This is a complete guide to Online Marketing in China (2020)
In this complete guide you will learn:
- How to penetrate the Chinese market
- How COVID-19 has impacted the online behavior in the first quarter of 2020 in China
- Where to focus your China online marketing efforts
- The total number of internet users in China
- How much and where Chinese spend their time online
- The most used apps in China
- China’s total internet revenue
- Lots more
So if you want to get the most out of your China online marketing in 2020 this guide is for you.
Let’s jump right in!
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Statistics quick-links
This is a large article so we have listed the quick links to the following statistics here for you:
China Mobile Payment Market Share 2019 Q3
China online shopping growth 2020
China leading B2C e-commerce sales market share 2019
China Internet Economy Revenue Structure 2020
China Internet Economy Revenue Sources 2020
China online advertising market 2020
China search engine growth 2020
Top Chinese Search Engines 2020 Q1 (All Media)
China Top social media users 2020
China Mobile Internet Users 2020
China online video users growth 2020
China online shopping market 2020
China Top 20 Mobile Apps by MAU 2020
China Top internet application categories 2020
China internet access by devices 2020
China avg weekly time spent online 2020
China Number of Internet Users 2020
China now has 903 million internet users which is the highest number of internet users of the world (4.33 billion total). This is data according to a report from the state-run network CNNIC. 99.3% of the Chinese internet users go online with their mobile devices, while 46% still uses desktop, 36% through the laptop and 28% tablet.
Rural netizens: 255 million (28.2%)
Urban netizens: 648 million (71.8%)
Since the start of the pandemic, live streaming, online education and mobile payment apps have seen user numbers soar.
Average time spent online also increased by 3.2 hours compared to 2018 to a total weekly average of 30.8 hours as of March 2020.
Chapter 1
What is the Great Firewall of China?
The Great Chinese firewall
China has been very effective in protecting their internet from Western influence. They essentially have their own version of the internet that they can control. In this list, you’ll find the Chinese internet companies that matter to your China online marketing campaign.
Which websites are blocked in China?
There are too many to name here but from this list, the following websites and apps are blocked: Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Whatsapp, Youtube, and Quora
Which Chinese websites or apps are blocked in the US?
Only TikTok and WeChat will possibly be blocked
It is important to note that most of these companies exist because of the Great Chinese firewall.
How does the Great Firewall of China work?
There are 3 state-owned internet providers in China: China Unicom, China Telecom, and China Mobile.
These 3 companies have the internet delivered as followed:
- URL filtering. China has a database of blocked websites, so if your website is on that list, it will be inaccessible from Mainland China.
- DNS Poisoning. This means the Great Chinese firewall can block IP addresses.
- Self-Censorship. All websites hosted in China have applied for a so-called ICP license. Content will be checked regularly and the ICP license can be revoked when breaking the rules.
- Example of a penalty: one of our clients had content on their website like: we have ‘the best product’ and ‘we are the most renowned company’. The ICP license applicant got called into the Shanghai internet regulation office and got an official warning since they can’t claim they are ‘the best’. So we had to change the content and say we will never do it again, or face more severe penalties.
- AI and a team of civilian workers are constantly browsing the internet for ‘harmful’ content
Chapter 2
How to Sell in China
Establishing your brand in China
- Market research – Are the Chinese consumers willing to buy your product or service?
- Competitive analysis – Learn from your competitors. How and where do they sell?
- Set KPI’s – Set your short term and long term goals
- Create online presence – A China-ready website and a social media strategy
- Online marketing – Organic and/or Paid advertising
How to sell your product through Cross-border e-commerce in China?
There are multiple ways you can sell your brand in China. Here you will find the most common ways for selling a product cross-border:
- A website with a cross-border payment provider
- Baidu SEO
- Baidu PPC Advertising
- WeChat shop with a cross-border payment provider
- KOL Marketing
- WeChat Guest Posts
- Market places with cross-border payment option
- Tmall only accepts well-known brands with +-100 million dollars in revenue per year
- JingDong (JD.com). Is cheaper than Tmall and accepts medium-sized businesses as well
China cross-border payment methods
Assuming you don’t have a Chinese business with a Chinese bank account registered, you will need a PSP (Payment Service Provider) to help you with the cross-border transactions.
A few key things to note when using a PSP that supports China cross-border payments:
- You’ll be able to receive money from Mainland China into your overseas bank account
- Your PSP will charge around 2% to 3% for each transaction
- Make sure your PSP has good customer and tech support (Regulations change all the time!)
The most common payment methods in China are:
Alipay
This video from August-2020 by the Wall Street Journal explains the importance of Alipay quite nicely:
WeChat pay
Very well integrated into the WeChat app and is a must-have when setting up a WeChat shop.
Union Pay
Rarely used, however when Alipay and WeChat pay services are down because of some new regulation change, Union Pay bank payment is good to have as a temporary alternative.
China Mobile Payment Market Share 2019 Q3
- Alipay 54.5%
- Tenpay (WeChat pay) 39.5%
- Yi wallet (Ping An bank) 1.5%
- Others 4.5%
Alipay vs WeChat pay
- Tmall and Taobao only support Alipay as a payment option
- WeChat pay is connected to the WeChat app. With most of the Chinese internet users having WeChat installed on their phone and is therefore one of the most favorite payment options
- WeChat’s support for Tmall and Taobao is poor. It’s not possible to do an Alipay payment through the WeChat browser
- Fees are almost equally low and therefor both remain a favorite
*If your cross-border website requires a Chinese payment method. Alipay will be the best choice.
*If your cross-border WeChat Shop requires a Chinese payment method. WeChat pay should be used since the WeChat browser does not support Alipay checkout.
China online shopping growth 2020
Before COVID-19 we have already seen a steep year on year growth in the number of people shopping online in China. However, that number has increased significantly since the start of 2020 to 710 million users.
670 million use the Taobao app to do their online shopping. Taobao is part of the Alibaba group and is the biggest online marketplace in China. Tmall is also integrated into this app. Taobao is connected to the Alipay payment provider.
Alipay and WeChat pay are the most common payment providers for Chinese to do their online shopping.
How to set up your China cross-border e-commerce
Cross-border basically means:
- Your product is shipped from outside China (like a Hong Kong fulfillment center)
- You are using a cross-border payment provider. This means that the Chinese buyer can purchase your product through WeChat, Alipay or an online bank transfer directly into your overseas bank account.
Touchpoints before a Chinese considers buying your product/service
There is one major noticeable difference between Western consumers’ thinking and a Chinese before buying a product:
- Before making a purchase, the Chinese consumer is always asking the question if the product is real or a copy.
So in other words: If the Chinese person does not know for sure if the product that you’re selling is the real thing. They most of the time won’t buy it.
That’s because they copy almost everything. And they are good at it.
So how does the Chinese consumer know the difference between what’s real and what’s fake? There are a few ways to find out:
- Chinese like to buy from a marketplace like Taobao or Tmall. Tmall has real brands only. Taobao on the other hand sells both real brands and copies of products. Sometimes the difference is hard to distinguish.
- An official website that is being linked to from the English official brand site shows the Chinese website is the real thing.
- A WeChat verified account that shows the brand is the account owner.
China leading B2C e-commerce sales market share 2019
- Tmall (Taobao) 50.07%
- JD.com 26.5%
- Pinduoduo 12.79%
- Suning 3.04%
- Vip.com 1.88%
- Gome 1.78%
- Yunji 0.45%
- Mogujie 0.24%
- Others 3.25%
Tmall vs JingDong (JD.com)
- Tmall and Taobao are essentially 2 different websites, however, the search results on Taobao also show Tmall products which is a huge advantage over JD. Both Tmall and Taobao are owned by the Alibaba group.
- Tmall has a Cross-border option, so non-Chinese companies can register a merchant account.
