US search marketing agency Point It was running a successful global search campaign for Microsoft Store, but the only country they needed to activate was China.
They reached out to Nanjing Marketing Group, and we planned and operated the campaign for Chinese search engines Baidu, 360 Search and Sogou.
We met and exceeded the 400% return-on-ad-spend targets we were given, reaching peak returns of 1,200%.
“NMG has been a great partner to complement Microsoft Store’s global paid search efforts in an otherwise challenging market.
NMG is able to quickly adapt to changes with consistent results, while their knowledgeable staff is quick to respond, willing to help, and always on the lookout for testing and growth opportunities."
- Ben Carson, Global SEM Manager, Microsoft
Virtuzone helps foreign businesses setup companies in Dubai and the UAE. They wanted to test the Chinese market by using Baidu ads. For tests like this, it can be a challenge to optimize the campaign in such a way as to stand out above the competition.
We launched their Baidu search marketing in late 2018 by focusing on the highest-potential keywords. We also took care to adjust their message on Virtuzone's landing page, deploying China-specific copywriting.
The campaign gained very positive results. In a short space of time, having proven that China is a hot market for them, they followed up in early 2019 with a rapid business development plan in China.
"Nanjing Marketing Group has been a key partner for us in our efforts to test the demand for our services in China. Wiktoria, Phoebe, Tait and the rest of the team have been very responsive to all our requirements, continually suggest improvements and always seek new ways to optimize our campaigns. Working with NMG has been a real pleasure and I look forward to expanding our collaboration over the months to come."
- Christian Voss Pedersen, Group Marketing Manager, Virtuzone
UNSW Global provides a pathway program for international students to enter the University of New South Wales.
With the help of Nanjing Marketing Group they built a huge social media following. As one of the first universities to blaze a trail on Weibo, they harnessed the power of Chinese social marketing and generate over 400 inquiries per month.
The returns on this type of marketing are from five to ten times more efficient than the equivalent of paying commissions to education agents.
Plus, by controlling their brand on Chinese social media, it makes it easier for agents to sell UNSW Global.
Hybris is a German company that sells omnichannel and product content management software. They have great staff in China, but they found it difficult to scale up their marketing, and so they turned to us for help.
Our role was to increase their public recognition and expand their influence in the Chinese B2B tech community through WeChat, paid search, and content marketing.
The WeChat articles we wrote for Hybris received four to five times the the views of articles that were not written by us. Additionally, we were able to have full control of the search results for the first two pages of Hybris’ brand name on Baidu.
"We are surprised how good your articles are. We are looking forward to more posts from you."
- Bo Liu, Marketing Manager, Hybris SAP
Multinational cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks wanted to grow their business in China, but their SEM department knew it would be hard to run search campaigns in the country. Language obstacles aside, all the search engines are different, which makes even routine operation a challenge. We also knew it would be a challenge to target the ads to focus on the right type of buyer, because Palo Alto Networks sells large, complex enterprise solutions.
We launched and have implemented Chinese search marketing campaigns for Palo Alto Networks, generating 1,700+ leads for enterprise firewall solutions since 2013.
Nanjing Marketing Group provides the Chinese-language part of a global campaign run by education marketing agency Higher Education Marketing. Conestoga College has capable Chinese officers and Higher Education Marketing is great at global education marketing campaigns. They just needed an effective way to reach Chinese students on Chinese platforms.
Since 2017 we have run a campaign on WeChat, Weibo and other Chinese social media, helping many students and parents understand the school better. Agents have also picked up the materials we've created and used them to help improve sales.
WeChat followers have grown from 0 to 1,225, using organic marketing methods only, and weekly post views number over 8,000. This has resulted in Conestoga College being able to recruit as many Chinese students as they can handle.
“Nanjing Marketing Group’s service is 5/5 stars. We appreciate their professional content planning, online event organization and social marketing for us.”
– Ryan Du, China Program Officer, Conestoga International Education
Concept2 sells high quality exercise machines. They already had some presence within China and a strong knowledge of how to operate. They just needed some help increasing the traffic and sales for their existing online stores on Tmall and JD.
We launched a Tmall and Baidu ad campaign in 2019. Like most of our projects, it's important that we cut out the less useful traffic and focus in on the most relevant. We avoided channels, keywords and demographics that were less likely to drive purchases.
They reached profitable return-on-ad-spend within one month.
