China is the world’s largest source of international students. Over half a million enroll in foreign higher education institutions each year.
In our education marketing work, we get the chance to interact with thousands of students every month. We know that they face some major challenges. Not only in study itself, but also with friendships, culture and life. They also face challenges in the application process.
A common saying goes “The tailor makes the man.” Chinese parents and students selecting colleges are affected by their brand names. When some students graduate from a famous foreign college, their neighbors and relatives back home may think they merely graduated from a diploma mill. Why? Because of a poor Chinese name translation.
In the days before the Internet, student recruitment was done via agents and school-to-school exchange partnerships. When I first studied abroad in Nanjing, I went through an exchange program.
But nowadays, there’s a growing number of options for student recruitment available. From social marketing to live-streaming to study portal websites. I’m going to list them all here!
This is the one and only list you’ll need. As we find and test new methods, we’ll update the list, so bookmark it. If we’re missing something, contact us and we’ll add it.
Somebody asked me for some general advice on how to use social media for B2B marketing in China.
I’ll answer that here. This is a beginner-level post for marketers with little to no experience with China.
Now for some details about the project. The company in question provides environmental services to other businesses. It’s a large business, but has a small online presence in China. Let's call them “AB Envirobots”. (Just “Envirobots” is taken already!)
Ten years ago, Chinese students learned English in traditional ways like reading books, listening to tapes and going to English corner. It’s the digital era now! The way that Chinese students learn English has changed greatly! They are now much more inclined to learn English online.
In addition to the cheap price, the most important advantage of online learning is convenience. With a computer or mobile phone, everyone is ready to learn English, and the quality of learning isn’t much different from offline learning.
So you’re entering the China market soon. Should you hire an in-house team to do the marketing or hire an agency?
I’m interested in your opinion, please leave it in the comments. First I’ll share my own.
I’ll share some of the pros and cons of each method, including a few hidden risks you might now have considered. Finally, I’ll talk about hybrid approaches.
This blog post is written by our lead social marketer Estrella Yang.
This is a very common question from clients. Yes, everyone can promote their brand with China’s most popular social media marketing tool - WeChat. But using a verified WeChat official account will help you stand out.
Recently, a well-known technology blogger Keso posted a WeChat moment, saying "the WeChat official accounts pay-to-read feature is a little bit late, but it's finally coming".
His post attracted everybody's attention and then he said, the specific launch time still remains unknown, but Pony Ma (the president of Tencent) said it would be ready right away.
I’ve had the chance to see a lot of different organizations expand their marketing reach to China, and I’ve carefully watched the different organizational structures they use.
The two most common structures I see are functional and geographical.
By “functional”, I mean that the organization is broken down by marketing channel. The organizational chart may look something like this:
Weibo's "Fan Connect" advertising platform is one of our favourite promotional channels nowadays. It's quite powerful, but only when used properly.
The reason Weibo advertising is so powerful is that you can target users based on a variety of factors, and then spread your message via their social connections. When a Weibo user's friend likes, shares or comments on a Weibo Fan Connect ad, they'll see the ad too. Chinese Internet users respond very strongly to brands that their friends like.