- WeChat has good support for JD.com and therefore has gained popularity over the past few years. Also, JD.com has a cross-border solution for non-Chinese companies.
- Tmall mostly only accepts big brands that have lots of revenue
- The setup costs for JD.com are lower than Tmall
For the online marketing of small to medium-sized businesses, JD.com would be the preferred cross-border marketplace. That’s because Tmall’s startup cost is very high and only allows large companies to join the marketplace.
China Internet Economy Revenue Structure 2020
- 34.3% Lifestyle consumption
- 26.7% Internet finance
- 15.1% Entertainment
- 7.1% Online media
- 5.2% Online education
- 11.6% Others
China Internet Economy Revenue Sources 2020
The revenue of China’s internet economy was 3.66 trillion yuan in 2017. With roughly a 42% year on year growth rate, we have seen the annual revenue increase to 7.37 trillion yuan in 2020.
- 36.8% Services (internet finance, company services, education)
- 34.3% Commodity (lifestyle consumption)
- 22.2% Content (Online media & entertainment)
- 6.7% Others
China online advertising market 2020
Online advertising has taken a massive hit during the COVID-19 pandemic. From only 2019 Q4 to 2020 Q1 we have seen a 35% reduction.
The good news is that the first signs of Q2 show that the online advertising market has bounced back. It’s important to note that during COVID-19 the Chinese internet users have a different spending habit. For example, online courses have seen a big increase in revenue.
Chapter 3
China Search Engines
The top Chinese search engines and a guide to Baidu SEO and SEA
China search engine growth 2020
There has been a pretty steady year on year growth for the amount of internet users using the Chinese search engines. In March 2020 we are seeing that 750 million Chinese users are using the Chinese search engines. That’s 83% of all Chinese internet users.
Baidu is still in the lead owning 67% of all online searches. Surprisingly, Sogou is catching up in the race of Chinese search engines, especially on desktop. Therefore it can be considered to include Sogou in your China online marketing strategy in 2020.
Top Chinese Search Engines 2020 Q1 (All Media)
Baidu is still in the lead. However Interesting to note that Sogou has overtaken Baidu on Desktop in the first quarter of 2020.
Top Chinese search engines on All Media 2020 Q1:
- Baidu 68.76%
- Sogou 21.13%
- Shenma 4.55%
- 360 2.44%
- Google 1.56%
- Others 1.55%
Top Chinese search engines on Desktop 2020 Q1:
- Sogou 48.48%
- Baidu 37.85%
- Haosou 5.78%
- Google 3.87%
- Bing 3.73%
- Shenma 0.14%
Top Chinese search engines on Mobile 2020 Q1:
- Baidu 85.08%
- Shenme 7.17%
- Sogou 6.28%
- Haosou 0.69%
- Bing 0.36%
- Google 0.31%
Most searches are done on a mobile device. Therefore your website’s compatibility on both mobile and desktop is crucial in order to get the most out of your China online marketing strategy.
Baidu
Since Baidu is the most used search engine in China, we’d like to educate you on the following:
- Baidu SEO (Traffic created organically)
- Baidu SEA (Traffic generated by advertising / pay per click)
Let’s start with SEO…
Baidu SEO
When you optimize a website for the Chinese search engines there are a few things that are recommended doing:
- Test your website from mainland China! Test the loading speed (if it loads at all!) and learn where the bottlenecks are. Aim for a quick loading website. We provide free speed tests.
Look for files that time-out in Mainland China
- Use the Baidu keyword tool for your keyword research. The search volume is still pretty accurate!
- Find out the competition for the keywords. If there are more than 1000 title results it gets pretty competitive!
- TIP! Use a keyword in your Chinese brand name. Your brand name is your most important keyword.
Example of the Baidu Keyword Tool. Search volume data is weekly (not monthly)
- Optimize your pages with Meta Keywords. Google doesn’t use these anymore, however, Baidu loves it when you use meta keywords on each page. Feel free to put in 20 or 30 keywords on your homepage!
