China's Digital Marketing Trends

In China’s market, digital trends are always changing as they tend to be in the western market. Yet they are also quite different from the trends we know in the western market. Foreign companies that aim at digital trends expanding into the global-leading Chinese market have to be knowledgeable about the market in China. It will be an obvious mistake to apply western strategies to the Chinese market.

This article is for marketers who want to learn more about digital marketing in China. You will find some latest trends in China’s digital marketing field.

WeChat: King of Mobile. WeChat is one of the must haves if you want to succeed in the marketing campaigns, because it really has a significant position in the mobile market. WeChat is on its way to become the most powerful app in the world. However, it is not easy for marketers to thoroughly understand and utilize this social media, as WeChat is not based on the exposure or influence to large audiences but more on the one-to-one personalized communication with users. The app is known to be what we call “social e-commerce platform”, which enhances social media and e-commerce via one single platform.

E-commerce is becoming m-commerce. While there are still concerns and different voices regarding the potential e-commerce space in China, a professional marketer must realize and understand what others may ignore. Nowadays, when it comes to e-commerce, m-commerce (mobile-commerce) is what most people are referring to.  Chinese spend an average of 50 hours a month to surf on mobile internet, much more than the time they spend on desktop. Thus e-commerce business operators should and must focus on smartphone users, because this trend will continue to dominate the market in the coming days.

O2O is more relevant than ever. Online to Offline (O2O) marketing has become quite relevant (and important) for business in China than ever. There are plenty of reasons behind that. Nearly every market has seen fierce competition. There are too many similar brands and products with features just like yours. Plus, people’s average attention span has decreased to 8 seconds, less than that of Goldfish’s; it means typical and traditional advertisement strategies are doomed to fail.

User experience is becoming more important. Because of the huge amounts of marketing campaigns, a business must focus on customer experience and it is a must to understand your customers’ needs and get them enjoy the experience. However, the point here is to be creative, meaning you need to engage your customers not only by sending them key messages but also by conveying brand’s self-expression to enhance individual participation. More and more brands are turning their consumers to designers or brand’s representatives.

KOL is playing a crucial role for business. Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) have always played an important role for business in China to reach new consumers, communicate with them and then convert them to buyers. Lately this method is adopted by more business, and the traditional advertisement methods are gradually abandoned by the marketers.

Multiple-screen integration. IPad, smartphone, computer, TV… Consumers are using multiple devices. Therefore, a good idea is to optimize all these devices in order to generate more traffic and engage with more consumers. But how? The key is not just to expose ads on all devices, more importantly, marketers should try to connect the advertising campaign with those devices. If the target consumers are pushed to use all the devices, they will probably be engaged in one of your advertisings, which is considered to be one of the most challenging aspects for the brands.