With the privacy policies being quite stringent in China, the WeChat advertising platform has been in beta for the last few years. In order to become a platform for people to place ads, your official WeChat account would need a sizeable following (larger than 100K followers); and in order to advertise on the platform you would also need to have a China bank account, China mobile number and China personal ID.
Basically if you aren't residing in China then good luck trying to find a way to advertise on WeChat...right?
There are still other ways for you to advertise on WeChat:
Place advertorials on popular WeChat official accounts. These channels are like the New York Times in their own cities and are usually geographically targeted; their account names would tell you which geographic region they cover with their news and articles. To advertise on these official WeChat accounts, you would need to contact their marketing / sales personnel, obtain a media kit, and make a booking, much like you would do with a regular newspaper.
Advertise through your own network. If you have lots of friends in your WeChat network, you can readily advertise your products and services by posting onto your personal newsfeed, aka. WeChat Moments, to get the awareness of your network. This is very similar to Facebook's newsfeed.
How about advertising on other 'MLM' style WeChat apps? When you are on the Facebook platform, often you would play games that are developed for the Facebook platform and upon opening the app you are told your information will be shared with the developer.
Some developers have developed a WeChat app similar to how apps in the western world would leverage an existing platform, like Instagram or Facebook. These WeChat apps run on top of the existing WeChat platform, and advertisers who place ads with them get their ads broadcasted to the app developer's network of 'friends', and the friends of the first layer of friends and so on. There are several privacy issues with this method as the 'broadcasters' in this network are paid (hence the 'MLM' business model) to share the ads with their friends in the network.
Not sure which method is right for you or for your business? Contact us today to find out how our team can help you. We have run over 35 WeChat campaigns in the past year for national and international brands and we look forward to assisting you to grow your business in the Chinese community.