The 5 Common Marketing Pitfalls for Foreign B2B Companies in China

Marketing for B2B companies in China is no easy feat, even for internationally renowned brands. The vast differences in the domestic and international marketing environments and cultures make it essential for companies entering or preparing to enter the Chinese market to be vigilant.

So, what should foreign B2B companies pay special attention to before launching their marketing plans in China? How can they stand out in a highly competitive market where all companies share similar goals? And how can they genuinely engage with local customers while maintaining their foreign brand identity?

Considering these questions, let's discuss the common marketing pitfalls that international B2B companies may encounter in the Chinese market and how to avoid them.

? Treating the Official Website as the Main Marketing Platform

Many businesses initially planning to enter the Chinese market follow traditional foreign marketing strategies by adding a Chinese version to their website. However, this approach is often ineffective due to a critical reason: not hosting servers within China. This affects website loading speed, subsequently impacting SEO, making it challenging for the brand's official website to appear in search results.

Additionally, blogs on official websites perform poorly in Baidu (百度) SEO. Chinese search engines prioritize high-authority platforms, media websites, and proprietary products (such as Baike百科/知道Zhidao), but there's a workaround: using "Zhihu (知乎)" to assist with SEO. You can synchronize WeChat articles and website blogs on Zhihu. Because of Zhihu's high authority, your content becomes more likely to rank. Insert your official website/form CTA into Zhihu articles for conversions.

In the Chinese marketing landscape, users prefer mobile communication. According to an Accenture study, Chinese B2B customers exhibit a socialized buying behavior, with 88% of B2B transactions starting online and 75% of customers using social media for product research.

Chinese users have weaker website usage habits, so brands can invest more effort in mobile platforms like WeChat Official Accounts (微信公众号), Douyin (抖音), and Little Red Book (小红书), turning mobile platforms into the "official websites" for customer service.

? Relying Solely on Forms for Lead Generation

Some companies exclusively use forms for lead generation, suitable for scenarios like downloading reports, event registration, or surveys. However, in the Chinese market, expecting customers to submit a form and then wait for communication significantly reduces sales efficiency and may result in customers forgetting their form submissions. Solutions such as using Enterprise WeChat (企业微信) for instant communication can leave a positive impression on customers.

Enterprise WeChat also offers various powerful features, including quick replies, file sharing, and automated responses.

? Using English Blogs for Content Marketing

This is a fundamental mistake often made by foreign companies, including using English in their WeChat public account introductions and menus.

A more common issue is directly translating English blogs from the official website and publishing them on WeChat without considering sentence flow, logical structure, and formatting. This makes it difficult for readers to engage with the content and leaves a negative impression on the brand.

In such cases, having a native Chinese speaker is crucial. Many examples demonstrate that poor translations can have disastrous consequences for a company's reputation. Chinese is a highly contextual language, making it challenging for translation software to accurately convey its meaning.

? Nurturing Leads Through Email Marketing

Many MarTech and CRM companies in Europe and the United States initially originated from EDM marketing. Salesforce's earliest sales automation, SFA, also stemmed from website marketing and EDM marketing user behavior tracking. However, nurturing leads through email marketing is challenging in China.

In China, once you collect emails, most of them are personal emails such as "qq.com" and "163.com," with very few people actively providing their work emails. This results in emails sent to Chinese audiences having minimal chances of being opened.

The correct approach for B2B companies to nurture leads in China is to continually deliver content through social means, potentially even turning their Sales teams into Key Opinion Customers (KOCs). Sharing industry insights and opinions not only effectively reaches users but also builds trust.

? Manually Uploading Leads to the Headquarters' CRM

The diversity of marketing methods in the Chinese market presents challenges for companies engaging in omnichannel operations, including their websites, WeChat, TikTok, events, emails, Baidu SEM, and more. This means that lead acquisition becomes more dispersed. International companies often have unified CRM systems and sales teams need to manually transfer this diverse lead information.

Using HubSpot as an example, many international customers already use HubSpot, but it may not integrate well with various Chinese apps/platforms. This leads to sales teams manually uploading leads, which can result in errors, omissions, and the inability to capture user interaction tracks.

The solution is to use methods and strategies to integrate the WeChat ecosystem with HubSpot, possibly by using third-party tools to synchronize customer information to HubSpot with a single click. Through tagging systems, all user interaction behaviors can also be synchronized, making it easier for Sales to follow up and convert leads.

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