Traffic Coupons for WeChat Livestreaming?
In 2022 April 12th to December 31st, any live streaming for shopping purposes with the shopping cart function activated will be automatically participating in Merchant Incentive Plan.
Brands or merchants have to introduce 50 new viewers that didn’t come from WeChat Channels to gain official traffic coupons. You can drive followers from your WeChat Official Account, spread the news through WeChat Moment, WeCom, personal chats, or groups, to Channels Livestreaming.
Once completed these requirements, the platform will reward the merchant with official traffic coupons, which are valid for seven days. The more new viewers, the more coupon you’ll be rewarded.
How does Traffic Coupon work?
According to WeChat, there are two ways to leverage Traffic Coupons:
- System Smart Recommendation: automatically push the Livestreaming to users who might be interested
- Custom Targeting: use this if you have a preference or established target audience. It works like in-feed bidding ads: you can target users by selecting age, city, and interests. Although, the segmentation capacity is quite essential compared to the WeChat Advertising backend.
Does WeChat Livestreaming worth trying?
Before, WeChat Service Provider (the agency that helps brands run WeChat Ads and other services) needed to apply to WeChat Team to promote Channels Livestreaming. Still, they cannot select segmentations such as age and cities. In comparison, Traffic Coupon has a clear advantage of reaching your target audience more accurately.
According to a Traffic Coupon user Xiaheng (夏恒), each UV (User View) is approximately 0.5 CNY (~0.08 USD). During significant sales festivals, you can raise the bidding price to 2-3 CNY (~0.31 USD-0.46 USD).
Traffic Coupons can bring actual sales returns. According to the same source, a traffic coupon of 10k UV can get more than 2000 product clicks and reach 150k CNY (~23k USD) of sales. This result is quite significant, but you can generally expect to gain 1000 CNY sales by spending 1000 UV traffic coupons.
Up to April 2022, merchants can only gain traffic coupons by participating in the Incentive Plan. It’s not open for purchase yet.
Therefore, for brands with an active WeChat Channels account, live streaming is a smart way to leverage the platform’s support, gain more traffic and increase sales.
Looking for more information about WeChat? You will find these guides helpful: