How to advertise your brand in China?

China is one the most appealing and dynamic emerging markets across the globe, perhaps also the most competitive one. However, opportunities come with challenges. As an ambitious western company that is looking for next drivers of growth, how can you miss the chance?

In this article, I will introduce some general but must-know facts and advice on how to advertise in China.

Understand the market and yourself

With the population of 1.3 billion and territory of 960 sq.km, this ancient country is in the process of modernization and urbanization, which makes great wealth and releases enormous energy. According to the JP Morgan, China’s aggregate consumption will rise from $4 trillion to $6 trillion over the next three years, an increase of the size of the German market. 1 

Meanwhile, the trend of middle-class is also an overwhelmingly urban phenomenon. Resilient from a frugal lifestyle of the last generation, the emerging middle-class people, especially in metros, have enormous purchasing power. Hence, more and more foreign brands pave their headways into the Chinese market for a bigger cake.

If you are one of them, make sure that you have a clear objective of your business before taking actions. The following list of questions is a reference for you to think about:  

1. What type of your business, B2B or B2C etc.? You mainly focus on online or the opposite?
2. What are the short-term and long-term goals respectively for business and communications, new product launch, competitor’s market share, boosting sales, etc; to enhance awareness, loyalty, government and media relationship, etc? 
3. Which market and clientele you mainly target? Nationwide or Regional, urban or rural, online or offline? The profile and insights of your target customers? If you don’t know precisely because you are not familiar with this new mainland, we will assist you to dig out relying on a bunch of local marketing and advertising experts.
4. What is your budget?

China’s media landscape

Chinese media landscape is one of the most special and complicates in the world. Not only because there is no access to Google, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube…as you may have heard, but also with richest media types and forms of operations.

First, most traditional media outlets: news agency, newspaper, TV, radio… are government Although they are scattered in different provinces, they are still stiffly controlled by the central bureau. However, commercials and advertisements are allowed but have to obey the strict written rules and intangible requirements. 

3 Internet Giants in Mainland China 

 Meanwhile, a large number of private media appear in recent 20 years, such as online search engine & portals: Baidu, Sina, NetEase, Tencent etc; nation-wide social media with thousands of millions of users: WeChat, Sina Weibo (like Twitter), etc; video platforms: Youku, iQIY, etc; online commerce: Taobao (Alibaba), JD, etc; and Toutiao App, NetEase News as news and information content platforms powered artificial intelligence technology. These platforms have very creative contents and active engagements, as well as various advertising products. In spite of private investors, they can still be demanded to adjust by the government. On Jan 1, Toutiao announced that it was closed temporally to transform the Social News into New Times, which focused on positive government news, so did NetEase News.   

Ogilvy Beijing released China Social Media Landscape in 2015. 

(Note: some may have changed by now)

On the other hand, well-known individual KOLs (Key Opinion Leader) and grassroots also emerged on WeChat and Weibo. With the development of Weibo (China’s Twitter) and WeChat (developed and launched by Tencent), a lot of individually registered users created attractive contents regularly and accumulated overwhelming influence either in particular fields or general areas. Benefiting from millions of followers, they start the cooperation with more brands. It is also considered to be an effective way for marketers.

How to promote a brand in China’s media?

After you know Chinese market, media as well as your objectives, you establish the confidence to create great success for your business. But be aware that a foreign company can still make some mistakes since the execution may be different from that of your home country. You may wonder why you can contact an editor directly in one magazine while being referred to the advertising department in another TV station. It is also confusing that a piece of invaluable news is not covered by the website you pitched, or you receive a tangible website link of the press but without any view. It will be frustrating if you do not have a professional agency or local experts to help you.

