April 19, 2024

2024 HOSPITALITY AND RESTAURANT MARKETING TO CHINESE GUIDES ON WECHAT MARKETING AND WECHAT MINIPROGRAM

WeChat Mini Programs have opened a new path for business expansion in the hospitality industry such as Restaurant, Hotel and Tourism in China. The iterative platform features are enabling businesses to consistently enhance their operational capabilities. Drawing from our industry insights, businesses can seamlessly integrate platform capabilities and their Mini Program operational scenarios to fully capitalize on the business potential offered by WeChat Mini Programs in restaurant and hotel marketing.

In this article we are to discuss:

How can WeChat Mini Programs help food and beverage brands explore new paths for business growth?
How can WeChat CRM help food and beverage and cultural tourism businesses provide better marketing and service experiences?
How can WeChat Pay Score further improve the completion rate and repurchase rate of the cultural tourism industry?
How did digital pioneers such as McDonald’s, Sumitomo Hotel, and Tongcheng Travel break through growth by leveraging the WeChat Marketing?

WeChat Marketing provides more "solutions"

“Mini Programs have created a new path for business growth for the F&B industry. The iterated platform features are also helping businesses continuously upgrade their operational capabilities. Based on our industry insights, businesses can better integrate platform capabilities and their own Mini Program operational scenarios to fully tap into the business potential of Mini Programs.”

– WeChat Open Class lecturer Huang Weibin

2023 was a year for the F&B industry to demonstrate innovation and vitality. As social life gradually resumes its orderly pace, businesses are actively promoting Mini Programs as their main operational base.

In this year, the transaction amount of Mini Programs in the F&B industry increased by 70% year-on-year, and user consumption activity in formats such as tea and coffee, light meals, and fast food has significantly increased. Among the top 100 chain F&B merchants, over 80% have opened Mini Program ordering, and over 60% support Mini Program takeout.

At the same time, consumers’ consumption habits are quietly changing. According to the research results of the WeChat team, scanning codes in stores is still the largest channel for acquiring and trading with Mini Programs, but channels such as pulling down the taskbar, external channel redirection, social communication pull-up, and subscription message pull-up are experiencing significant growth. In addition, official flagship stores, transaction guarantees, and other platform certification marks are also important factors affecting users’ trust in merchant brands and their willingness to purchase.

Based on the above trends and insights in the F&B industry, WeChat Open Class lecturer Huang Weibin summarized four key points that F&B businesses need to focus on in 2024:

Improve the exposure effect of WeChat Mini Programs to help users quickly lock in their own brands;
Strengthen WeChat Mini Program takeout to gain incremental revenue;
Pay attention to the performance of WeChat Mini Programs to ensure stable operation in terms of robustness and security;
Accumulate various WeChat Mini Program data, establish a data-driven mindset, and manage details clearly and visually.

In the face of new trends and opportunities in the F&B industry, Mini Programs also provide new industry capabilities for business growth from the perspective of upgrading industry operational capabilities, and new platform capabilities to improve Mini Program performance, exploring better integration of Mini Programs with F&B scenarios.

In terms of empowering business growth, Mini Programs provide new upgraded product capabilities in marketing, takeout scenes, message delivery, brand trust, etc.: WeChat’s student identity verification capability has been upgraded to a fast verification mode; new URL scheme and URL link efficient generation mechanisms; Mini Program takeout capabilities such as store fast delivery provide richer operational resources; the new version of one-time subscription message capability with user-side free subscription features; Mini Program transaction evaluation, official flagship store labels, and multiple new entrances into Mini Programs.

To help Mini Programs run stably and reliably, the platform has also brought many performance guarantee upgrades, covering performance analysis, operation experience, stability and pressure resistance: WeChat Data Analysis’s performance report section can quantitatively evaluate the running effect of Mini Programs; Donut’s product experience analysis capability provides Mini Programs with convenient intelligent interaction analysis; the newly launched Mini Program stress test capability has the advantages of high-fidelity simulation and full-link test coverage; the new generation rendering engine Skyline allows Mini Programs to present interaction and performance performance close to the APP level.

