Digital Marketing in China

Planning your Digital Marketing in China

China is the market everyone wants a piece of.  With over 1.5 billion people, your target market is here. But, entering the market doesn’t make it just start raining money.

Chinese consumers are bombarded by businesses that want them, both homegrown and foreign.  For your business to get a piece of the pie, you need to come in with a well thought out, meticulously researched plan.

No one is saying it's easy.  But any demographics report will tell you how much your bottom line could benefit.

Here are few Sectors you can increase your expertise and can do well in the Chinese market.

Be Mobile Friendly

Mobile usage in China, particularly in terms of eCommerce and social media, makes a lot of other markets look like they're trapped in the 1990's.

WeChat, the major player in the social scene, had 600 million active accounts in Q2 2015.  25% of those people check the app over 30 times a day. Even in B2B, the app’s penetration rate (north of 95%) makes it an easy way to do repeat sales and CRM.

In short, if you're not mobile-friendly or ready to jump into the wide world of WeChat, make it a priority.

Baidu is not Google & WeChat is not Whatsapp.

It's a mistake to try and think of these platforms as "the Chinese Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp" or "the Chinese Google".  Perhaps at one point, it was true, but now they have come into their own.

WeChat is a messaging platform that is completely private.  If you see a photo or video shared by a friend and comment, only people friends with both of you will see that interaction.  Everyone else sees just the photo.  For businesses, official accounts can send out photos, articles, videos, games, audio messages, and chat with followers--all through a private conversation with each person. Businesses can also accept payment and do customer service directly through the app.

With Baidu, SEO is a completely different beast.  The way the first page is structured is so unnatural that a heat map of it will show users habitually clicking next page to find organically high-ranking content. 

Email is dead.  Long live video.

The only kind of companies that see any kind of open rate for email campaigns are B2B, and even then it is far lower than what you get elsewhere.  And Chinese users don't often download a company-specific app, especially if that company can be found on TMall or WeChat.  You have to find new ways to engage.

Chinese consumers want content-driven campaigns.  Baidu wants content-driven search.  When you come to China, expect to devote resources not just to translate what you have, but creating new content with an extra emphasis on your company's story.  Spend time crafting a story that sets you apart and expressing it both verbally and visually.

The video is the new king.  Everywhere from WeChat to TMall, pages with video are not only getting more clicks, they get more conversions. Why? The story drives brand recognition which helps page viewers engage the first time they see it and remember the next time they get to a product search engine like TMall.

Communicate

We've talked about the need to create content to drive your marketing in China.  This tip is a little different, but not following it will definitely cost you sales.

Make sure you have a team available to chat with customers.  Contact forms?  You'll get almost no responses.  Chat buttons and callback systems?  Customers will call and chat, asking questions sometimes for 20 minutes or more before committing to a purchase.  Your customer care team is the difference between them buying and walking away.

These are very few sectors which are explained on the blog but as we all know Chinese market is a huge market and we have to continuously apply some new technique to get traffic and business in China.