Last updated on March 13, 2018, 9:03 AM

What do you need to know to do digital marketing in China?

Technological developments in China are progressing at rapid pace. Described as “copycats” a few years ago, Chinese tech companies have been overtaking their Western competitors in terms of innovation leadership and technological advances for some time now.

Things are also happening quickly on the Internet. A platform called WeChat has particularly stood out in the social media sector. Due to the state-imposed isolation of Chinese society from many large Internet platforms in the Western world (Facebook, Google, YouTube, …), interesting counter-proposals have developed, some of which have already far surpassed the large Western models.

Chinese firewall

In the beginning, a lot was copied from the big role models like Facebook, but in recent years things have practically gone the other way and Facebook is copying back many functions that WeChat has already established for years.

But who are currently China’s big players on the Internet and how does digital marketing work in China?

To get a quick overview, here are the largest digital platforms in China at the moment:

With WeChat, it should perhaps also be mentioned that this super app also covers many of Facebook’s functions, but basically started with the pure messenger approach. Now often referred to as “Facebook on steroids” :)

WeChat = Whatsapp+Facebook. As a travel platform, CTrip = booking.com / Expedia etc. has stood out very much from the rest. And Pinterest and Instagram clones are also growing rapidly. It’s also interesting to know that since November 2016, the Twitter counterpart Weibo has already overtaken the original in terms of market value.

QQ**** also from Tencent (WeChat) should not be completely ignored, but intended as a more pure instant messenger, there is less functionality here than with WeChat.

WeChat is the undisputed leader

I don’t want to bore you with number crunching, but a few numbers have to be mentioned.

Find more statistics at Statista

Since the start in 2011, there has been incredible growth, which also reflects the Internet development in China very well. As of Q3 2016, WeChat already had 846 million active users per month (who were active at least 1 per month). Around 500-600 million users use the WeChat app every day. And now comes the kicker: At the beginning of 2016, 200 million of these users also used WeChat as a payment solution (source: http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/wechat-statistics/) and 300,000 “offline” shops and department stores enable payment via WeChat “in real life”.

WeChat is also referred to as a super app by many analysts because it combines all useful functionalities in one app, almost like an operating system. Facebook is still far behind in terms of bandwidth (and sometimes usability).

More on the direct comparison of Facebook vs. WeChat in an article in the near future here on freshestweb.com (So as not to miss anything, I recommend subscribing to the newsletter :)

[btnsx id=”817″]

China’s largest tech companies compared to Facebook (Source: statista)

To shed some more light on this: QQ is basically the Twitter equivalent in China and, like WeChat (Weixin in Chinese), also belongs to the Tencent company. From a global perspective, Facebook is of course still ahead, but it is important to keep in mind how quickly WeChat has grown and the unimaginable market power it has in China.

Source: Digital Jungle Blog

Which platforms should you rely on in China now?

In addition to WeChat, the Youku (YouTube clone) platform is particularly suitable for tourism. Weibo is also an important platform for generating attention. Weibo can mainly be seen as a replacement for Twitter.

To put it simply, you can say that a WeChat account can serve as a hub and content source. You use Weibo to generate additional traffic that you direct to your WeChat account, and you host your videos on Youku, which you can integrate into WeChat or link to the videos from WeChat and Weibo. More about the WeChat account types in a later blog post.

A website doesn’t do any harm as a digital business card, but here you don’t need to put quite as much into it as in the western world, as these are usually only briefly visited as “proof” as to whether the company really exists. For SEO measures, a website is also a good thing in China.

Who should care about all this anyway?

Mainly tourism companies and organizations. Chinese outbound tourism is also growing rapidly with the rise of the middle class in Montenegro and Chinese tourists are also flocking to Austria. Here I recommend a very good summary of the Chinese Guest from Austria Advertising - which can be ordered free of charge as a print brochure here.

The younger the user, the more Internet-savvy they are and, even in Europe, they always have their own mobile Internet hotspot. This is where having your own WeChat account pays off and triggers astonished looks and extreme joy from Chinese guests due to their unexpected willingness to provide valuable information on “their” platform in their own language. Chinese guests are also absolute bargain hunters and are extremely happy about special deals. This means you can achieve a nice aha or “wow” effect with your Chinese guests and build strong customer loyalty.

But even big brands shouldn’t miss this train and keep an eye on WeChat. The luxury segment in particular had a good nose for this early on, because Louis Vuitton and other luxury brands had [big headlines about sales records in China] years ago (http://www.focus.de/finanzen/news/unternehmen/luxusgueter-china-beschert-lvmh-einen-rekordgewinn_aid_596875.html).

There will also be more blog posts about this in the near future, such as: “Digital Marketing for Tourism Companies in China”

So stay tuned :) -> so it’s best to simply register for the newsletter.

TL;DR (too long, didn’t read) – Summary Digital Marketing in China

Google, Facebook and YouTube do not work in China.

WeChat is the absolute top dog of social media platforms in China. And WeChat has overtaken Facebook for several years in terms of functionality and the intensity of how much users use it.

However, with platforms like Youku (Chinese YouTube), WeChat (Chinese Facebook+Whatsapp) and Weibo (Chinese Twitter) you can build a very good digital marketing concept and reach an immense number of Chinese users and also achieve a wow effect among Chinese guests in Austria. This blog post serves as an easy introduction to the topic and in the next few weeks and months we will go further in depth about digital online marketing opportunities in China.

And how can I implement the whole thing now - > just ask freshestweb :-)

[btnsx id=”875″]

We would be very happy about a review of the blog post :)

[RICH_REVIEWS_SNIPPET]

[RICH_REVIEWS_FORM]