- Write a title filled with keywords and have these keywords come back into the meta description as well.
- The title can have max 80 characters. 40 will be visible in Baidu SERP.
- Meta description max 200 characters. 65 will be visible in Baidu SERP.
Example of what a title and description could look like on Baidu
- Don’t use direct translations when your Chinese website is on another domain. Rewrite parts of your content so Baidu does not punish you for translated duplicate content. We learned this the hard way.
- Submit your website to Baidu and add the sitemap. Specifics on how to do that can be found here
Baidu SEO Case Study
How Michelle’s new website from 0 to 36.359 visitors in the first 6 months through SEO only!
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1
Website goes live!
Michelle decided to have this English name generator website created for naming newborn babies or for Chinese students that go studying abroad and require having an English name. Pretty cool idea!
The amazing thing to note is that all these visitors came to the website via Baidu and Sogou, just through organic SEO. $0 was spent on advertising!
So how was this achieved? Actually quite simple!
- First, we did the keyword research and found a keyword that had little competition and exactly described the service: “Custom made English name” or 定制英文名 in Chinese. It doesn’t translate very well into English. However, there’s loads of search volume for it and little competition!
- So then we decided to use this keyword as the company/website name! Because Baidu thinks your brand name is your most important keyword.
- And voila! By implementing all the other steps that are needed for a Chinese site as described earlier (fast hosting, optimizing text/meta tags, etc) we ranked in the top 3 search results pretty much from day one!
Baidu Advertising
The Chinese equivalent of Google Adwords would be the Baidu advertisement platform. However, there are some important differences to notice.
Things you will need in to register an advertising account with Baidu:
- You’ll have to submit a copy of your (overseas) business license
- Bank statement
- A screenshot of your countries’ official business registration website that shows your company is registered
- A domain. This can be only one domain and must contain the Chinese language.
- The website speed has to be acceptable from Mainland China
- In the ‘About us’ page the company name must be identical to your business license
- In the ‘Contact us’ page the address must be identical to your business license
If you understand Chinese you can submit the above documents listed above to Baidu yourself on e.baidu.com. Or the more common hassle-free option would be to use an agency that usually already has established an agreement with Baidu.
Once that has all been done you can start topping up the account with advertisement credit and create your advertisement campaign.
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2
1
This is Advertisement
2
This is SEO (Organic)
Baidu Analytics
Baidu Analytics is very similar to its counterpart Google Analytics. If you want to track your Baidu Advertising campaign in Google you will have to set the UTM codes for each keyword.
To get a complete picture you can consider setting up Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Baidu Analytics, and Baidu Zhanzhang (Similar to Google Search Console).
The good news is that setting up Google Analytics does not slow down your website in China!
Chapter 4
Chinese Website Requirements
You will need a Chinese website
Regardless if you’re selling B2C or B2B, your potential customer will search your brand on Baidu to see if you’re the real thing.
There are 3 things to consider when designing a Chinese website:
- Having a website hosted in Europe means slow loading speed from Mainland China.
- Chinese design. Especially on mobile, the Chinese internet user navigates through the website differently.
- Remove all scripts/files loaded off-site. This will increase your website speed significantly since scripts from Google and other websites will time out or just load very slowly.
- Ideally have Mandarin as the only language on the domain. If that’s not possible, it’s recommended you direct the Baidu user-agent to the Chinese language.
So, we arrive at the next important point: “Does your website actually load from China?” Chances are it probably loads pretty slow. The good news is, there’s something that can be done about it.
How to speed up your website speed from China?
- Remove scripts loaded from domains that don’t load from China. Like Google fonts.
- The best hosting up to date is Aliyun/Alibaba cloud. They have servers in Hong Kong that have a special line into mainland China which will increase your website speed significantly.
- Use a CDN. Alibaba offers a CDN that works well in China.
