Winning in China Marketing

Just after the Spring Festival in China, a large number of Douyin’s users rushed into Watsons’ stores.   It was an online-to-offline marketing campaign which created more than 320,000 user-generated short video clips and 1.5 billions playbacks in just 7 days. Recently, Douyin (or TikTok outside China) just passes 1 billion global downloads, according to Reuters. If you want to enter the China market but you have never heard of Douyin, you may miss a good opportunity to promote your products.   Douyin is a super short videos of everything from make-up tips, selfies to amateur dancing, often set to catchy music and animations.   People generally use it to produce and browse quick-fire short clips.   Its editing functions have tapped into young Chinese users’ preference by adding interesting effects, music themes, filters, animated stickers and more.   It’s so addictive that some people even watch mind-numbing clips for an hour without d...

A welcome news to many foreign brands - Tencent recently made a change that allows overseas business to set up their own WeChat Official Account to reach mainland Chinese WeChat users.   Anyone who has set foot in China will be aware that China’s super app WeChat is the top of the priorities for brands hoping to enter China market.   WeChat now counts 1 billion monthly active users (MAU) worldwide.   Chinese users spend over three hours a day on WeChat versus just 20 minutes Americans spend on Facebook.   No wonder WeChat official accounts continue to increase in importance and effectiveness in brands' marketing strategy in China. The most frequent inquiry I’ve had over the past few years is “can I set up a China-accessible WeChat Official Account if I’m a foreign company outside China?” Many foreign brands have long been forced to go to the extent of registering a China-based entity, or hire a ‘trusted partner’ in China who effectively own...

Have you ever noticed that the advertisements of smartphones look alike? It is interesting to find out that advertisers love to ask celebrities to put their products close to faces. Is it true that advertising agencies are lazy for their jobs?   In fact, those ads are already approved by their clients so that you can see them on air.   Then, why do clients accept such “boring” repetitive creatives? As we discussed before, people’s attention is selective, like a bottleneck.   We can only focus on something at one time and are blind to others, aka inattention blindness. (Further reading: Inattentional Blindness: Do You See Any Brands in the World Cup? ) Chinese brands are willing to spend millions of dollars on celebrity marketing, just for one reason - get people's attention. Probably, brand owners are afraid that people only focus on celebrities and cannot see their products.   Therefore, the best way is to put the products closer to ...

In short video market, two major market leaders, Kuaishou and Douyin, have already reached 100-million user milestone in China. Douyin is growing drastically and catching up with Kuaishou in recent half year.   In my previous article, I have shared some thoughts about Douyin for marketers after attending its marketing conference in Shanghai. Douyin Reaches 100 Million Daily Video Views. 4 Tips for Marketing on #Douyin Penguin Intelligence (Tencent Research) just releases a comprehensive user study for Douyin and Kuaishou today   (in Chinese).  The research is conducted by interviewing 1080 Kuaishou users and 1104 Douyin users, while 630 users have both apps. This report is important for marketers to understand the short video battlefield and to help you evaluate more objectively, especially if you are going to use short video for your future content marketing. Here I’ve picked up the 10 most important findings that marketers should know: ...

If your business isn’t using content marketing, then you’re missing out one of the best ways to reach your target audience. In the previous post, we discussed about Why Is Content Marketing So Important? Here’s What It Needs ToBe .   Influencer marketing is the next level of content marketing . The trend has become so popular and in a survey , 84% of marketers said they would launch at least one influencer campaign within the next twelve months. AdWeek also emphasized the importance of influencer marketing by quoting: “For the visionary marketer, the rise of the social media influencer creates a world of possibilities. It opens up a new channel for brands to connect with consumers more directly, more organically, and at scale.” To put it simple, content marketing is the content your company creates and distributes to your audiences . Influencer marketing is driven largely by external social media persona .   You can boost your content marketing effo...