If things go right, China will be in post-pandemic time and online marketing will be more important than ever. Chinese rely heavily on social media, such as early day Weibo(微博), Wechat(微信) and nowadays Little Red Book(小紅書), TikTok(抖音) and Kwai(快手) etc. The Research Department of Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) posted an interview on 15th Sep about Laurel Huang, the founder of Social Seeding Technology (Shenzhen) Ltd., a profession of social media marketing strategy for brands.1 BizMagnet BUD consultant thought it useful for people planning to run businesses in China, especially to select marketing services. The article will brief the interview and introduce the Mainland Programme of the BUD Fund.
Update: Webinar: How to choose online marketing channel in mainland China
Social media dominates promotion and sales
In the interview, Laurel pointed out that the features of Chinese social media are massive user amount, speedy spread and strong seeding effect (“Seeding effect” means the growth of buying desire after product showing among netizens). The Generation Y and Z (Young people born after 1985) don’t watch television anymore today and mainly get information from social media. From awareness, interest, desire to action, all things take place on social media. Whatever it is Weibo, Wechat, Little Red Book, TikTok etc. Every time when there is a new platform coming out, it signals a technological advancement. In order to build brands in China, we must know how to promote and sell on social media.
Marketing subsidy: Common items in BUD Fund Projects
Big data helps the integration of branding and conversion
In the past, we had to set a goal for a social media business page, such as brand exposure or sales conversion. However, nowadays online strategy integrates brand reach and sales. New generation marketing companies collect social media big data for natural language processing. The goal is to discover the relation between keywords, consumer emotion, effectiveness of KOL (key opinion leader) etc to achieve the best combination. This is a continual feedback process, and the interaction with the market will keep correcting the strategy to enhance exposure and conversion.
Segmented marketing
The traditional promotion channels, such as television advertisement, outdoor broad etc, demand a very high budget with single measurement. Digital marketing is totally different, that we can start at a small budget. And the performance measurement is multi-dimensional which we can have a lot of variation. For example, for the same industry and the same audience, if the company scale or positioning is different, we will conclude a very different marketing strategy. Under the segmentation, marketers should be flexible to adapt the new environment. The interviewee describes marketing today as “adaptive”. A big budget campaign on one single item doesn’t work now, the marketer has to consider the cost-effectiveness by testing the market first.
Know more: BUD Fund Disbursement
BUD Fund application for China internal circulation
As Hong Kong epidemic fades out, the China-HK border is about to re-open. As the same time, due to the change of global political and economic environment, the Chinese government targets to develop the internal circulation of China economy. It is a good time to plan the marketing in mainland China. The BUD Fund subsidizes Hong Kong companies 50% of the cost for branding, upgrade, transform and domestic sales. The cumulative maximum amount of grant of Mainland Programme is HK$ 4,000,000. All the above items is supported by the BUD Fund. Welcome to find BizMagnet BUD Consultant to know more about BUD Fund application.
- Alice Tsang, New Marketing Strategies in China: Big Data’s Social Media Sales Boost (HKTDC 2020), https://research.hktdc.com/en/article/NTM0OTYwOTMx