Choosing the right hosting in China is crucial:
| Hosting Location | Ping (ms) | Mainland China website speed score (10 is best) |
| Europe | >220 | 5 |
| US | 150-200 | 7 |
| Japan/Singapore | 120-180 | 8 |
| Hong Kong (Aliyun) | 50 | 9 |
| China | <50 | 10 |
| CDN Cloudflare (free) | 150 (US server) | 7 |
| CDN Aliyun cloud CDN Alibaba cloud With ICP |
150 (US server) Untested Untested |
8 Untested Untested |
How to create a Chinese website?
- Use Simplified Chinese (Mandarin)
- Focus on funneling the traffic to your WeChat Official Account so you can re-target the visitor any time in the future
- Using a contact form is fine, however, don’t expect the visitor to email you
- Host in China or Hong Kong. Having a website hosted in Europe means slow loading speed from Mainland China.
- Maintain a design that Chinese are familiar with. Especially on mobile, the Chinese internet users navigate through the website differently.
- Remove all scripts/files loaded off-site. This will increase your website speed significantly since scripts from Google and other websites will time out or just load very slowly.
How to get an ICP license in China?
It’s possible to host on a Chinese web server when your domain has applied for an ICP license. Alternatively, you could host your website in Hong Kong, which does not require you to apply for an ICP.
- The first requirement for an ICP license is that your domain is registered with a Chinese registrar, like Aliyun
- The second requirement is that only a Chinese company can apply for an ICP license
- Once both requirements are met you can start applying
Chapter 5
China Social Media
Statistics and the top Chinese social media platforms explained
China Top social media users 2020
As of March 2020, out of all Chinese internet users:
- 85.1% use WeChat
- 47.6% use Qzone (QQ)
- 42.5% use Weibo
WeChat should be included in everyone’s China online marketing strategy.
China Mobile Internet Users 2020
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the average time spent online per day has soared to over 7 hours per day in March 2020. That’s a 29% increase from the same period in 2019.
Out of all applications, people are spending an increasing amount of time on instant messaging and online video apps.
China Social Media Platforms
WeChat has 3 types of accounts that we will discuss here
- Personal Account
- WeChat Official Subscription Account
- WeChat Official Service Account
WeChat Personal Account
You will have access to all the basic functionality of the app. You can register this type of account with your non-Chinese phone number. However, the app’s registration does require you to ask a friend that uses the WeChat app to verify it’s you.
WeChat Official Subscription Account:
Only Chinese nationals can register this type of account. With this type of account, it’s possible to post daily. However, the posts do have less visibility than the service account.
WeChat Official Service Account:
Both foreign and Chinese can register this type of account. It requires several documents like a business license, phone bill copy of the last 3 months, copy of your ID, and the registration form. Registering this type of account can be challenging the first time you do this.
The Service Account is allowed to post a maximum of 4 times per month, however, these posts have more visibility than the Subscription Account posts.
WeChat users are all ages with all levels of income. This platform can both be used for B2C and B2B.
Instant messaging app QQ still has 705 monthly active users. This app from Tencent has been around since 1999 – way before WeChat came to existence. Therefore it’s still widely popular for businesses and people that were used to instant messaging through a computer and an internet connection.
Currently, still, a lot of customer service in China is being done through QQ.
QQ vs WeChat:
- Both apps have been created by Tencent.
- QQ has groups that anyone can join. This is the most used functionality in QQ that WeChat does not support.
- QQ allows for sending big files, which is a huge advantage over WeChat’s limit of 20mb per file transfer.
- WeChat has a ton more functionality than QQ. Therefore WeChat is also called a Super App.
- WeChat has around 200 million more users than QQ. In recent years teenagers have been flocking to QQ since their parents are on WeChat.
The Chinese version of Twitter has around 459 million monthly active users. There are 2 types of Weibo accounts:
- Personal account
- Company account
Both can be verified by submitting the right documents. Weibo charges a whopping $1000 for verifying a company account.
