Getting your product into the market could be a costly adventure in the past. But Tencent´s WeChat is offering a cheap alternative for startup companies, says William Bao Bean managing director of Chinaccelerator in Technode at the Chinaccelerator Demo Day, presenting new startups.
Technode:
Even the most careful startups can drain their funding on marketing in a tough ecosystem like China. But according to local incubator Chinaccelerator, using WeChat the right way can be the key to slashing costs.
“We focus on Wechat as a platform for low-cost customer acquisition,” says William Bao Bean, the managing director of Chinaccelerator and partner at SOS Ventures.
Chinaccelerator presented the twelve startups in their most recent batch this week for judging after a 90-day intensive program, where Mr. Bean pointed out that Wechat was now a core marketing tool for the young companies.
“Some of the companies in this batch have no website or application,” he says. Instead, those companies launched on WeChat, attracting users with rich content that integrates with the payment model within WeChat itself.
Mr. Bean pointed out that in the past Chinese companies raised money to spend it on marketing, whereas U.S. companies spend it on hiring great engineers. He now believes that WeChat is helping young companies cut the cost of marketing.
“For these three months there was zero marketing money spent for these companies,” he says. Among six companies in batch 8 that leveraged WeChat marketing, one company was already profitable. Urbem earned $10,000 USD through its Wechat account.
Sitting in front, William Bao Bean
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