Yes, it’s a busy time of year for Western retailers, with planning already well underway for most brands in the run-up to Christmas. However, the potential gains are clear; China is now the biggest e-commerce market in the world and its online sales reach over $1.5 trillion annually. Furthermore, sophisticated Chinese buyers love Western brands and view them as offering quality and status. This means a potentially ready audience of motivated customers – if you get your strategy right.

So if you’re ready to take the plunge, how can you get the most from your marketing campaign for China’s singles day?

Gain your insights

It’s important to know the features of China’s Singles Day, which include a growing interest in luxury brands as well as the more typical high volume, deep discount and thin margin sales. It’s also a largely celebratory event, with Alibaba and Amazon investing heavily in TV and experiential advertising in the run-up to the day. Big brands feature highly and key product sales categories include fashion, beauty, electricals and homeware.

Know what you’re doing!

Work with a Chinese Marketing Agency if you want to get your marketing campaign in this vast and complex country right. For example, discounts which feature the number 4 are best avoided, as the number has unlucky connotations in China. However, good fortune is signified by the number 8 and you could factor this into your pricing and promotion to ramp up your ‘feelgood’ factor and encourage those online conversions.

Target, Target, Target

Chinese Singles Day is such a vast event that it pays for Western brands to really pin down their targeting before they begin to launch their marketing campaign. For example, female consumers are rising in China and this is changing the product categories that sell the most – with beauty, clothing, health and nutrition and baby items growing in prominence. Female Chinese shoppers are also shown to be detailed in their research and more inclined to use online buyer guides and social media to compare prices and to read reviews. As an example, Charlotte Tilbury was successfully launched as a new brand in China by Feelunique. The previously unknown make-up brand was brought to market via a social media education campaign and partnership with a KOL to deliver brand exposure and help to create trust, using Weibo and WeChat accounts.

Choose your platforms

The platform that leads Chinese Singles Day sales is Alibaba, and last year around 60,000 global brands joined the rush, helping to list over 15 million products on Tmall. JD.com, Amazon and other growing e-commerce platforms are also competing hard to win custom during the event. [Source: www.forbes.com]. However, because these online marketplaces are crowded and tend towards deep-discounting over the holiday, some overseas brands may prefer to focus instead on their own Chinese website. By doing this, they can better target niche audiences and offer service and quality as key differentiators. Examples of companies already doing this include GetTheLabel and Burberry. [Source: www.netimperative.com]

Focus on mobile

Remember that e-commerce is now heavily led by mobile devices, with 80% of Chinese shoppers choosing to buy using their smartphones. Phones are easy and quick and online buyers are digitally savvy and often young. With that in mind, make sure you offer a recognised payment system such as Union Pay, AliPay or WeChat Pay. Remember too that these platforms offer digital marketing opportunities too. Post-purchase, you can encourage your customers to follow your brand on social media and offer special deals or promotions for additional or later purchases.

Integrate your campaign

The digital e-commerce platforms of choice for China’s Singles Day offer plenty of scope for creative marketing. For example, if you set up a TMall merchant web page, you can stream content to your customers, leverage the value of Chinese Key Opinion Leaders (KOL) and their social media feed recommendations and integrate with the live countdown event to get your customers excited and ready to buy. A multi-channel approach is best for cross-fertilisation of your messaging and content, and if your budget and tech allow it, activities such as live streaming are extremely and worth pursuing in the run-up to the big day itself.

Baidu PPC

As China’s equivalent to Google, you must place and target Baidu PPC adverts carefully in order to differentiate yourself from the competition. Make sure your website landing pages are optimised – if you haven’t created a dedicated Chinese website – set up your Baidu PPC account (using help from your Chinese Marketing agency ideally to speed up the process), run your Chinese language adverts and measure the results on Baidu Tongji (Analytics). Again, your Chinese marketing agency can deliver this service for you to optimise your results and ROI.

