Weitao

Recently, Taobao has shut down QR code access from Wechat, officially waging war with Tencent on mobile traffic entrance. Taobao released its own CRM service Weitao, competing Wechat directly.

For Taobao sellers, they have to keep up with Taobao’s changes and learn how to do marketing on Weitao. Before they begin investing and putting effort on Weitao, let’s see how much does Weitao mean for Taobao.

Weitao’s Value for Taobao

1. Weitao is located on the second on the Taobao mobile navigation bar. This will bring a lot of traffic to Weitao. Besides, WangXin, a Taobao transaction communication app, fully supports Weitao.
2. Weitao gained public relation support from Taobao, which means Taobao laid huge emphasis on this product.
3. Weitao has made a 1 billion yuan (USD 162 million) transaction goal to achieve for Double 11 promotion. Weitao has begun to attract businesses for Double 11.
4. Weitao is Taobao’s entrance to mobile traffic, and Taobao’s social network marketing product. It aims to compete with Tencent’s Wechat, Taobao would not give out the mobile shopping market easily.

Weitao’s Value for Taobao Sellers

Weitao is a product that resembles Weibo and Wechat, more like Weibo, it can only used in Taobao.

1. Mobile traffic: As we know, mobile traffic is not like PC, it is limited by the size of screen. Besides, unlike PC, mobile traffic mainly comes from apps rather than browsers. Mobile traffic is both valuable and expensive for Taobao sellers, so they should grasp Weitao, a new mobile traffic entrance.
2. Marketing: Weitao is just an app, sellers could use different marketing methods on Weitao to get their effect.
3. CRM: Weitao offers a platform for sellers to display their stores to consumers, to let them know about your products.

Weitao is Not Every Sellers’ Cup of Tea

Not every sellers are suitable to operating Weitao platform. Now, big sellers and marketing accounts are the main players on Weitao. They have advantages in human resources, contents and contacts with Taobao. Taobao is promoting Weitao, so they would choose to support some big players to make the platform successful and attractive. When Weitao platform is mature enough, Taobao would help small and medium sellers to do marketing on Weitao.

How to Market On Weitao

This article focuses on how to market on Weitao for small and medium sellers.

1. Know yourself. We have mentioned above that not all sellers are suitable for Weitao. You need to assess your store situation and products categories, to decide whether it is good for Weitao marketing.
2. Choose a path. You can either open an account for your store on Weitao, or you can operate a marketing account based on your assessment.
3. Name. Once you choose a name on Weitao, you cannot change it. So, be careful what you choose for your store. For small sellers, if they don’t have enough people to manage the account, our suggestion is to operate an account to sell your products.

Generally speaking, Weitao platform is quite active now. As m-commerce develop, it will only grow more popular in the future.

So much for Weitao, next, let’s discover Wechat.

Wechat

Taobao’s shut down of QR code from Wechat platform has hurt a lot of big marketing accounts. For small sellers, they don’t have to worry now, because if Taobao doesn’t block Wechat totally, they can find a way to do marketing on Wechat.

Compared to Taobao, more consumers like to receive promotion messages on Wechat. On one hand, Wechat is used more often than Taobao mobile, for social needs are much greater than shopping. On the other hand, the new version Wechat 5.0 has folded public accounts, the disturb for users has been decreased a lot. They can read promotion messages when they need. Wechat already has 500 million users now, but Weitao just begins.

 How to Market on Wechat

1. Wechat open public platform: Sellers could operate an open public account on Wechat, to attract as many followers as possible.
2. Make use of Wechat friend circle. Sellers could explore more on friend circle, start building Social CRM.
   Our suggestion for Taobao sellers is to target consumers who have bought more than three times in your store, add them on Wechat. You could add them by phone numbers, or by leaving message on WangXin. Anyway, try to become friends with these consumers on Wechat.
   It is absolutely worthy to maintain relationships with old customers. Usually, consumers who purchased three times are not so much. But these people bring a large portion of total profit. Workload of maintaining these customers would not be heavy.

In conclusion, to cultivate new users, it is better to use Wechat official platform. To maintain old customers, Wechat friends circle is a good choice.

Weibo

In August, Alibaba and Sina Weibo launched Weibo for Taobao together. This is meant to bring more traffic to small and medium sellers on Taobao.

Sellers should pay more attention to Sina Weibo, Alibaba and Sina Weibo will have offer products for sellers, especially on mobile devices.

Marketing on Weibo has many advantages for sellers:

1. Improve brand awareness.
2. Promote new products and services.
3. Lower the marketing cost for small and medium sellers.
4. A platform for public relation management.
5. Improve CRM through Sina Weibo, interact more with followers.

Weitao, Wechat and Weibo, the three platforms are all important for sellers.