” WeChat mini programs can empower enterprises to connect with consumers through functions such as external collections, customer service, customer assistance, etc.; at the same time, it provides functions such as documents, smart forms, etc. to help enterprises’ internal HR and operations departments work efficiently; in addition, the functions of connecting upstream and downstream in the enterprise WeChat will help enterprises better collaborate with the supply chain.”

– WeChat Open Class lecturer Li Yingchao

During the epidemic, many F&B companies stabilized their operations by connecting with customers through WeChat. With social life gradually out of the epidemic’s influence, the F&B industry is gradually transitioning from the “traffic era” to the “retention era”, connecting with customers through Enterprise WeChat and providing “value” to customers.

However, in the process of exploring from “traffic” to “retention”, large store models such as formal meals, hot pot, and grilled fish, and small store models such as tea drinks, fast food, and baking all encountered their own difficulties. How to solve these problems? Based on industry insights, WeChat Open Class lecturer Li Yingchao gave the “solutions” of WeChat Mini Programs.

For large store models such as formal meals, hot pot, and grilled fish, attracting new customers through public domain traffic, increasing the frequency of repeat customers, and providing naturally warm operational services are the three major challenges facing large store models.

In the past, consumers needed to go through multiple steps to become friends, which took more than 20 seconds and customers were extremely likely to be lost during this process. In 2023, Enterprise WeChat launched the “Customer Acquisition Assistant” capability, which allows consumers to add merchants’ Enterprise WeChat friends with one click without scanning the code, by clicking on the customer acquisition link. Moreover, the “Customer Acquisition Assistant” capability can not only be configured in WeChat’s ecosystem capabilities such as video accounts and public accounts, but also in external channels such as brand official APPs or SMS channels, making it more convenient for merchants to reach users and precipitate customer resources.

How to improve the frequency of repeat customers and how to operate naturally and warmly? The F&B brand TanYu provided its “answer”. At TanYu stores, there are dedicated store customer managers who operate in the private domain and provide consumers with a more personalized service experience. At the same time, private domain users also have exclusive benefits. After members take pictures of the table code and send them to the group, the store will provide benefits such as free side dishes. Currently, TanYu’s store in Longgang, Shenzhen, has 57,000 private domain customers, and the store’s turnover has increased by 1.5 times. 50% of the dine-in orders come from repeat customers, and the turnover provided by private domain friends on weekends reaches as high as 37,000 yuan.

Faced with consulting demands during peak dining hours, the F&B brand Pizza Hut created a task board based on the open interface of Enterprise WeChat, which can timely see if messages have reached customers.

Unlike large store models, the more urgent problem for small store models such as tea drinks, fast food, and baking is the mismatch between a small number of employees and a large number of customer demands. How can digital tools help small stores serve a large number of customers well?

The CFB Group, which owns brands such as DQ and Papa John’s, chooses to empower its stores through WeChat Enterprise, turning store employees into “super touchpoints” while reducing their workload to serve a large number of customers. Taking DQ as an example, brand promotions will be pushed from DQ headquarters to store employees with just one click, allowing employees to reach all their private domain consumers with a simple confirmation click. At the same time, headquarters will collect feedback from frontline stores and consumers through forms to improve product taste, etc.

Coffee brand Luckin Coffee, on the other hand, has played more tricks with private domain operations using WeChat Enterprise. Based on the WeChat Enterprise architecture, Luckin Coffee headquarters has finely labeled private domain customers and segmented them, and has conducted a large number of analyses based on user ordering preferences, consumption frequencies, and store inventory situations through algorithms. With the fine labeling capability, Luckin Coffee can make precise personalized recommendations based on user preferences to retain consumers, such as recommending new latte products to latte enthusiasts, recommending Americano to Americano enthusiasts, recommending hot drinks to northern users, and recommending cold drinks to southern users, etc.

In addition, whether it is a large-store model such as main meals, hot pot, grilled fish, or a small-store model such as tea drinks, fast food, baking, WeChat Enterprise provides rich product capabilities at different stages of private domain operations, helping brands provide consumers with warm services at every step, turning “traffic” into “retention,” and achieving better management.

