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.
I think Chinese consumers are highly untrusting of new brands. I think that it’s essential for any new brand entering China to assume that it will be tough to pick up customers unless they can build that trust.
When I express that opinion to people experienced with marketing in China, they always agree. Yet Western marketers usually disagree with me.
We get asked that a couple times a week. While the response can vary based on the situation, there are a few points that are common to almost every SEM campaign we do.
The post is brought to you by our guest author, Marcus Pentzek.
If you are working on your SEO for Baidu you will need to think how Baidu drives traffic to a website.
Saying China is moving towards becoming a cashless society is stating the obvious – I’ve mentioned how highly appreciated the WeChat Wallet feature is in my last blog post. A couple of weeks ago I’d have said the subway station was one of few places left where you had to use either coins or banknotes – but UnionPay’s just been launching a new app for a subway system and all you’ll soon need to do is scanning a QR code. China’s been changing constantly, leaving no space for those who drag their feet.
When I first arrived in China all I expected WeChat to be was a Chinese version of Facebook – a place to connect with friends, chat, share pictures, etc. Little did I know it would be so much more than a social platform.