Chinese Social media

Start the buzz now in the run-up to China’s Singles Day, using KOLs where you have identified a beneficial partnership opportunity. Teaser campaigns showcasing the product lines you will be promoting at discount for Chinese Singles Day help your Chinese customers to research your product and make a decision to buy in advance. Remember, they only have 24 hours to take advantage of those offers, so make it as easy as possible for them to choose yours by providing the information that they need beforehand. Use a mix of video content, images, news and promos to build your brand presence and relationships with your followers. Remember too that this market loves quirky content, so gamification is another good strategy to follow. Again, you have the social media giants such as WeChat, Weibo and YouKu, but there are also other smaller platforms which may be relevant to your niche.

Targeted online advertising in China

Click volumes tend to increase in the week running up to Chinese Singles Day as shoppers carry out their research online, but conversions remain relatively low until the actual day. Plan your targeted online advertising in line with these trends, offering links to content which raises awareness of your brand, your product range and your key messages. Get your rich media advertising and targeting strategy right and your target audience will find you quickly.

Ready to find out more?

If you’re keen to make the most of Chinese Singles Day, Market Me China is here to help. Our team of marketing experts offer a full suite of professional digital marketing services, which we deliver in partnership with our clients to ensure measurable ROI and results. Contact us to find out more.

The post How to boost your sales on Singles day in China appeared first on Market Me China®.

Baidu advertising

Baidu accounts for almost 80% of all online searches in China, so it stands to reason that you’re going to want to be where the majority of searchers are. Baidu is particularly popular because it’s results driven; users are already searching for products or services to fill a need they have, so you’re going to want to be there to match your products or services up to their search term. It may involve creating new advertising campaigns, as because of the cultural differences, Western advertisements may not work in China. It’s also a good idea to create Mandarin landing pages. Although it’s not essential, if a Chinese user clicks through to an English landing page, chances are that the bounce rate will be very high indeed. If you get your advert and landing page right, you’ll be putting your business in front of the biggest online audience in the world.

WeChat marketing

WeChat is the biggest social media platform in China, with 900 million users. WeChat marketing is a key for your social media marketing in China. WeChat previously had a history of keeping advertising away from the users, that has since changed and it’s open to ads. The change presents an excellent opportunity for marketers to reach their target market. Depending on your brand or budget, there are different options for advertising on WeChat. One of the most popular is WeChat moments, which works similarly to Facebook timeline ads. A moment ad includes your brand name, profile picture, a 40 character ad description, up to six pictures and a link to your landing page. What’s interesting about Moment ads is that marketers are able to target users by their location, age, gender, interest and even their device and phone network.

Weibo marketing

Weibo is a social media platform with 300 millions of users, so if you’re serious about advertising in China, you definitely need to feature on it. There are several different ways you can advertise on Weibo, with straightforward options such as banner ads and Weibo search engine promotion, to more Weibo specific advertising methods such as fan headline and fan tunnel. Fan headline has proved to be a particularly popular advertising method because it promotes your account, or your Weibo content, either directly or via famous accounts. The return you see from the ad is pretty instantaneous, and due to the fact you can specify your target audience, it’s a pretty effective method of reaching them.

Display ads in China

Display ads are great because they help to build brand awareness, which is ideal if you have a new product or service you’re about to launch. Display ads allow you to be found by your target audience on various top ranking sites in China. It works by using cookies to target your audience and is used by hundreds of well-known advertisers all over the world. The audience targeting means you’ll be speaking to your customers directly on some of the most visited sites in China, which can only mean more exposure and greater brand awareness for your business.

For help getting your campaign off the ground in China, be sure to contact us. We can advise you on the best way forward and ensure your campaign achieves its goals.

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Here’s why targeted Chinese advertising is so important, and how you can use it.

Why should I use targeted Chinese advertising?

Targeted advertising is a reliable way to get the attention of China’s huge internet shopping population. These people spend regularly and often high, with 50% making more than 11 purchases, and 40% spending around $300 minimum, in 2008 (source: China Business Review). An average Chinese internet customer can spend up to three hours online every day (source: China Business Review), with nearly 80% of internet users spending at least 14 hours online per week (source: eMarketer).