You can upgrade to a VIP account for $15 per year so the platform offers the account more options to customize.
Douyin
Short-video app Douyin is the Chinese version of TikTok created by the Chinese company Bytedance. It enables users to creatively enhance their videos for a huge audience. The app launched in late 2016 and already has 518 million users in 2020. This makes Douyin one of the fastest-growing apps out there.
Douyin generally attracts users below the age of 24 in the more educated first and second-tier cities.
China online video users growth in 2020
China has seen massive growth in its video apps with both Douyin and Kuaishou covering most of the monthly active users.
From 2019 to 2020 we have seen a 12% growth, reaching 850 million in March 2020.
Douyin has a following of Chinese with a higher salary than Kuaishou. Therefore depending on your target audience and product price, the right platform has to be chosen for your China online marketing strategy.
Chapter 5
KOL Marketing
KOL stands for Key Opinion Leader – Also known as ‘influencers’
One of the most popular ways to sell your product in China is through KOL (Influencer) Marketing. Some of the most popular industries KOL marketing is used for:
- Beauty
- Fashion
- Fitness
- Parenting
- F&B
- Travel
The benefits of KOL Marketing:
- It’s a great way to test your product and market strategy in China
- Having social proof for your brand has proven to be a very efficient conversion method
- You decide how much you want to spend per KOL. The budget per KOL can vary from as little as $100 to $1.000.000
The cons of KOL Marketing:
- Almost all KOL’s have a percentage of followers that are zombies (fake)
- It requires experience to know which KOL’s have fake followers and which ones are honest
Social Proof
In order to get the attention of potential customers, having social proof is extremely important in China. Without it, the Chinese consumer might think your company or product quality is poor or fake. Learn more about creating social proof in the Brand Marketing section.
China online shopping market 2020
In Q1 2020 Chinese have spent 2116 billion / 2.1 trillion yuan on online shopping. As a result of all the shopping festivals in Q4 2019, online shopping reached 3.2 trillion yuan.
Once published, Q2 2020 will have some interesting data to show us during the COVID-19 pandemic which we’ll update in this complete guide.
If you’re selling a product in China the shopping festivals are key to your online marketing strategy. Make sure you book your KOL well ahead of time before a shopping festival is about to start.
China Top 20 Mobile Apps by MAU 2020
Use apps that have your target audience on it
These are China’s most popular mobile apps sorted by Monthly Active Users:
- 946 million – WeChat
- 705 million – QQ
- 703 million – Alipay
- 670 million – Taobao
- 572 million – iQiyi
- 536 million – Tencent video
- 536 million – Baidu
- 521 million – Sogou input
- 518 million – Douyin
- 478 million – Gaode maps
- 459 million – Weibo
- 443 million – Kuaishou
- 437 million – QQ browser
- 426 million – Baidu input
- 398 million – Pinduoduo
- 382 million – Youku
- 376 million – WIFI master key
- 297 million – Baidu maps
- 292 million – Tencent news
- 288 million – DingTalk
China Top internet application categories 2020
The most used apps in 2020 are:
- 896 million – Messaging (WeChat)
- 850 million – Videos (incl short videos)
- 768 million – Payment (Alipay, WeChat pay)
- 773 million – Short videos (Douyin, Kuaishou)
- 750 million – Search engine (Baidu, Sogou)
- 730 million – News
- 710 million – Shopping (Taobao)
- 635 million – Music (NetEase)
- 560 million – Live streaming
- 532 million – Games
- 455 million – Literature
- 423 million – Education
- 398 million – Food delivery
- 373 million – Travel booking
- 362 million – Car hailing
- 164 million – Personal finance management
China internet access by devices 2020
In the past year, we have seen a 5% drop in desktop users.
This is the market share of devices with internet access in March 2020:
- 99% Mobile phone
- 43% Desktop
- 35% Laptop
- 32% TV
- 29% Tablets
Since the Chinese netizens are spending over 7 hours a day on their mobile phone, that’s where you will want to focus your online marketing efforts.
