WeChat dominates China's social media: All B2B brands invest

The report analysed the results of a survey conducted among 50 international B2B MNCs operating in China, spanning 20 diverse industries. 

Here are some of the key findings from the study: 

• 94% of those surveyed identified social media as one of their primary marketing channels, with 70% planning to increase their social media marketing budget in 2024.
• 78% plan to use AI for their social media activities, with more than 50% of companies already using it for content editing and in the search for content ideas. However, over 20% of brands have no intention to leverage the power of AI this year.
• 42% indicated that improving brand awareness was their primary objective, and 34% chose generating leads. 88% indicated impressions, views and reads as one of the social media metrics they use, followed by the leads it generates (80%). However, only 18% would utilise sales revenue as a metric for social media activities. 
• Offline events (86%) and paid search (66%) were identified as other major marketing channels, with only 38% planning to increase their marketing budget for paid search, and 44% indicating plans to reduce the budget on display ads.
• Popular consumer platforms such as Douyin have been adopted by B2B companies, with 40% indicating that they were on Douyin, but only 4% believed that it would be the best platform for them in the next three years, which is the same rate as Bilibili and higher than Red (2%).  
• All of the businesses surveyed had WeChat official accounts, with 100% surveyed businesses have WeChat Official Accounts and 76% are active on WeChat channels. Among these, four out of five believed that WeChat would be the best platform to achieve their business goals and objectives in the next three years.

The survey also found that B2B marketers identify producing engaging content (66%), developing content that generates leads (66%) and connecting with the target market as their top three challenges in 2024. Regarding social media analytics, the top challenges are the lack of time (27%), the lack of understanding (26%), and not having enough social media data (21%).