Our China Blog
Targeting Chinese Companies: Part 1: Trade Shows, Exhibitions & Conferences
What are the most efficient ways to communicate with Chinese companies from the seller’s point of view? The answer to this question depends on what type of product or service you are selling and at what stage of the sales process you are. Making an initial contact, contacting repeated customer or maintaining a relationship require slightly different approaches, one of which is participation in trade shows/exhibitions and conferences.
The following conclusions are primarily based on our B2B marketing experience in China as well as the research by Matthew Harrison and Mark Hedley of B2B International. read more…
Pros and Cons of Hosting a Site in China
Foreign websites that are looking to target Chinese audience are often presented with the dilemma regarding physical location of their server. There is also a lot of conflicting information about whether local hosting is important, as well as to what degree it affects site’s performance and ranking in the search engines.
In this post, we attempt to summarize various pros and cons of having your site hosted in China. read more…
9 Points Checklist for Building Your Chinese Landing Page
Building Chinese landing page that targets visitors in China requires taking into account an additional set of guidelines besides the typical requirements for landing pages.
First, let start with the definition of – a landing page (or LP) is where your potential customer “lands” first after clicking your link in the search results, social media or an email. read more…
Competitive Research in China, Part III: Chinese Social Media Channels
Continuing the series of articles on conducting basic market research in China, in this post I will be explaining how Chinese social media channels can be used for that purpose.
In China, Sina Weibo and WeChat are two most popular platforms. Sina Weibo has evolved around desktop use while WeChat only works with mobile. I have already those platforms in much more details in this blog. For now, suffice it to say that, for the purpose of market research, Weibo is much more suitable and this is what I will be focusing on. read more…
Competitive Research in China, Part II: Chinese Marketplace Sites Search
This post is the second part on conducting basic market research in China and it is about searches on Chinese marketplace sites. In the first part, we have discussed using Baidu for basic market research with search engines.
If you are selling a physical product, one of the best ways to find out what is already available is to research Taobao (Taobao.com), the primary C2C marketplace in China and its B2C equivalent, Tmall (tmall.com). Both platform belong to Alibaba and are similar to Amazon but much bigger. read more…
Competitive Research in China, Part I: Baidu Search
Every proper marketing campaign in any market should first start with market research. Fortunately, it doesn’t always have to be an expensive market study, complete with complex competitive analysis and forecasts. Often times, a simple internet research, such as with Baidu search engine, would do just fine, but, of course, you should first know where and how to look.
This post is the first one in the upcoming three part series covering basic market research in China. read more…
Looking for love in China? The List of 8 Most Popular Chinese Dating Apps
Here is our review of the most popular Chinese dating apps:
(more…)
5 Common Misconceptions About WeChat Marketing
In the last couple of years, WeChat marketing has been a hot topic. The app is, by far, the most used one in China and it is estimated to be installed on over 90% of smartphones. The combination of the enormous potential reach and the possibility for brands to connect with their customers in the most intimate way makes WeChat marketing one of the important components of the overall marketing strategy.
On the other hand, many foreign brands, who want to jump in on WeChat, don’t realize that the platform comes with the number of limitations. While in some cases and if done right, WeChat marketing can be incredibly effective, in other cases the results can be quite disappointing. read more…
Chinese Payment Systems Overview: Union Pay
Union Pay is the state run credit and debit card system with the largest reach in China and overseas. Online, it is competing with AliPay and WeChat.
Chinese Payment Systems Overview: WeChat Pay
WeChat Pay is the payment system that grew out of WeChat super app. Nowadays, just like Alipay, it is widely used for both online and offline payments. read more…
Chinese Payment Systems Overview: AliPay
AliPay is the largest Chinese online payment system for both online and offline transactions. It is the primary payment method of China’s ecommerce. read more…
Chinese Payment Systems Overview: AliPay vs. WeChat Pay vs. Union Pay
Understanding the ecosystem of Chinese payment systems is a prerequisite to setting up a successful sales strategy in this market. It is also one of the many aspects of Chinese market that is considerably different from what we are familiar with in other markets.
Relying on traditional payment systems such as credit cards or PayPal is simply not going to work in China. In fact, if you are planning to sell anything to Chinese consumers, there are only three viable options. read more…
How Does Advertising on Youku Work
Watching and sharing videos through social media is one of the most frequent and beloved activities of a typical China’s internet user. Due to YouTube’s inaccessibility from the Mainland, Youku has been the main video hosting service in China for some time. Since Youku‘s merger with Tudou, the second largest video host, back in 2012, Youku-Tudou is estimated to hold about 60% of the total online video market share in China.
Recent statistics show that there were about 430 million online video users in China and this number has been steadily growing at the annual rate of between 12 to 15% since 2007: read more…
Advertising Options with Youku
Advertising on Youku, China’s largest video host, has its similarities as well as significant differences with YouTube in ways ads are displayed and priced. Here is an overview of different advertising options with Youku with the visual description of how each of them works.
Why Do Chinese Websites Seem So Cluttered?
Ever wondered why popular Chinese websites seem so cluttered compared to their Western counterparts? Should you follow this trend in your Chinese website design or stick to the modern look? Let us help you decide.
If you have spent some time looking at Chinese ecommerce websites, you can’t help but notice how incredibly cluttered they look. In fact, most of that apparent clutter is a result of link-heavy nature of Chinese internet in general.
What might strike a Westerner as an overwhelming overload of information is likely to be perceived as a content rich and intuitive site by the Chinese.
Here are just a few examples of the most popular sites in China: read more…
WeChat Marketing Part II: Getting Followers Organically
In this post we are picking up from the last week article on how to grow your WeChat followers base organically.
In an earlier post on WeChat marketing we’ve discussed limitations of WeChat based advertising and its low ROI. Therefore, acquiring subscribers organically remains a much more cost effective way to grow your brand following.
WeChat marketing can be tricky but there are some ways to make it work. In addition to the list from the last week, here are five more tips: read more…
WeChat Marketing Part I: Getting Followers Organically
Continuing from the previous post on WeChat marketing, this time we are going to look into ways of getting WeChat followers organically.
One of the key distinctive characteristics of this platform is its private nature. This feature also makes the discovery difficult.
For example, if one is looking for a particular product on Facebook or Weibo, it is relatively easy to get relevant results quickly. With WeChat, searching for a particular product or event would most likely return nothing unless you know the exact name of the WeChat account, or, at least, the brand name. read more…
International Education in China
In the last few years, international education in China has been an exceptionally fast growing sector. According to the latest numbers from International School Consultancy (ISC) Group, China is currently in the second place (after UAE) by the number of international schools in the country. Globally, international education is a rapidly growing market where demand far outstrips supply. Between 2009 and 2013, international school enrollment grew by 42% to 3.4 million while the number of schools increased by a third to 6,734. read more…
Learn all about China digital marketing here:
