How to Attract Audience by Mobile Marketing in China

In China, this new trend is known as “Internet Plus”, in contrast with traditional industries and directly affected by newly developed business models, including mobile marketing. According to a CNNIC Statistical Survey on Internet Development in China, by December 2016, China had 731 million internet users, and 695 million of them were mobile internet users. This accounts for a staggering 95.1% of the total internet users.

Moreover, new data from eMarketer shows that mobile ad spend in China will increase significantly over the next five years. The analysis predicts that by 2021 nearly 82 percent of digital ad spending will be dedicated to mobile. According to the data, investment in mobile marketing in China is mostly contributed by three major players: Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent. Together, these three companies accounted for almost 72 percent of all mobile ad spend in China this year.

Below are some of the ways to reach your audience by mobile marketing in China:

1.     Reach out to new customers via social media

These days almost everyone has a social network app installed in their mobile device in China. You could attract new customers by feeding brand-related content on social networks like WeChat and Sina Weibo. Social media platforms give you an opportunity to raise your brand awareness and ultimately to boost sales. Therefore, it is rewarding to invest in mobile ads on social networks in China because you can reach out to more audience.

2.     Start a mobile loyalty program

You could look into loyalty programs that offer a mobile app for your customers so that they can store your loyalty information, rewards, etc. on their smartphones instead of stuffing their wallets with more cards. Beyond the convenience for customers, these programs collect user data that allows you to personalize your marketing to loyalty program members. In this way, it also enables easier mobile marketing outreach.

3.     Make use of newsletters

The use of newsletters is a great strategy for communicating with both old and potential customers in China. Since emails can be read from mobile devices, we can conclude that newsletters are as effective as other mobile marketing ways. Emails containing news, special offer and discounts can be sent to customers. In your designing of the newsletter, you’d better incorporate short and appealing texts accompanied with eye-catchy images. You content should also be optimized to adapt to different size screens .

4.     Send printable coupons

Sometimes recipients don’t response immediately about your offers on mobile end, they may print out coupons to use later. So you need to make sure coupons sent via email are also printable.

5.     Place geo-targeted mobile ads

Geo-location marketing uses GPS location data uploaded from customers’ smartphones to target them when they enter a specific area. You’ll probably get higher click-through rates for your mobile display ads by using geo-targeting. It can be surprisingly twice as high as those mobile display ads that don’t use the function.