What Digital Marketers Need To Know About China

China is a country with rule of man, which is different from developing countries with rule of law as foundation of governance.

Rule of man will result in two problems, of which the first is management problem. Chinese enterprises are more autocratic than enterprises in developing countries. It is difficult to realise relatively equal and effective communication between superiors and subordinates, which leads to passive and blind execution of executors of indications of managers.

For example, manager requires to improve user amount under the circumstance without cost change, the executors may be forced to choose users with low cost while lack of practical value in order to increase user amount. Both parties fail to make effective communication. As KA manager, the problem must be deal with between the two. The second problem is relationship in Chinese characteristics. Chinese boss may not advertise due to your excellent effect. They focus more on relationship than products. They tend to choose reliable cooperators. As a result, you will see that Chinese are more willing to do business in restaurant rather than coffee bar for that they need more time to make contact, communication and understand the other party to establish such kind of relationship.

Chinese are willing to spend on solving rapidly problems due to their usual idea of fast food economy. However, foreign advertises pay more attention to cultivate teams to solve fundamentally problems, thus resulting in the Chinese advertisers are more rely on the agencies.

Second, Chinese advertisers prefer to require agencies and compare advantages and disadvantages of each agency to find the most favorable advertising agency to them and then squeeze the price.

The reason resulting in such situation is the various and complicated domestic advertising channels in China. There are Baidu Assistance, Tencent Assistance and Pea Assistance in App store. They have variaty of channels like Toutiao, Momo, Moji Weather and so on. Advertisers don’t usually establish a team to classify and purchase media all day, but find several advertising agencies to require them to write an advertising plan. Once the plan is passed, the budget will be distributed to advertising agencies.

When such thinking pattern moved to the advertisers who want to go global, advertisers will first choose agencies and compare price and then assign more power to agencies. Of course, I also see transfer of such situation in some large scaled advertises. They have gradually understood the importance of automatic control over marketing team.

However, as to some middle and small scaled companies, such circumstance exists commonly.

As to such situation, I tend to try to communicate with oversea agencies and transfer agency resources. Taking reseller as example, I will first differentiate the ability agencies, and choose the one who can assist advertisers to make optimising, thus improving the expenses of advertisers. It is the relationship with long time cooperation and friendship. We must observe organisation framework and executive ability of agencies during each period, thus satisfying advertisers and improving expenses.

In 2015 and 2016, Chinese advertisers emerged in oversea market. There were dark horses arising in game industry.

The income of such game reached billion level and became top Chinese SLG game among world list. Many Chinese advertisers find the SLG game and started plagiarise as soon as possible. We can find that in 2016, there were many similar games to SLG arising.

Finally, the directional CPI of SLG game is forced high. At this time, many advertisers inquire me how to solve CPI price problem. I will usually remind that besides SLG game, there are many outstanding games after providing them with professional suggestions about advertising.

For example, Family Farm Seaside Mobile of Funplus, it has steady profits for three years according to App Annie. Zenjoy’s Slots Game is still competitive in international market. The reason for the constant progress of these companies is that they find the battleground exclusive to them and became a new star of detailed field.

With constant optimisation of products, the harvest can be gained.

Some advertisers agree with me. Some advertisers tell me that he wants only to gain users in short time in order to face investors. At this time, I can judge which advertisers with development in the future and which advertisers don’t worth my time cultivating.

Above contents are some of my thoughts targeting at Chinese advertisers according to my experience. I think that Chinese middle and small scaled developers will gradually grow into the main force of advertising expense of FB all over the world within one year or two.

On the other hand, as to oversea development of Chinese advertisers, the next year is still in the growing stage.

Finally, I would like to share my observation about which game will will in the future when they go global.

Normally, I use three ways to verify which game or team will have more potential:

1. Product: Product quality means a lot. Whether they spend time and money on it, whether they have a quality producer for the product, whether the game is cloned by some other games, whether they have a long - term strategy to promote the product.
2. Whether the team willing to accept the external suggestions: This is extremely important because some advertisers have already had a great achievement, so that leads them has more confidence on making a decision. But I think sometimes a great leader are willing to listen the suggestions from the expert, and not just get into a dead end.
3. Investment Status: I lead a team before, so I know how important investment will lead the company win or lose. In different stage, the developer has different think. For example, Serious A many people are more likely to focus on the product itself, and the boss is more focus on keeping their founders stable. On Serious B, they’re more focus on expending the team and use part of the money to make a branding. On Serious C, which means they’ve already had some popularity but also needs to have the past expends one to keep their advantage.

