Most effective WeChat livestream marketing methods – How to promote Livestream on WeChat?

Livestream Marketing Method 1: The most efficient and effective method on WeChat ecosystem: WeChat community promotion (Private Traffic Marketing)

When it comes to redirecting inbound marketing, WeChat Live Streaming mainly relies on the customers’ private traffic or WeChat community groups/chat groups (Private Traffic) which are under the hands of advertising agencies in China. OctoPlus Media has accumulated more than 1000,000 WeChat community group over the years, which include groups such as: Entrepreneur CEO groups, mother and baby groups, shopping groups for high-net-worth individuals, student groups from major universities in China, vertical communities in various industries such as finance and real estate, etc.

Through rapid dissemination among these WeChat communities, we are able to increase the viewership & popularity of the live streaming within a short period of time. The advantages of Private Traffic Marketing / WeChat community marketing include:

• Any client can use, no industry entry requirements, do not need to create an additional account, and no preliminary preparation and review is needed.
• Theoretically, any form of advertising materials is accepted. Videos, images, texts or a combination of these three are accepted, there is no restrictions on the advertising format.
• Main advantage: to be able to attract a large volume of audience in a fast and efficient way. This type of livestream particularly suits large brands and the government who requires a large number of audiences.

OctoPlus Media has many successful case studies of helping clients to promote their brand through Private Traffic / WeChat community.

Livestream Marketing Method 2: Suitable for brands who has mid-high budget: WeChat Ads to Promote Livestream. Making a reservation on WeChat moments with just one click, Live Streaming reserved via WeChat moment ads – click on [button], a redirect popup reservation will appear – click on [image] and you will be redirected to the reservation login page – click [brand profile picture/ nickname] and you will be redirected to the channel homepage, search configure live broadcast reservation button on brand area

There are few things to be noted for this method:

• Early advertisement preparation is required, as the advertisement review process takes time. Also, there is a possibility of requesting your ads to be revised.
• The speed of entering the livestream via ads is not that fast, hence this method mainly relies on traffic during pre-live instead of the traffic or viewership during livestream.
• If the livestream isn’t started within 72 hours after the ads has been run, the ads will automatically be deactivated, and unable to be re-run again.
• When the livestream ends, the advertisement will end, automatic replay of advertisement is not supported as of now. Hence, if the livestream is interrupted and is being restarted again, there will be a need to recreate a new advertisement again.
• Once the livestream ends, there will still be slight exposure charges, which is a normal circumstance; if needed, try to minimize post-livestream ads. Hence, it is advisable to end the ads 30 minutes before the livestream ends. (Thus, the time for viewership increment during livestreaming will be shorter)
• Focus on ads cover and caption settings optimization, high click through rate helps increases the rate of audience entering the livestream.

Even though the efficiency of promotion of live stream is slightly slow via WeChat advertising, but it is still an important part of marketing plan for livestream, especially for clients who are doing branding.

Livestream Marketing Method 3: The least expensive and most basic function — own WeChat ecosystem releasing push messages

Method 3 has been placed at last method as this is basically what most of the brands will do (but let us just remind again), clients’ own WeChat ecosystem promotion:

• Brand’s own WeChat public account, you may post teaser three days prior, one day prior and even on the day of the livestream itself
• Brand’s own followers group notification; (can) issue vouchers
• Message reminders via the CRM system; (can) issue vouchers
• WeChat brand marketing sharing the livestream teaser on WeChat moments
• After the livestream, WeChat public account releasing the video for replay