User:Chuhua Chen/sandbox

WeChat Business

WeChat Business（Chinese name: 微商） is one of the latest mobile social network business model after e-commerce, which utilize business relationship and friendship to maintain customer relationship. Depending on the instant messages, free video calls, group chats, information sharing on WeChat Moments and almost 1 billion users, WeChat attracts many companies and self-employed person selling their products on WeChat. Comparing with the traditional E-business like JD.com and Alibaba, WeChat Business has large range of influence and profits with less input and lower threshold, which attracts loads of people to join in WeChat business. .

WeChat Business marketing mode

B2C Mode

This is the main profit modes of WeChat Business. The first one is to launch advertisements and provide service through WeChat Official Account, which is a B2C mode. This mode has been used by many hospitals, banks, fashion brands, internet companies and personal blogs because the Official Account can access to online payment, location sharing, voice messages, mini-games and so on. It is like a 'mini App', so the company have to hire specific staff to manage the account. By 2015, there are more than 100 million WeChat Official Accounts in this platform.

B2B Mode

WeChat salesperson in this mode is to agent and promote products by individual, which belongs to C2C mode. In this mode, individual sellers always post relevant photos and messages of their agent products on the WeChat Moments or WeChat groups and sell products to their WeChat friends. Besides, they develop friendship with their customers by sending messages in festival or write comments under their updates on WeChat moments to increase their trust. Also, keep communicating with the regular customers rise the 'WOF'(word-of-mouth) communications, which influences decisions making. Some of the WeChat businessman already have a online shop in Taobao, but use WeChat to maintain existing customers.

Existing Problems

As more and more people join in the WeChat Business, it brings many problems. For example, some sellers begin to sell fake luxury goods such as bags, clothes, clothes and watches. Some of them have special channels to get high-quality fake luxury products supply and sell them in a low price. Moreover, some sellers even disguise as international flight attendants or overseas students by posting fake stylish photos on WeChat Moments. Then they claim that they could provide overseas purchasing service but sell fake luxury goods in the same price as the true one. Another heat product selling on WeChat is facial mask, its marketing mode is like the Amway but most of them are unbranded products which came from illegal factories making of excess hormones with would have bad influence on customer's health. However, it is difficult for customers to defend their rights because a large amount of sellers' identity is uncertified. Additionally, the lack of supervision mechanism of WeChat business also provides chances for the criminals to continue this illegal behavior.

Faceu

Faceu (Chinese: 激萌) is a heat beauty selfie camera App for smartphone. This app uses AR technology to allow users to choose their favorite stickers or add interesting and exaggerated effects in real-time when taking selfies and videos. Moreover, it was launched in 2016 and already had more than 250 million registered users in 2017, and most of the users of Faceu are females from 15 to 35 years old. On February,2018, Faceu was acquired by Chinese media startup Toutiao, which is worth about $300 million.

Marketing Strategy

Faceu have been topped the Appstore list in 2016 within a very short time and increase 10 million new users in just 7 days. Targeting the young group, Faceu have launched many marketing promotions.

Online marketing

As there are so many selfie camera apps in China such as MeituPic, Pitu and Camera360, Faceu decided to focus on the social function, it added IM block where users can add other users and have a funny video chat with their friends or strangers. Besides, the photos and short videos will be deleted in a short time after sharing to protect users' privacy, which can encourage users to use Faceu more freely . Also, Faceu have cooperated with many famous brands like CHANEL, Michael Kors and KFC to launched social media campaigns by designing specific stickers. In 2016, Faceu cooperated with Meipai which belongs to MeituPic, and launched a rainbow effect activity. As the main users group of Meipai is similar to Faceu, this activity had great success and Faceu ranked straightly to top one in the AppStore list from around 80 within just 3 days. In October 2017, Faceu launched a special function during Mid-Autumn festival and National Day. When users upload their selfie onto the App, the photo will be changed into a painting with Chinese ancient costume or Chinese military uniform. Then many people posted their edited photos on WeChat and Weibo, which made it became a hotspot for a long time. Hence, more and more people download it to catch up the trend. Additionally, Faceu also cooperated with more than 50 celebrities on the social media, such as Papi jiang, Liu Yifei, Wu Chun and Sun Honglei to cover different kinds of customers. Celebrities will post selfies or short videos with the loge on social media or appear with the cute effects on the TV show. Faceu's online marketing was a great success. The main reason is that the cost of users' participation is low, they just need to upload a selfie, and wait for a few seconds. Besides, they know what their customers want and choose the right time to launch the effective strategies. Lastly, Faceu group has elicited users emotional and resonance utilizing KOL and acquaintances social.

Offline Marketing

On the first day of 2018, Faceu have cooperated with PUMA and Bobbi Brown and set up a fancy shop in Shanghai. This shop called 'U funny laboratory' have fashion and interesting decoration, which is an excellent place for the hot bloggers to take photos. Faceu have successfully discovered the interest of the young, utilized its own functions and connected the brand with fashion.