With the surge in the launch of multitudinous newer social media platforms in the Hong Kong market, most of these channels aim to compete with significantly well established social media giants in that segment, namely WeChat and Weibo.

With flourishing new social media outlets, marketing methods have also evolved rapidly as each social platform has its own dedicated marketing means and tools.

Following are 5 crucial ways to boost your business’s performance on various eminent social media in Hong Kong:

1. Target your clientele with precise advertising

When inculcating social media, the ultimate end goal is to attract and convert prospective clientele. With the spur in the development of big data systems, more and more social platforms push publicizing paid ads to aid you to target a certain segment of niche customers.

Illustratively:

WeChat has these types of promotional ads:

• Moments ads
• Official account ads
• Mini Program ads

Once you’ve figured out and determined your promotion goals, you can finalize your target group amongst these six categories:

• Population attributes
• Regions
• Interest
• Mobile devices
• Re-marketing
• Media types

Between these categories, you can also fixate upon more granular details. For example, there are three category options in Regions:

• Residents
• LBS
• Overseas visitors

These filtered details can assist you in specifically narrowing down and targeting your prized customers.

Weibo launched a product named Follower Express, which lets businesses target users in accordance with the detailed parameters. The dissimilarity between WeChat and Weibo is that WeChat is a private social network, whereas Weibo is a public source of information–think Facebook and Twitter, respectively.

Usually, HK consumers count on recommendations from family, friends and influencers inclusive in their social circles prior to purchasing. Consequently, influencer marketing is big on Weibo.

2. Promote with key opinion leaders (KOLs)

The ability to influence a consumer’s purchasing habits has witnessed a drastic shift from traditional public media to individual brand ambassadors. These ambassadors are termed as key opinion leaders (KOLs). To be defined as a KOL, ambassadors must have amassed more than 10,000 followers at the bare minimum. Provenly, they have a pretty impactful influence on Hong Kong purchase demands and can be recruited on behalf of a brand for marketing purposes.

Weibo developed a KOL-specific promotion platform: Weirenwu. Brands can access Weirenwu to check out relevant KOLs to post their content. Your business can select various distinct KOLs with varying influence levels as per your target, budget, and strategy.

3. Open a direct online store

Post surpassing a particular number of followers, brands, particularly retail companies, may generally create an online store on WeChat. It’s more suitable and relatively less expensive (as opposed to opening up a physical store set-up) to companies. In a WeChat article, you can seamlessly link pictures or words to relevant items and purchase links. The precondition is that the official account opens the function of WeChat Pay, a Chinese online payment gateway. Only verified accounts possess and enjoy this function.

4. Utilize WeChat Mini Programs

WeChat Mini Programs are sub-applications in the internal ecosystem of WeChat. Users can access and use available web-apps via the browser subsequent to scanning a QR code or performing a direct search. The apps proffer users with advanced features, such as e-commerce,  coupons, task management, mobile bike locking and unlocking, bus time checkers, etc.

WeChat also offers a function of ‘Mini Programs Nearby,’ which entails users to explore more Mini Programs based on their locations.

WeChat Mini Programs maintain a conversion rate higher than that of WeChat’s formerly existent marketing channels.

5. Constantly post creative content

Aspire to create innovative and creative content, to engage and interest people more in your brand. Content is quintessential in Hong Kong, people rejoice strong visuals, pictures, stories, and videos. Additionally, several brands bring H5 pages to play into their posts and official accounts to optimize their WeChat and raise the quality of the user experience.