WeChat marketing: effective B2B communication strategy for drinktec 2025

What it’s all about: WeChat marketing as key to the Chinese market 

Drinktec is the world’s largest trade fair for the beverage and liquid food industry. It is the central meeting place for many international brands to present innovations and establish business contacts. But how do you reach decision-makers in a market where Western platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are rarely used?

The answer: WeChat

With over one billion active users, WeChat is more than just a messaging app; it’s a complete digital ecosystem. It combines communication, social media, mini-programs, e-commerce, and WeChat Pay on a single platform. Therefore, communication via official WeChat accounts is essential for reaching Chinese users in the B2B sector.

For drinktec 2025, The Digitale developed and implemented a comprehensive digital campaign on WeChat that successfully reached decision-makers from China.

Challenge: Western channels do not work in China.

The Chinese beverage and food industry is one of the most important markets for drinktec. At the same time, it has one of the most isolated digital landscapes in the world. Traditional channels such as Google and LinkedIn are not accessible to Chinese users, which limits the visibility of international brands.

The biggest challenge was therefore to:

• Develop a targeted approach that seamlessly reaches Chinese decision-makers.
• Create and distribute appealing content in a local environment.
• Create and use the right formats and advertising spaces in the complex WeChat ecosystem.
• Use the budget in a way that effectively integrates awareness and lead measures.

In short, The Digitale, an experienced social media agency, had to find a culturally appropriate and technically feasible solution that ensured a high level of interaction with Chinese decision-makers.

Solution: Data-Driven Campaign Management with WeChat Ads

To effectively reach Chinese decision-makers on WeChat, The Digitale relied on comprehensive, data-driven campaign management with several key measures.

• Rich creatives: A large pool of images and videos formed the basis of the WeChat marketing campaign. These assets were updated and adjusted weekly to ensure fresh, appealing content was always displayed.
• OCPC special plan: To maximize performance, a special Optimized Cost per Click (OCPC) plan was set up and tailored to Drinktec’s official WeChat account. This approach optimized the ads for clicks, thereby increasing efficiency on the WeChat platform.
• Focus on WeChat Moments Ads: Most of the budget was allocated to official advertising space within Moments Ads, WeChat’s central ad format, which is particularly suitable for achieving high visibility among the relevant target group.
• Automatic Placements: Additionally, automatic placements were activated so WeChat could independently discover and use other suitable spaces.
• Dynamic Optimization: During the campaign, ad placements, durations, and target regions were continuously reviewed and adjusted on WeChat.

Less successful ads were promptly stopped, budgets were shifted to high-performing formats, and the campaign was seamlessly integrated into the overall strategy.

This combination of targeted measures and ongoing optimization resulted in an approach that flexibly adapted to user feedback, achieving exceptionally strong performance in the Chinese market.

We used the following services:

Results: wide reach, strong interaction, and new business inquiries.

The drinktec 2025 campaign far exceeded expectations. The combination of rich images and videos was particularly successful, generating a high level of attention among the target group.

Despite the highly specific content tailored to a niche audience, the campaign achieved an exceptionally wide reach. Presence via official WeChat content led not only to intensive interaction between users and the ads but also to a large number of direct business inquiries via WeChat.

Using Moments Ads, optimizing continuously via OCPC, and consistently adapting creatives and placements ensured the campaign achieved its full impact in the Chinese market.

Conclusion: WeChat is a success factor for B2B marketing in China.

This B2B campaign on WeChat showed how effective the platform can be for reaching Chinese decision-makers at a major international trade fair.

Key success factors were:

• The continuous updating of creatives
• targeted distribution on WeChat Moments
• and dynamic playback optimization

These factors generated visibility and qualitative leads among an important target group, positioning drinktec sustainably in the relevant market environment.

This campaign demonstrates that, with the right strategy, formats, and clear concept, WeChat can be a decisive success factor in international B2B marketing.