The MBA Tour holds events to help potential students learn about their options for MBA studies. Students that attend events can talk directly to officers from multiple schools. The MBA Tour already had a presence in China, and Chinese staff, but they wanted help to improve their marketing model.
We ran a comprehensive campaign on Weibo, WeChat and other websites, making use of the most cost-effective advertising and influencers (KOLs).
The campaign generated over nine hundred registrations for The MBA Tour’s Global Tour events in Beijing and Shanghai at a cost of 23.7 USD per registration.
Bar Codes Talk sell digital barcodes to businesses and individuals around the world. We’ve been running their comprehensive Chinese marketing campaign since 2012, under a broader global campaign run by Canadian marketing agency Acro Media.
We started with search marketing and lightweight customer support to ramp up their ROI to the 400% target and then expanded to include other advertising and organic marketing methods.
How can you sell millions of yuan’s worth of pizza at an ROI of 1,000 to 2,000%?
Papa John's wanted to launch search ads in China, but they wanted to focus on measuring results.
Before starting ads, we helped create a plan to analyse traffic from Baidu ads in Google Analytics' e-commerce module as well as Baidu's analytics tool. This allowed the US team and Chinese team to share what we learned and improve results. Then we set out the best-targeted keywords and created tasty campaigns that kept customers coming back.
It became easy to attract both new and returning customers to purchase on-site which helped push up the ROI to between 1,000 to 2,000% on a regular basis.
Pennsylvania’s Grier School is a private boarding and day school for girls in grades 7 through 12, and has a reputation for its alumni going on to the most famous universities in the US. Despite the variety of educational resources they offer, when Grier first contacted NMG, they were struggling to replicate a similar presence and reputation in China.
Our goal was to increase their presence online and expand brand awareness amongst the Chinese upper-middle-class families, and eventually increase the number of leads and registrations. We localized their website for the Chinese audience and search engines to make it more accessible for potential students and their parents.
In addition, we have also established a strong content base and following on platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, Douyin and Zhihu. We also manage their Baidu Baike page, and our content-marketing campaigns have had a significant impact on Grier's popularity in recent years. From 2018 to 2020, Grier moved from #120 to #92 in the national ranking for best boarding schools.
Additionally, our social media and SEM campaigns generate an average of 60 leads per month.
“It’s great to see that everything continues to move in an upward direction, especially the WeChat followers!”
– Jennifer Neely, Head of Admission at Grier School
Clicks Research is a survey company that helps major brands collect anonymous feedback. They work with industries such as beauty & skincare, baby care, food & beverage, pet products, and more. Clicks Research didn't understand the Chinese market and had difficulty getting feedback in China, so they approached NMG.
The first issue we identified was that, while the free-trial model was popular in other markets, it didn’t encourage users in China to sign up—and it also made them suspect it’s a scam.
Taking this into consideration, we increased the reach of the platform to multiple channels, which in turn, improved its familiarity to Chinese users and raised the level of trust. It also allowed us to gather more information about users of all age groups and their preferences. To ensure we achieve our client's objectives, we constantly test different approaches to reach out to the target audience.
Our main goal has been to have enough registered users to generate 100–200 participants per product tested. We achieve this through Weibo advertisements, which match specific products to users based on their preferences. We not only generate enough registrations from the campaigns, but have also built an interactive follower base on Weibo.
"Nanjing Marketing Group have been nothing but professional since we began working with their team. The team have been extremely helpful and amenable, considering there is a massive time difference between ourselves. We are ever so pleased with the results that Nanjing Marketing Group have helped us to achieve and in such a short space of time. We shall certainly continue to use Nanjing Marketing Group for future lead generation and online advertising. Thank you!"
– Robert Ayton, Director of Ayton Global Research
Matmatch—based in Munich, Germany—is a comprehensive material database connecting engineers and material suppliers around the world. They first approached us in 2018 while attempting to break into the Chinese market, and we provided them with light-weight market research, including a review of competitors and recommendations for marketing channels.
As they made preparations for the next step, Matmatch contacted us again the following year. Our goal was to build a strong online presence and drive inquiries among the growing engineers’ community in China. To achieve this, we localized their website for the Chinese audience and implemented a 50-step technical audit of their website to identify and fix issues that may hinder their indexing or ranking. At the same time, we developed an effective content strategy and achieved noticeable results in just six months. The content we create and publish generates about 20K views per month just on Zhihu, and the user sign-up increased by 129% over the service period.