“We use the capabilities of the WeChat ecosystem to drive customers to place orders on WeChat Mini Programs during the preheating and promotion of our activities. The whole process is very smooth, and customers love it.”

Li Ye, Director of Self-Channel Business, McDonald’s

As a senior brand deeply rooted in the Chinese fast-food market, McDonald’s actively embraces the digital marketing trend in F&B brand, focusing on WeChat Mini Programs as a key business outpost. It closely integrates with WeChat’s new capabilities in the F&B industry to achieve rapid business growth and win-win user reputation.

Utilizing WeChat Mini Program’s student verification capability, McDonald’s launched the O Mac Gold membership student-exclusive benefits. College students can complete verification in a few simple steps and enjoy exclusive benefits.

In order to better provide delivery services to consumers, McDonald’s integrated the store’s fast delivery capability into the Mini Program at the end of October last year. Users can enter the Mini Program and directly access the store menu for ordering based on LBS positioning, making the entire process very fast and convenient. Li Ye revealed that since the launch of the store’s fast delivery capability, the daily new user acquisition has been stable.

In terms of marketing, McDonald’s also actively develops new gameplay through Mini Programs and other WeChat ecosystem capabilities. For example, in July 2023, it collaborated with the outdoor trend brand CHUMS to customize the “FRIES with your CHUMS Big Fries Day Cooling Water Gun” limited edition peripheral products. It guided consumers to the Mini Program through WeChat ecosystem capabilities, and through the cognitive education of Big Fries Day during the ordering process on the Mini Program, it reached a wide range of consumers, driving the activity to go viral.

“Enterprise WeChat makes it possible for hotel users to digitize operations at low cost, with high efficiency, full-chain, and standardized operations.”

Ren Xiaofeng, Senior Director of User Operations, Sumitomo Hotel Group

As social life resumes vitality, the tourism industry is entering a new stage of rational prosperity characterized by differentiated demand, graded consumption, and upgrading. As an innovator and leader in China’s online travel industry, Tongcheng Travel is seizing industry opportunities and actively using WeChat’s ecosystem capabilities to meet users’ personalized and diversified travel needs.

To enhance user experience, Tongcheng continuously optimizes the application of WeChat Pay in its platform business and has deeply integrated it into scenarios such as hotels and ride-sharing, effectively improving the authorization pass rate, completion rate, and repurchase rate in these scenarios.

At the same time, leveraging the student verification capability provided by Mini Programs, Tongcheng can quickly identify student identities and provide exclusive benefits and activities for student groups. In 2023, the number of student users on Tongcheng increased by 62% year-on-year. Thanks to the application of WeChat Mini Programs’ elderly-friendly design guidelines, Tongcheng has also developed a caring version of its Mini Program for middle-aged and elderly users, adapting text size, simplifying processes and content, and streamlining recommended information. Currently, the number of users on Tongcheng’s caring version exceeds 6 million.

In terms of incremental growth, Tongcheng has actively accessed various capabilities of the WeChat ecosystem, such as live broadcast appointments after WeChat payment, search service cards, and Enterprise WeChat travel assistants. Leveraging its supply chain advantages and advantages in the upstream and downstream of the industry chain, Tongcheng has created a matrix of video account accounts, generating multiple cases of videos with over tens of millions of views and actively applying video account components and video account shops to effectively improve the brand’s conversion rate.

In 2023, many F&B and travel industry merchants actively innovated and explored using WeChat’s digital tools, making important contributions to society’s return to normalcy and the industry’s recovery. In the future, WeChat will continue to play the value of new tools and new scenarios, hand in hand with F&B and travel industry customers and partners, to explore more possibilities.

OctoPlus Media is an integrated marketing technology company focused on China inbound and outbound marketing. OctoPlus Media is also one of the pioneer agencies becoming WeChat Full Ecosystem Service Provider, providing one-stop WeChat services, from Social Content Management, Ads Campaigns, WeChat Mini Programs Development and CRM Marketing Solution. Contact us with the form below to understand how we can help you boost your business!