The above contents are my observation about Chinese advertisers.

------

中国是一个“人治”国家，而不是如同发达国家一样以法治为立国之本，“人治”会导致两个问题。

一是管理问题，中国企业，一言堂的情况远高于发达国家的企业。上下级之间很能做到相对平等有效的沟通，这导致了执行者会被动或盲目的执行管理层的指示。例如，管理者要成本不变的情况下提升用户量，执行层可能被迫会为了用户量的增长去选择那些低成本易获得而没有实际价值的用户，双方不能达成有效沟通。

作为客户经理，就必须去占在他们中间解决这个问题。第二是中国特色的“关系”，中国的老板不会因为你的广告效果好就一定在你上面投广告，他们对“关系”的依赖要超过产品本身。他们会选择更信赖的“关系”合作方。所以你会看到中国人谈生意更多是在饭桌上而不是在咖啡厅，因为他们需要有更多的时间接触丶沟通丶了解对方来建立这种“关系”。

中国人因为有快餐经济的惯用思维，所以他们愿意花钱在迅速解决问题。而国外广告主更注重培养团队将问题的根本解决，导致中国人对于代理商的依赖程度比美国人更高。

中国的广告主很喜欢要求代理商做事，比较每一个代理商的优劣，来找出对自己最有利的广告商，在进行压低价格。

会造成这样的主因，其实是因为中国许多的国内渠道实在是太多太杂，在App Store端有腾讯的应用宝，百度手机助手，豌豆夹等流量。而在应用端有今日头条，陌陌，墨迹天气等各种大型渠道。广告主通常不会自己建一个团队来进行媒体分类并且采买，而是找到数个广告代理商，要求代理商们写出一个广告投放计画。一旦过关，就将预算下放至广告代理商。

而广告主这样的思考模式，沿用到了出海时，会首选代理商，比较价格，再将许多的权力放给代理商。

当然，这个情况在一些大型广告主身上我看到了转变，他们已经渐渐地理解了自主控制Marketing团队的重要性。不过对于一些中小型的公司，这个情况还是非常普遍的存在。

对应这样的情况，我往往会尝试与出海代理商进行沟通，并且将代理的资源转为己用。以Reseller的例子而言，我会先分辨哪一家代理商的能力比较强，可以真正协助广告主来进行广告优化，并且达到提升广告主花费的目的。这是一个长期的合作与保持友谊的关系，我们必须要不断地观察每一个时期代理商的组织架构与执行能力，才可能把广告主的服务的满意，并且花费提升。

2015.16年是中国广告主出海爆发的一年，其中游戏行业出现了一批批黑马。某些单款游戏的收入可以到达亿万级别，并且成为来全球所有国家榜上前列的中国SLG游戏。

许多中国广告主发现了有一个SLG的游戏，就开始尽快的学习。我们可以发现16年时出现很多类似的SLG游戏，到最后将SLG的游戏定向CPI堆得非常高。

这个时候，许多广告主询问我应该要如何解决这个CPI的价格问题，通常在我给出他一些关于广告投放的专业建议后，我会善意的提醒他们其实除了SLG款游戏外，还有其他很多的游戏可以做。像是Funplus的Family Farm Seaside Mobile，三年多来一直都是非常的稳定并且盈利；像Zenjoy的Slots Game，两年来在国际上依然是非常有竞争力。这些公司之所以持续不断的进步，原因就是他们找到了专属于自己的战场，成为细分领域中的一颗新星，并且不断地优化产品，才会有直到今天比较丰硕的成果。

有些广告主十分同意我的观点，有些广告主隐喻的告诉我他只想在短期内获取用户来面对投资人，这时候我就可以用来判别哪一些广告主在未来有他的发展性，哪一些广告主可能不值得我花费时间进行培养。

对于中国广告主出海而言，接下来这一年应该还是属于成长阶段。中国政府不断的针对app开发者提高监管，将会很大层面上抑制了中国app开发者的创意创新能力。而中国一些比较有远见与思考力的菁英们，将会把自己的产品着眼于海外，尝试在比较自由的国家发展出另外一片属于自己的蓝海。中国开发者的变现能力，已经从工具上得到了印证，例如猎豹的Clean Master，阿里巴巴的Ali Epress，Kika的Emoji，都已经站在了全球的舞台，而游戏这一个领域，在2016年的资本稍作沉淀之后，未来会逐渐出现精品化的趋势，类似阴阳师，Family Farm等精品游戏将会逐渐增多，成为国际广告市场上一个很大的广告预算提供方。

以上是我对于中国广告主的观察。