China avg weekly time spent online 2020
In March 2020 the average time spent online per week is 30.8 hours. This is data across all devices.
It comes as no surprise that COVID-19 had a significant impact on how much longer Chinese are spending their time online.
Chapter 7
Brand Marketing
How would you like to introduce your brand to your Chinese target audience? There are multiple efficient ways to do this. Let’s dive right in:
- Deliver your company introduction with great content on your website and social media
- Your companies’ values
- The companies’ vision
- Determine your target audience
- Be consistent and communicate with emotion
- Advertise on Baidu and use Native ads
- Place posts and guest posts on China’s biggest platforms like WeChat, Zhihu, Baidu Tieba, Baidu Zhidao
- These posts will rank well in the Chinese search engines
- When people search for your brand these results will come up
- This is a very efficient way of creating brand awareness
- Use a KOL (influencer)
- Build a relationship between your brand and the KOL
- Implement step 1 and 2 first to increase conversion rates
How to create social proof in China for your brand?
There are a few ways to do so:
- Have positive feedback about your brand on China’s most famous Q&A platforms like Zhihu, Tieba, Baidu zhidao and iask. So when people search for your brand on Baidu they will find positive feedback.
- Have a Chinese person, preferably with a social media following, review your product on video. That content can be used for things like a brand introduction. It creates a sense of security for the buyer that the product is likely to be real and of high quality. The video can show how the product was received by mail followed by the unpacking. Reviewing the product and showing the benefits of using the product.
Zhihu
Very similar to Quora where people can ask questions and experts or just about anyone can answer the question. Benefits of using this Q&A platform:
- You can fill the question with keywords. The page will rank very well in Baidu once indexed.
- Lots of visibility. Each post shows the number of views it had.
- A great way of creating brand awareness even though advertising is not allowed
Baidu Tieba
In the West we don’t really have an equivalent to this platform so it might require a bit of explanation:
- There are topics called Ba’s. So you could for example create: ‘American Cosmetics Ba’ for so people can share questions and ideas within the Ba.
- Also, a great way to fill the title with keywords. Ranks very well in Baidu.
- It creates an online community for specific topics.
Baidu Zhidao (Baidu Knows)
This is undoubtedly the biggest Q&A platform and Baidu is not shy about ranking the search results of this platform very high in its own search engine. Often with multiple search results on the first page.
- You can fill the question with keywords. Once the page has been indexed there’s a good chance Baidu will rank it well.
- Advertisement is not allowed. However, you can still post positive things about a brand.
A popular search query could be: ‘What popular American Cosmetics brands are there?’
With Baidu Zhidao as the first search result and Zhihu as second these pages will get a ton of traffic.
Only Zhihu reveals how many visitors the page has had as such:
This post has 317.345 page views
An answer on Baidu Zhidao looks something like this
Chapter 8
Difficulties
Entering the Chinese online market is not for everyone. There are some noticeable differences compared to setting up a marketing campaign in the West.
- China is very competitive!
- What works for your brand in the West, might not work in China due to cultural differences
- If you already have a well-established brand in the West. The chances are they have either already copied your content and frequently even already have copied your product.
- Censorship – Your website or social media can get blocked when putting up sensitive content such as gambling, adult, or just about any content that’s offensive to the Chinese regime.
- Creating a new account with for example Baidu and WeChat can be a painful process when doing it for the first time
- Requires a higher budget and generally more effort to get the ball rolling in terms of conversions and sales when comparing the required marketing efforts to the West.
Benefits
Now, let’s list some of the benefits of doing online marketing in China!
- Chinese love Western products or services
- Chinese are willing to pay more for a quality product. Especially when they can show it off to their friends or social media
- An entire alternative type of internet is just ready for your product or service to be made available to
- A billion Chinese are spending billions of hours on completely different websites, social media apps, and platforms
- A massive growing market, even during times of a pandemic!