Targeted advertising is also a highly effective medium. Over half of Chinese mobile internet users admitted that mobile ads influenced their consuming behaviour to some extent. In 2013, 66% of users noticed Chinese advertising on their mobiles, while 32% of them went on to make a purchase, according to Renren (source: Tech in Asia). Mobile internet users are an important market – one which you can target with specific campaigns that are shown depending upon device. With 98.8million smartphone shipments in 2015 Q1 alone, you would be accessing a large potential market that is constantly growing (source: News Cred).

The more targeted your adverts, the better. 78% of Chinese consumers are more likely to click a mobile ad featuring content that is relevant to them, with 77% saying relevant content is the most important factor in mobile advertising (source: Price Waterhouse Cooper).

How can I use targeted advertising?

Targeted advertising allows you to engage with the right people at the right time. You could use interest and purchasing history to find the people who might want your luxury goods. Targeted Chinese advertising allows you to easily connect with these people – important, as 40% of Chinese luxury consumers bought a luxury item within a one day period of wanting it (source: Red Luxury). If you can get the right message in front of these people, you could see significant rewards.

Another market that targeted advertising allows you to tap into is the rising number of rural internet users. The impressive number of people online in China is still growing, mostly fuelled by young people in rural areas. Online shopping is popular among the less-urbanised areas of China. One town, Luxi (population 57,000), has transformed in the past three years from having one express delivery office handling ten packages daily to five handling 100 every day (source: Economist). Targeted advertising allows you to connect with a new market, one that is becoming increasingly internet-savvy and willing to spend.

(Image source: Image created by Feelart | www.freedigitalphotos.net)

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Why you can’t transfer your western data and customer habits

One of the biggest reasons why huge global corporations have failed to make an impact in the Chinese market is assuming the consumers can’t be that different from the domestic market.

Mattel is perhaps one of the best-known stories, when they tried to launch Barbie in China. They failed to realise that, while Barbie may be an iconic representation of the ultimate woman in America, she completely clashed with traditional Chinese values. Women in China are traditionally expected to act with dignity and modesty, so Barbie’s confident, sexy clothing went against traditional values (source: Chairman Migo).

Regardless of where you are marketing, making assumptions is one of the easiest ways to go wrong. This is especially true in China, where you don’t have an innate knowledge of the local culture and customs to fall back on.

Use SEO to bring your target market to you

There is now plenty of data available online to help you discover what people are looking for. Keyword research tools help you to pinpoint the most popular things people are trying to find. Once you know what people are looking for, you can work out how your product suits their needs. Once you have matched high traffic keywords with your product, you can create a Chinese SEO friendly website that will begin to take advantage of Baidu’s 500 million active monthly users.

Use targeted online advertising when marketing in China

One of the most interesting differences, from a marketing point of view, between China and the West is the attitude of internet users towards advertising. While in the West we tend to see adverts on our mobile devices as an invasion of privacy, users in China actively welcome targeted online advertising. They are also highly effective. 53% of Chinese mobile internet users say that their purchasing behaviour have been influenced by mobile advertising. 66% of mobile internet users noticed the advertising being displayed, and 24% were affected enough by advertising to make a purchase (source: Tech In Asia).

Targeted advertising allows you to put your marketing directly in front of only the right people. So once you’ve done your target market research, and know exactly who you want to marketing to, you can use targeted advertising to reach the right people. It can be a great way not only to sell your product, but to build awareness and drive traffic to your site.

(Image source: “Marketing Graph And Folder” |www.freedigitalphotos.net)

The post How to find your target market when marketing in China appeared first on Market Me China®.

Geo-targeting

Targeted advertising can sort users by location, and display relevant ads to them. You can set the radius in different increments, or by other factors such as town/city. Location targeting can be useful if, for example, you were opening a new store in a certain city.

Keyword targeting

Keywords are an effective way of finding internet users who are interested in your product/service. Targeted advertising online in China analyses a user’s keyword usage in order to determine which adverts are most suitable for them. For example, a user who often talks about ‘Samsung’ is likely to be a fan of the brand, and therefore a good person to promote new models or accessories to. The more specific your keywords, and the more relevant keywords you use, the more precisely you can target your advertising to ensure it engages exactly the right people.

