For the past few weeks they’ve been everywhere. In elevators, WeChat Moments and website banners, online and offline. They’re staring at me first thing in the morning when I leave my flat and later, when I go back home. Those blue cups everywhere! Luckin Coffee’s offensive has grown stronger lately and they claim they want to revolutionize China’s coffee market.
A few years ago the idea of an unmanned store would sound like a sci-fi story. But not anymore. China’s giant, like Alibaba or Tencent, do everything to make sure the term blends into consumers’ daily vocabulary.
We have posted before about many features that are incorporated into WeChat app. One of the latest is a mini-program function. It’s an excellent way of making sure its users won’t ever leave the app. It was not very welcomed right after it was introduced last year, but now many brands create their own mini-websites and mini-stores to make sure they don’t miss out on the trend. The mini-programs indeed make a user experience quite pleasant.
Using KOLs for a brand promotion has become a very common form of marketing, especially in China. According to "2017 Digital Marketing Trends Report", 72% of brands’ executives increased social marketing investments in 2017, of which 63% was directed into KOL promotion.
Chinese New Year is a very busy time for both domestic and international brands. For some industries, like travel industry, for example, it starts as early as two or three months ahead. Clothing brands roll out their holiday campaigns a bit later, a few weeks before the festival. In order to draw customers attention, every year they must be more and more creative, especially because Chinese customers have become very demanding. Moreover, Chinese giants, like Alibaba or Tencent, have gone mad making up new ways to integrate offline and online shopping experience.
Student recruitment seems to be one of the only fields that hasn’t been revolutionized by the Internet yet.
As a 20+ year veteran of the International student recruitment field told me:
“Universities are the dinosaurs of marketing… It’s insane! They can’t track anything… They don’t have the concept of marketing…
The post is brought to you by our guest author, Ivo Ganchev.
Question:
“I have a podcast / audio show I would like to get distributed in China, hopefully on one of these platforms: Koala, Lizhi, Ximalaya or Qingting.fm. Do you think you could get my show on one of these? What would be the price?”
Mike (let’s give the person a name)
Answer by Shane Chen, our marketing consultant:
It seems like most search marketers outside of China have heard that Baidu is “the Google of China”. And sometimes they’ve heard of 360 Search and Sogou too.
But I haven’t met many that have heard of Shenma Search.
When it comes to marketing in China, you can do it the classic way – Baidu Advertising, WeChat and Weibo campaigns are commonly recommended options. You probably have heard of them if you did any China marketing-related research. But what we like to highlight as often as possible is that China is very different from what you know, and it changes quickly too. Chinese competitors know the market very well and will almost certainly be ahead of you, using marketing channels that are not as well-known in the Western world as Baidu.
