Australian SMEs urged to use WeChat for marketing

Australian SMEs are missing out on huge opportunities by failing to include China’s WeChat, the largest social media app in the world, into their marketing mix, according to China expert David Thomas.

Thomas, the founder and President of the Australia China SME Association, noted that WeChat has recently hit the milestone of having over 1 billion monthly active users worldwide.

This includes around 3 million users in Australia, with nearly 40% of these being non-native Chinese speaking users, as a result of the high population of Chinese visitors and temporary migrants to the nation.

But although around 70% of Australian businesses use at least one form of social media platform for marketing purposes, only a small portion use WeChat.

The Chinese account for a large component of retail spend in Australia. Our country enjoys strong tourism activity from China. Around 1.2 million Chinese tourists visit our shores every year and spend an average of $8300 while they are here. This is the highest spend of any visiting nationality. In addition, there are also at least 185,000 Chinese students studying here every year,” Thomas said.

“Clearly, WeChat is growing in use and if Australian businesses want to ensure their brand and products achieve full reach across the market space and capture the spending dollars of visitors as well as those living in Australia who use the app, they need to include WeChat in their marketing mix.”

Market research company IBISWorld recently predicted that in 2017–2018, 30% of Australia’s retail industry revenue would be generated from inbound tourists, and especially from China’s growing middle class.

Thomas noted that Australian SMEs do not have to speak Chinese to use WeChat as most users consume content in both English and Chinese, and there is a reliable translate button to convert Chinese characters into readable English.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Kalim

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