Share More, Gain More—My Group Marketing in WeCom

I got to know Du Zhong, the author of Practical Guidance for Industrial Product Marketing Department, at an authors’ meeting in April 2015, and hit it off. Although I was in Shanghai and he was in Tianjin, we chatted a lot in the QQ group “Industrial Product Marketing Department” founded by him.
In July 2015, Du Zhong came to Shanghai on a business trip, and we took the chance to have a long talk. Based on his long-term experience in operating QQ groups, he was very sanguine about the future of WeChat group marketing. He believed that with the WeChat groups, he could form an online industrial social circle; and through meaningful remarks and interaction, we could gain trust from more potential customers in a short period of time, while it usually took more than a lot in the offline environment.

But I held the opposite view. I insisted that WeChat was a personal mobile chatting tool and was no more than an extension of QQ. Since it was also considered a kind of self-media, it might be a good marketing channel for personal consumer goods (this is actually another wrong idea. At the end of 2015, the YouShop widely favored by the media was in dismal operation and many stores were closed down due to excessive overdraft of the trust from their friends, marking the end of WeChat marketing. Because of reckless postings of a large number of advertisements in Moments and WeChat groups, the Wechat businessmen became targets of scorn, either being muted or kicked out). But WeChat might be a good channel for maintaining the relationship with old customers in business-to-business marketing (B2B marketing). As for developing new customers, I would think it was much more effective to study SEM than to use WeChat.

We didn’t succeed in convincing each other, but we both agreed to set up and operate together a WeChat group named “Entrepreneurship and Market Operation" on the foundation of members from his QQ group “Industrial Product Marketing Department”. A small number of members in his previous QQ group were experts in industrial product marketing (considered suppliers) and most of them were owners of micro and small enterprises or practitioners in the industrial product marketing department (considered potential clients). In less than 10 days, 500 members joined the group, reaching the upper limit of a WeChat group. Among them, around 400 members were potential customers, while the rest were suppliers (half had published monographs on marketing. The number of experts was really huge).

Due to the activeness of the previous QQ group, the newly established WeChat group was also relatively active, but the topics of discussion were rather scattered. Therefore, the group owner would propose a topic every day for everyone to discuss. What’s more, we organized activities at 8 o’clock every night for group members to introduce themselves or listen to guest speeches.

In the first place, we also encountered advertising bombardment from Wechat businessmen, but soon they were all kicked out. If the remaining group members, whether they were service providers or customers, wanted to post advertisements, they only needed to send red envelopes to the group. In the first three months after the group was established, red envelopes often rolled in along with the group activities from 19:00 to 21:00 every night.

In order to explore the mode of group marketing, I took an active part in activities and discussions with others in the first three months. Except for a self-introduction and the sharing of my original articles, I had never advertised for myself (in fact, self-introduction and original articles are both hidden advertorials). But I did often participate in red envelope games. Finally I became an active member in the group.

Two months after the establishment of the group, we invited a distinguished guest—Ding Xingliang, the dean of the Industrial Product Marketing Research Institute— to make a WeChat voice sharing on hosting service of industrial product marketing. Prior to the activity, the group owner had made a great deal of publicity and called on the active members of the group to take part. On the night of Ding’s speech, I was actively engaged in interaction and also shared my learning experience.

To my surprise, the next day, Mr. Ding invited me as a network marketing consultant to guide the network marketing team of his research institute. Du Zhong and I had long predicted that the first order from the group would be generated in a guest activity, but we didn’t expect that the roles of service provider and customer were reversed. I, as the audience, turned out to be the beneficiary.

Encouraged by the success of the first order, I started posting original articles to the group more frequently. Since most of the articles were based on my experience in network marketing over the years, they were favored by the group members. Before I shared my articles in the group, there were only dozens of views on WeChat. After sharing, they had got hundreds of views. There was another article that helped me get another order, which was Do You Know How to Name Your Company in the Internet Age? This article had been published for a long time, but I didn’t share it in the group before, for I thought it didn’t have high professional value from the perspective of network marketing. To my surprise, when I shared the article in the group, it gained more likes than professional articles. Feeling inspired, I forwarded this article to my other 10 business groups. Just about ten minutes after I forwarded it to a group named “SingCham Shanghai” (I was once invited to give a speech about network marketing for the Singapore Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Shanghai), a group member added me as a friend, and consult me about the network marketing work of their company. After two times of offline communication, I became the network marketing consultant of their company.

During the three months of active engagement in group activities, I received four valid inquiries, two of which were converted to successful deals, accounting for 50% of my new business in the second half of 2015. In the fourth quarter, my business became very busy, so I stopped the trial of WeChat group marketing.

Looking back, I recalled Du Zhong’s theory when creating the group: groups could solve the trust issue of unfamiliar customers. It used to take many efforts to gain customers’ trust in offline marketing activities. But it could be easily achieved on the Internet, especially in WeChat groups.

Summary:
All the successful cases about network marketing in this chapter are real stories that happened to me and my clients. Compared with the marketing cases of those big brands and big companies, these stories are more vivid and representative and can be used as a reference for B2B and large-sized B2C businesses. I’m also looking forward to hearing more vivid stories from you.

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