SEO & SEM: as the counterpart of Google in the globe, Baidu is the leading Chinese search engine in mainland China, where brands are mainly doing SEO & SEM. SEO is a marketing discipline focused on growing visibility in organic (non-paid) search engine results. If you have a website, you can still structure your website and manage keywords to make it more friendly to search engines. However, if you want to drive traffic to your business effectively, you can’t ignore Baidu Bidding Price Ranking which differs from Google AdWords in some way. Despite that it is capable of bidding for keywords on the platform, the calculation and final result are more price-determined than Google. For example, when you pre-pay a minimum RMB 5,000 and select several most relevant keywords as well as the main criteria, your webpage may still be shown in the following pages if these keywords are popular and your competitors set a higher price than yours. 

Baidu Bidding Price Ranking Platform

Advertising & Media Buy: it’s worth noting that in addition to traditional media outlets, more and more marketers spend their budget in social media advertising products, KOL and grassroots, such as Weibo ads, WeChat Moment ads and various editorials on individual pages. 

PR & Media Pitch: traditional media are used to charging for every advertising press release in the form of traffic allowance before. Usually, PR agencies have to prepare a complete press kit including a well-written press release for media. Recently, more and more international companies try to cease the payment and pitch the media with unique news angle, but the result is not guaranteed. That being said, media relationship is still vital.

Own media: currently, own media play a more and more important role in a company’s communications. If they are run creatively and professionally, they can be leveraged to generate remarkable voices rather than paid media. There are many successful precedents like Weibo account that has more than 2.5 million followers, and every post has above ten thousand engagements. WeChat Service account of China Merchants Bank is also a well-known corporate platform. Every top article can gain more than 100,000 views. (which is the maximum amount WeChat can display). Since so many brands lay emphasize own social media, it’s a keenly competitive area too.

 China Merchants Bank WeChat Account

Earned and free media: good content is the key to success, which is the immutable truth. Same as the fact that outstanding commercials in Super Bowl always get many earned media, websites and other media outlets in China will also republish from each other. If the brand is with a limited budget, you can also help you approach some free forums or websites at the same time.

News clipping and data monitoring: many online platforms already have the dashboard to monitor and measure the result after purchasing their advertisement. Furthermore, lots of agencies and different platforms are also able to do data mining and monitoring. Only that when you invest in different advertising forms on various platforms, you may need an agency to help you collect and integrate data, further to assess the result (CPT, ROI, etc.).

A successful case that can inspire 

In December 2017, a Japanese mobile game called 《旅かえる》(Travelling frog) was launched. Only in a month, the buzz of this game soared and ranked No 1 in Apple Stores in China. There are more than 10 million downloads at the end of January and 95% of them are from mainland China, which is out of expectation of the Japanese company. Another surprising fact is that this game even doesn’t have Chinese version. All the copies are initially in Japanese. 

of Baidu Buzz Index

So how does it happen? It reveals the incredible power of Chinese social media. Even though this game has no social-media element at all, the game design still triggers creative copywriting among Chinese players. Some players incline to forge creative contents to the frog and share them on WeChat Moment and Weibo, which arises the curiosity of more audiences. In some days, almost every friend is talking about this game on social media and that leads to your final decision, to download and have a try.  

Players created funny copies and posted on social media

Some tips that a foreign company should pay attention to

At the end of the article, I will share some of the tips for a western company to advertise in China.

Advertising legislation: if you want to advertise your brand on public media, you have to follow the Advertisement Law of the People's Republic of China (as amended on September 1, 2015). Many items obviously differ from western rules. For example, you can’t publish your brand or product as the “top” “the most” “the best” …

Data & privacy: the legislation of online data and privacy is still in the process. Therefore, you may find some are not as strict as developed countries. However, you still have to be careful about this. 

, government relationships: if you are a business owner who needs to build up strong relationships with local government, you’d better to partner with a local agency to assist you. For most western businessmen, it is very difficult to understand the government running and regulations, which are crucial to start a business locally.

Cooperation with individuals (grassroots, KOL, freelancer etc): marketers today tend to cooperate with KOLs, grassroots on social media, because sometimes it is a very cost-effective way. But a large number of frauds and counterfeiters exist there.

As an overseas entity: as an offshore entity, there are some limitations for you to advertise on several platforms or sign in a social media account.

If you are interested in any of the items, please feel free to contact me for more details.

Wendy Song