Riding the wave of emerging media

Being one of the prevailing social medias, WeChat has extended its reach to an increasingly broader range of people’s lives after years of growth. WeChat is widely used across all age groups for both personal and business purposes. And it has become a smartphone app that is broadly known in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao.

Beyond providing an information sharing platform, WeChat also offers an advanced mobile payment solution; a social media platform “WeChat Moments”; WeChat Official Accounts for organisations and public figures; WeChat Business for online trading and more lifestyle-related useful tools. The number of WeChat’s monthly active users was estimated at 1.82 billion with more than 45 billion messages delivered daily in 2018, making WeChat one of the most popular mobile applications in the Greater China region.

As early as 2014, Samgor Cheong, Director of Era Fengyun Macau Electronic Media Ltd. already saw the potential in WeChat, setting up the very first WeChat Official Account of his company – “Macau Fengyun” – as a development of his passion and interest in social media.

“In the beginning, I was always looking for a potential business that had not come to the public’s attention,” Mr Cheong said. “When I noticed WeChat’s gradual growth, I knew it could be a new trend in the future. That’s why I started an official account to build my business around it”.

To cater for different interests and a very wide audience, Mr Cheong later started two more WeChat Official Accounts – “Macau Online” and “Macau Fun”. Through regular posts and updates, these pages provide interesting and useful information for tourists in Macao.

“For major tourism events, such as the Macao Light Festival and the Macao Food Festival, we compile official information and share them on our accounts with our subscribers and travellers,” Mr Cheong said. “Besides tourist information, our accounts also serve as important news broadcasts when needed.”

Local users account for 30 percent to 40 percent of the 110,000 subscribers across the company’s three WeChat Official Accounts. The remaining subscribers mainly reside in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and are between the ages of 18 and 60.

“When people search the word ‘Macau’ on WeChat, ‘Macau Online’ and ‘Macau Fun’ will pop up among the top five search suggestions, thanks to their popularity and targeted marketing strategies,” he said.

In addition to operating their own official accounts, Era Fengyun Macau also runs other WeChat Official Accounts on behalf of their clients, and provides tailor-made advertising strategies and e-commerce marketing services for online businesses. “Every new media has its own rules to play by. Our in-depth understanding of how to properly use data is the reason why our clients from various sectors are confident in our services and entrust us with their official accounts for better marketing results,” Mr Cheong added.

Tea is one of the many products on sale at the online retail space

Opening the doors to online retailing

Benefiting from the ongoing developments in the Greater Bay Area, Era Fengyun Macau broadened their scope of business through the online retailing platform supported by WeChat, selling various products of their own and imported goods.

“In the Greater Bay Area, Macao serves as an important middle ground,” Mr Cheong said. “We hope to sell products from the Greater Bay Area to Taiwan and Hong Kong through Macao and sell imported products to Mainland buyers via Macao.”

He is also very positive about the future of the MCMore – an online retailing platform of WeChat. “We launched our Xinhui Green Mandarin Orange gift sets during Mid-Autumn Festival in 2018. Shortly after the products hit the online store, we sold around 20 boxes, which was quite a good start,” said Mr Cheong.

Their online retail space also carries other products under their own brand name such as tea, coffee and almond cookies.

With just one click, WeChat users can visit the retail space via any of the three official accounts run by Era Fengyun Macau. Once in a while, the company will also create products advertisements to attract more users to the online retail space.

“It is quite manageable to run an online retail business with a third-party service provider like WeChat, because they have an online payment solution; social networking tools and other useful back-end functions in place to provide all sorts of support we need.”

Era Fengyun Macau’s products can be divided into four main categories – specialties from the Greater Bay Area, imported wines, imported cosmetics and travel-related products.

“When I noticed WeChat’s gradual growth, I knew it could be a new trend in the future.” Samgor Cheong, Director of Era Fengyun Macau Electronic Media Ltd.

Moving forward with 5G

With the growing popularity of Douyin, a trendy media app for creating and sharing short videos in China, as well as the culture of live streaming, Mr Cheong believes there is a future in it. “5G will be available in Macao in 2020. By that time, a faster and more efficient network will only be more beneficial to the culture of live broadcasting, streaming uploading and downloading videos.” 

The future plan for Era Fengyun Macau will be to promote sales and share local Macao information through live streaming or making videos on Douyin. Mr Cheong believes dynamic content will soon overtake traditional texts and print advertisments, which will diversify the content of the company’s official accounts and channels.