Your Weekly China Roundup

Growing Significance of Private Traffic

In China, a growing number of industries are incorporating private traffic into their digital strategy. Meituan, a food delivery app similar to Uber that has 450 MAUs, is one of them. Bonus fandom groups, where businesses may communicate directly with customers, are the newest additions to Meituan. Customers can find group access directly from the shop’s main page & u users are encouraged to join such organisations by CTAs implying that they will receive further coupons and offers.

At the same time, groups give users a place to express their comments and merchants a place to change their products. Meituan just implemented a new social feature: customers can now share their restaurant orders with their friends to enhance company awareness.

 

Link: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/btw5G7GQvwOyNqgQQGbn3w 

 

Bilibili and Luxury Brands?

Bilibili, which began as an anime and comics platform, has evolved into a crucial platform for Chinese Gen Z, focused primarily on mid and long videos, and is currently China’s third largest video platform.

Beauty brands such as Shiseido and Lancome have already begun to experiment with Bilibli in order to reach Gen Z, but will luxury brands follow suit?

Bilibili is still relatively unproven in the luxury market, having only attracted a few early adopters such as Dior, Fendi, and Gucci to yet. The major disadvantage is the average age of a Bilbili user, which is still quite young. Bilibili has been actively pushing its e-commerce capabilities to its more than 62.7 million DAUs over the last two years.

Link: https://jingdaily.com/will-a-red-hot-bilibili-become-irresistible-to-luxury-brands-in-2022/?utm_source=CCI&utm_campaign=bca9179477-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_03_12_06_39_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f85454f2c4-bca9179477-408382229 

 

Why Chinese Brands’ Strategies are Important to Brands Everywhere


Chinese businesses differ structurally from those in other countries in that they place a greater emphasis on revenue growth and customer acquisition rather than profit, as most western brands do. As a result, they devote a considerably higher portion of their revenue to marketing and concentrate on hot platforms and key opinion leaders.

Since China has become the world’s factory, Chinese brands can swiftly imitate and improve what is being produced. Because most Chinese businesses do not have heritage brands to protect, they are less risk-averse than established western companies and are willing to attempt a lot more things. This lean startup, come-as-you-are strategy has now been embedded in the DNA of many Chinese brands. Everyone who has grown up in China has only experienced constant change, which has made them extremely adaptive and quick-thinking, especially in business.

Understanding how Chinese competitors operate is critical for brands in China. However, with Chinese businesses like SHEIN becoming more likely to compete in western markets, marketers and strategists working in other nations, including their own local markets, must understand how they operate.

 

Link: https://www.chinaskinny.com/blog/chinese-brand-strategies-to-watch/

 

AMX X Ayayi – the first Metahuman in China

AMX, a yogurt company, teamed up with Ayayi, the first Chinese Metahuman, to produce a digital yogurt based on user data. This digital yogurt is comparable to NFT, a one-of-a-kind cryptocurrency token that serves as a digital asset representation.

AMX gained more scientific and technological features as a result of this collaboration, which set it apart from the competition. AMX will use Xiaohongshu and Weibo to promote the idea that “Yogurt brands may also be popular and fashionable” in order to raise the brand’s visibility. AMX wishes to usher the company into the digital era.

On September 8th, Ayayi started working for Alibaba as the proprietor of Tmall Super Brand. She had her own ID card and launched the first NFT digital mooncake for the Mid-Autumn Festival.

 

Link: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/TuX2Tv6d8sgReFQw2bRIfQ 

How To Leverage Douyin For Advertising

Douyin has a massive influence among Chinese people, both young and adults alike, and a lot of brands have started to make appearances on the platform as well. It only makes sense to take a closer look on how they are leveraging a social media app for their promotion.

💹 Douyin (China’s TikTok) Statistics 2022 [UPDATED!]

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Breaking Down WeChat Advertising For Luxury Brands

WeChat has completely redefined luxury brand marketing in Mainland China ever since Dior posted its first WeChat Moments ad on the platform. After that, WeChat was quite readily embraced by many international brands who wanted to tap into the Chinese fashion community.

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How To Promote Your Account On WeChat

WeChat is more than just an instant messaging app. It has become a lifestyle for people living in Mainland China. It functions as a chat app, a marketplace, a dynamic marketing tool and much more. The number of monthly active WeChat users is over 1 Billion as of 2019, and around 80% of them are between the ages of 20 to 40. Its holistic ecosystem, with tools that enable companies to do everything from realization to conversion, makes it very convenient for brands and users to interact with each other. This opens up a lot of avenues for executing effective promotions and campaigns.

