This blog will give you a full introduction of Weibo advertising in China including Weibo definitions, Weibo Business Account setting, Weibo marketing Channels.
1. What is Sina Weibo?
Monthly active users have grown to 462 million in December with 93% of the traffic coming from mobile users, according to the Weibo Q4 2018 reports. Sina Weibo is the second most popular social media platform in China and called China’s Twitter. Although the rise of WeChat in recent years has put pressure on Weibo , it’s still experiencing impressive growth and keeps developing and offering powerful functions which is unique and irreplaceable among all the Chinese social media platforms.
2. Set up Weibo Business Account
To start with Weibo Marketing, you should register an official account for your business. For the company who owns the Chinese business licence, the registration takes around 1 week; for the oversea company, the process would take about 2 weeks.
After the registration, you could have more powerful customised functions of the homepage, more accurate data analysis services and more efficient communication management background, with the unique “blue V” certification which hepls build more reliable impression to fans and consumers.
3.Weibo Advertising Channels
A. Weibo search engine promotion
Weibo is the most significant social media in China who provides the Search Engine optimisation. There are varies way for Weibo search engine promotion to Increase brand exposure.
For example, default search keyword in discover page which leads the user to click subconsciously. After the click, all the related contents are showed to the user including Brand poster, brand window, recommended account, recommended micro-blog.
The search page automatically displays top search events, and the third place is the advertising space. Top search promotion helps brands to appear in the list of real-time most hot news and provide a good channel between users and brands to fulfil the communication.
Search Promotion helps brands to target a specific audience based on keywords and ensures the presentation of brands reach the right people and improves effectiveness of their advertising. One keyword can only used by one customer, which ensures the exclusiveness of the promotion. What’s more, it could be the guidance of the hot public opinions and service for brand crisis pr and image maintenance and improvement.
Extra scene in Search is an interesting way of reaching the social circle that gathers around the power of fans. Full screen display in the mobile terminal, Extra scene could make the largest visual impact to users to attract their attention. Transparent animation floating on the top of the results page provide a new experience to realise the keywords related content land softly to users.
B. Exposure advertisement (Starting Up Page Advertisement)
Exposure advertisement is one of the most popular advertisement types in Weibo. The advantage of it is, it’s easy to get the attention of the user when they see the advertisement in the start-up Page of Weibo. And it is compulsory, which means that the ad reach rate is certain to be 100%.
The daily active user of Weibo is impressive including 190 million users and every single round of Exposure advertisement could reach 20 million PV. There are 9 rounds of advertising plus 2 rounds of area advertising. 3 Forms of interaction and 4 types of materials are supported.
C. Information flow advertisement
Information flow advertisement is another very popular advertisement type in Weibo which is also called native advertising (Native ads). There are 2 types of information flow advertisement: “FenSiTong” and “Brand advertising”, separately focusing on increasing fans and branding.
Generally, advertisements are interspersed in the content of micro-blog, which is not easy to be found by users. Moreover, according to the powerful positioning system of micro-blog, advertisements are recommended to users accurately, which are not easy to cause users’ aversion.
For advertisers, this kind of advertising effect is better, is a new marketing model, in line with the user’s browsing habits, easy to obtain conversion rates. All the brands’ channels are given such as corporate accounts, event links, product information, interactive information.
What’s more, the full types of call-to-action buttons are provided, users could view the content while downloading the promoted apps and videos, purchasing the products, etc. Users are easily attracted by the content and participate in the interaction of champions.
D. Weibo Story - Video Ads Advertisement
Video ads are placed at the top of the Weibo following page, aggregated with the author’s profile as the entry, and displayed at the top of the feed. Very eye-catching, and easy for the user to click. The videos use portrait screen which is according with the user’s habit of browsing articles on the mobile. Video can reflect the characteristics of the product, arouse the interest of users, support to add chain jump.
The product advertising type selection is depending on the product characters, brands could choose different types to better realise their goals. Weibo has also developed many customised functions, for example, AR Camera functions which allow user to realise the combination of Visual Reality and provide more possibilities for brands who are designing the creative Weibo campaigns.
Before confirming the Weibo Advertising type, brands need to know clearly about their objective of Weibo Advertising. Increase brand’s awareness ? Gain more followers ? Increase the customer Engagement? Or growth the income. These goals are followed by different strategies and advertising models.
EuroPass is a full-service expert focus on Chinese market .