Re-targeting

Re-targeting gives you the chance to re-attract users who browsed your site or filled a basket, but didn’t buy, by displaying adverts for the things they viewed. For example, a customer puts a pair of shoes in their basket, then leaves the site. You could use re-targeting to ensure that those particular shoes are displayed in adverts on other sites that they visit, to remind them that they liked them. This is incredibly useful because only 2% of web visitors actually convert on their first visit to your site, so you need to keep displaying your message in order to get those sales (source: Econsultancy).

Gender targeting

Research suggests that Chinese women are much more likely to shop online than Chinese men. You may find it useful to target only female internet users, as they may be more responsive to the idea of buying online. Of course, you may have a product that is specifically for men, in which case you can display your adverts only to male internet users.

Device targeting

Targeted advertising can even recognise the kind of device internet users have. This can be incredibly useful in order to personalise advertising and make it more relevant to consumers. If you were selling phone accessories, you wouldn’t want to advertise iPhone cases to Samsung users. Targeted online advertising allows you to avoid this, saving you money that would have been wasted targeting the wrong market.

Interest targeting

By targeting customers who have expressed an interest (via the pages they like or the accounts they follow, for instance) in your industry or service, you can access consumers who have made their tastes clear. For example, with it estimated that 32% of Chinese families being able to afford to travel abroad and purchase luxury goods during their stay by 2015 (source: eChinacities), targeting online users with an interest in travel allows you to tap into that market.

(Image source: “Target Market Means Consumer Targeted Advertising” | www.freedigitalphotos.net)

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So what exactly is targeted online advertising and how can it help you during Golden Week in China?

Why is Golden week important to Western businesses?

National Day Golden Week, which runs from 1^st-7^th October, is one of two week-long holidays in China, and is often the only time off work Chinese workers get. For this reason, many Chinese consumers use Golden Week as an opportunity to travel, whether to see friends and family abroad or simply for pleasure, and do plenty of shopping. Tourism providers in the UK have the opportunity to grab the attention of a huge number of Chinese travellers looking for somewhere to go, and luxury retailers will find Chinese consumers a lucrative market. For instance the average spend of each Chinese shopper in Harrods per visit last year was £3,500.

What is targeted online advertising by cookie?

Targeted online advertising by cookie uses information on an internet user’s behaviours, preferred sites, location, interests, keywords, and much more, in order to target adverts that are likely to appeal to them. For example, it is highly likely that women who’ve spent a lot of time visiting forums for new mothers would be interested in adverts for baby products. Using a database of 900 million cookies, Market Me China can use targeted online advertising to put your message in front of only relevant customers.

Why should I use targeted online advertising in China?

Targeted online advertising is cost-effective, efficient, and highly controllable. With other forms of advertising, such as print and television, you are effectively paying for people who have no interest in your product, and are not your target market, to view your advertisement alongside those who are. With targeted online advertising only people who are your demographic will see these adverts displayed to them. This increases the likelihood of your advertising engaging the right people, and creating new customers.

Targeted online advertising is a cost-effective way to get onto top Chinese websites. Whereas standard banner advertising on a popular website may cost a lot of money, with targeted online advertising you only pay for exactly the right kind of consumer to see your advert. Whether you use strong images or engaging video content, you have a much higher chance of generating click-through with targeted advertising.

What are the benefits for Western brands?

1. Be found by your Chinese target audience on the top websites in China.

2. A great solution for special online campaigns, such new product launch, promotion etc.

3. Enjoy the low prices to advertise on the top websites in China.

4. The key technology “Audience Targeting” by cookies makes the advertising campaign efficient and intelligent, reducing costs and increasing the scale in which you reach your audience.

5. Creative rich media ads are very attractive to your target audience.

6. The “Super Advertising Media Engine” system has been trusted by 300 world-class advertisers, such as auto, finance, IT, beauty, fashion, travel, FMCG, etc.

7. Provide you with verified data monitored by a third party.

Why not  have a chat with us to learn more.

(Image source: “London Skyscrapers At Dusk” | www.freedigitalphotos.net)

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