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WeChat Trends In 2020

2020: A Big Year For WeChat

WeChat is one of the biggest and most important platforms in the digital marketing game. For both freshers and professionals alike, WeChat brings a lot of opportunities for brand growth, community interaction and business development. So keeping up with the latest trends in the market become second nature to anyone who wants to leverage these opportunities.

Without wasting any more time, let’s dive into the treasure trove of WeChat trends that can be expected out of 2020.

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With great events come great opportunities

Events such as the FIFA World Cup are important for companies as it is a way to increase their brand equity… And because a lot of the World Cup’s viewership will come from mobile, brands that are mobile-driven (food delivery apps, e-commerce apps, parts supply apps, and biking/ride-sharing applications) have special opportunities during this event.

 

REMEMBER

Back in 2010, web traffic rose by about 35% and the use of mobile data bandwidth (4G) went up by 24% during the World Cup matches. With the evolution of social media and the advent of platforms such as WeChat in China, the event is expected to reach as many as 3.2 billion users worldwide.

Although leveraging events for a marketing campaign can be a killer tool to raise brand awareness, it is essential to follow some rules to make the best of it.

 

BE USEFUL AND ENTERTAINING

 

The key to standing out in today’s marketing world is by creating unique and entertaining content.

Indeed, Social Media are more than simple chat rooms, they provide any kind of information and more. 


CREDIT : KRDS for CANAL+


Interactive platforms can provide a real experience for the users. The H5 functionalities of the N1 APP in China, WeChat, is a preferred tool for digital marketers. Also this is very easy to share. (We will come back to that point later)

Besides that, with such a big audience base, it is essential to choose your audience according to their preferences, in order to provide them with their favorite content, eventually time zones, location and sex. 

 

CREATE SHAREABLE CONTENT

 

The best way to create effective content is to choose the right format and the right channel. Therefore it is good to have a multitude of cross-media campaigns that can be completely personalized for the brand.


CREDIT : KRDS for Groz-Beckert (vote for your favourite team and try to win an Apple Watch!) 


Keeping branding to a MINIMUM will let user share the content in a more natural way. In fact, content that has minimal branding is more likely to go viral. So whether it is the content you produce or from your company’s website, we recommend to not let the digital content have a  ”corporate” feel to it. 

A good example is when we have worked with Groz-Beckert. We tried to provide users with an interesting platform that they can enjoy and share.

 

STAY SAFE

 

The FIFA has specific regulations regarding their brands and logos, so, as frustrating as it may be, you must comply with the regulations (unless you are an official sponsor). From a commercial viewpoint, you cannot use terms such as Russia 2018, World Cup, FIFA etc.


CREDIT : KRDS for FFF (see more)


Hashtags (Weibo)

Also it is better not to use the official hashtag #Russia2018# or #WorldCup#* etc. In fact each game played during the cup is likely to have its own unofficial hashtag (like #USAvsPOR). That will be a good way to stay on top of the action. The same thing applies on Weibo.

 

*The double Hashtag is used on Weibo

With all these tips what will be your next campaign ? Let us know in the comments !

How brands can leverage WeChat Index to measure their popularity on WeChat ?

Apart from brands having their own official WeChat accounts (which provides them with direct feedback from their consumers), the application has recently released a new feature called “WeChat Index” (微信指数) – to access this tool, simply type the previous Chinese keywords in the WeChat search bar.

 

WeChat Index is a trend projector showing the popularity of a brand upon searching the relevant keywords on the tool. The tool enables the brand to identify and understand their performance, once entering the keyword on to the tool the number of times the keyword mentioned in any of the articles within the app for the last 7, 30 or 90 days hits the screen in a trend graph.

 

The service is based out to be on big data analysis and mobile indexing, where it understands user behaviour patterns and other data aspects and characteristics to project the brand’s popularity and performance among the 898 million WeChat users in turn helping the brand to build and evolve with real time feedback from its consumers.

 

With WeChat Index as a listening tool, the app also had various ways of marketing for brand such as content promotion through articles on product reviews and information, advertising via moments and account ads. Linking the brand’s online website portal to their official account along with strategic partnership emphasizing the use of WeChat wallet are other ways of marketing on WeChat.

 

WeChat is much more just another instant messaging app, it has replaced the wallet for users in China. With the recent report by Tencent projecting 93% adoption rate to using WeChat Pay (in cities) majority of them reasoning it as to not carrying cash at the time of purchase. Addressing the change in consumer behaviour, WeChat enables their users to book hotels and restaurants, buy movie tickets and handle all viable transactions through the app. A clear shift or transition towards a cashless society is being welcomed by the country.