Attaining High ROI Through Internet Marketing in China
- Culture Fish Media
In China, internet marketing provides a high ROI relative to the United States because Chinese consumers are less ad weary than their Western counterparts. Internet word of mouth (“IWOM”) has proven itself to be a potent force in China, thereby providing the opportunity for internet marketing campaigns to “go viral” (be shared throughout the internet by large numbers of users in a short period of time). Pay per click (“PPC”) advertising is also a highly attractive means of reaching consumers in China. At a minimum, foreign companies selling in China should have at least a basic search engine marketing (“SEM”) program, which usually does not need to cost much money.
There are three commonly used ways to foster IWOM awareness of your product or service: Discussion boards, blogs, and videos. The goals with IWOM are to 1) make people aware of your offering, and 2) to encourage them to share that information with their internet networks. When a particular way of delivering information and / or the underlying offering strike a chord, it can go viral on the Chinese internet, often translating into sales.
Your marketing people can look to create discussion threads of your product or service on various bulletin boards. However, it is generally considered bad form to pose as unaffiliated board users and manipulate discussions – rather, the threads should be transparent conversations with the board users. It can also be effective to buy ads on discussion boards that relate to your product / service.
Chinese internet users are frequent visitors to blogs. There is an elite group of bloggers in China who have a wide following. Having A-list bloggers discuss your offering means that there is a good chance that knowledge of your offering can go viral.
Online videos posted on popular Chinese video sites like Tudou, Youku, and 56.com may already be more popular than those on YouTube. Our observation is that many foreign companies posting online videos for the Chinese market produce footage that is too serious. The Chinese appreciate humor and love to share funny videos with one another over the internet. In particular, the Chinese are big fans of slapstick humor. Mr. Bean is one of the more popular foreign pop culture figures in China.
In the pay per click (“PPC”) advertising space, click through rates are approximately 25% greater than in the U.S. Moreover, the cost of each click to the advertiser is lower using Baidu, which is China’s leading search engine, than it is when advertising through Google. These two factors increase the probability of running a successful PPC campaign. Of course, it takes skill and understanding to design a proper PPC advertising campaign in China.
Search engine marketing (“SEM”) is a critical piece of any internet marketing campaign. Experts in SEM are highly sought after in the English speaking world. In China, the skill set required to effectively optimize websites and implement search engine marketing is even more demanding. Baidu and other Chinese search engines give preference to websites with Chinese language. It is crucial to properly use Chinese keywords. However, there can be a number of regional variations in the way that certain topics are commonly written, thus creating a need to use keywords that have relevance in several regions of China.
Culture Fish Media is a China-based Search Engine Marketing company started by Lonnie Hodge. The company aims to use local knowledge to help brands market and manage reputation at a local level in China. For more information, go to our website at www.culturefishmedia.com.
