So, in this article we will review which Chinese digital platforms are getting the most attention and spending from marketers. 

• Which platforms are hot and get the most attention ?
• How does it reflect Chinese consumers behaviors online ?
• Which digital marketing strategy you should adopt for advertising in China ?

Digital Marketing Spending in China: The Trends 

Before diving into the details, let’s have a look at the overall digital advertising spending in China.

In 2019, digital advertising spendings value will grow over 90 billions of USD with a growth rate of 18%. Today, digital represents almost 70% of the total media spendings in China.

Even if the market speed of growth will decrease in the coming years, we can see the large domination of digital marketing over traditional media in China.

E-commerce in China - A key focus of digital advertising spending.

Today, promotion and media buying in China are directed more and more to e-commerce platforms. The focus on e-commerce is a lasting trend in term of digital marketing. Over the last years, brands have been focusing their marketing spending on e-commerce platforms to impact online sales directly and efficiently. 

As a matter of fact, Alibaba has seen its market share of digital spending growing over the last five years from 21% in 2015 to 29% in 2019. Today, Alibaba is generating 50 RMB by quarter for each daily active user.

Discover the best e-commerce to sale your product in China

Digital marketing video platforms on the rise - Douyin, Kuaishou and Bilibili 

Short video platforms have captured more and more time from Chinese internet users.

As so, Douyin (also known as TikTok outside of China) is on the rise and is attracting more and more money from digital marketing agencies. 

In fact, Bytedance, the owner of Douyin and the news related platform Toutiao, is now the second largest ads platform in China with 18% of the Digital Spending. It quickly rose from only 2% back in 2016.

The popularity of video platforms among advertisers is directly related to the time spent by internet users. Everyday, Douyin users spend 88 minutes on the APP. With 83 minutes, Bilibili is not far behind and even beats the time spent on WeChat (82 minutes).

Chinese Social Media marketing: still an easy way to reach massive audiences

While Tencent (WeChat owner) has seen a slight decrease of 1% of its market share, Sina Weibo remains stable.

Most marketers consider those two platforms to be mature now and will maintain their level of spending as social media allow them to reach very easily massive audiences.

With 765 millions of daily users (DAU) for WeChat and 188 millions DAU for Sina Weibo, both platforms are still very performant to reach audiences from multiple demographics and profiles very easily. Also, the cost of digital advertising can be attractive, especially on Sina Weibo.

Learn how to buy media on WeChat

How to define your advertising strategy for digital marketing in China ?

Deciding where, when and how you should invest your advertising budget is not an easy task. This is especially true in China where the platforms are diverse, versatile with advertising systems not always easy to understand.

As a digital marketing agency in China, Next Ren Shanghai will be looking at those key aspects to help your decision:

• Brand Maturity in China. If you are new to the market, your investment will be strongly different from a more mature brand. As a matter of fact, you should focus your advertising budget on one or two platforms to maximize your impact and build an audience in China.

• Target audience in China. Who are you targeting ? The location and profile of your target audience will have a strong impact on the platforms you will select. Platform will have different targeting system and tools that will impact your advertising campaign. If you are targeting a very narrow audience, you will favor multiple platforms and collaboration with specialized KOL to make sure to reach out this specific target.

How to find KOL in China to promote your brand ?

• Industry specificities in China. Your industry and business will of course be another determining factor. If you are in the travel/ tourism industry, you will need to consider some specific platforms like Fliggy or Qunar.

As you can see, they are a wide range of aspects to consider and discuss. Our digital marketing agency will help you make well informed decisions to grow your digital presence in China. 

Next Ren is a digital marketing agency in Shanghai.

Follow us on LinkedIn and WeChat to stay updated on WeChat trends.

The post Which digital marketing platforms to choose for advertising in China ? appeared first on Next 人.

How the WeChat “Buy Now, Pay Later” features works ?

“Buy Now, Pay Later” works as a micro loan, with added unfixed interest rates. The loan can be reimburse at any time. The accessibility and flexibility of this feature is very attractive compared to classic credit bank offering.

This micro loans can only be used on WeChat platform which make WeChat even more attractive for e-commerce.

A surge of consumption in premium and luxury products on WeChat can be expected as this features will ease access to those product to a larger population.

Also, this feature can help mitigating the negative effects of Covid-19 and keep boosting online sales.

A positive impact for e-commerce and marketing on WeChat

We can anticipate the “Buy Now, Pay Later” feature to have a positive impact on e-commerce on WeChat and facilitate payment. Chinese will have an easier access to credit thanks to the platform and it will probably boost spendings on WeChat. This is a great news for the 50 million merchants on WeChat.

Today, e-commerce on WeChat is largely done through WeChat Miniprograms. The transaction on Miniprograms have more than double since last year !

Create you WeChat Mini-program for e-commerce and marketing

What is WeChat ?

WeChat is the number one messaging APP in China. Like WhatsApp, it is massively used by Chinese to send messages to their friends and family, both directly and through group chats. However, WeChat offer much larger features and services to the user than WhatsApp. For example, you can actually pay online and offline with WeChat very easily. The payment service of WeChat is called WeChat Pay.

Today over 1.1 billion people are using actively WeChat with over 1 billion CNY in transaction every day.

Review the latest WeChat numbers and data from 2020

Social Media marketing in China: Build your presence and sell on WeChat

To attract and sale to Chinese consumers, WeChat is a great option to consider for your company.

First, your company will need to set up an official account on WeChat. You can open two different types of accounts: Subscription or Service account depending on how you want to use WeChat for your business.

Learn how to open an account on WeChat.

With this account you will be able to build your community and recruit fans. Recruitment is a critical part of your WeChat marketing effort as you can only reach your fans (unless you spend money on advertising). WeChat is a private platform so you can not see and interact with all the user freely like with a public platform like Sina Weibo.

Discover how to recruit fan on WeChat

Once you have start building your community on WeChat, you can now push content to your audience, create marketing campaigns and sale your products !

Get advice on how to do marketing on WeChat from a digital marketing agency like Next Ren Shanghai.

Next Ren is a WeChat digital marketing agency in Shanghai.Follow us on LinkedIn and WeChat to stay updated on WeChat trends.

The post WeChat launches “Buy Now, Pay Later” marketing feature appeared first on Next 人.

• The size and the growth of the WeChat community
• The performance of the WeChat Miniprograms and Pay
• How the APP help during the recent Covid-19 crisis

Discover more Chinese Digital Marketing Trends for 2020

WeChat Monthly Active User - 1.164 Billion

In 2019, the size of the WeChat community has kept growing to reach 1.164 billion monthly active user. Even, if the growth of the WeChat users has slowed down over the last months, the number of active users prove that WeChat is still the center of the Chinese digital environment.

Chinese people use the APP more and more, as the numbers of messages sent have increased of 15% in Q4 2019 YoY

Today, almost every Chinese citizen is actively using WeChat making it the place to be for digital marketing. If you want to reach out to the Chinese market, it must be done first through WeiXin. Furthermore the platform is ideal for client management and customer service.

WeChat Mini Programs - A popular solution for e-commerce

 As discussed previously, WeChat Miniprograms are now over 3 years old and have known a growing popularity among the WeChat users.

Today, Miniprograms are largely used for e-commerce and sell products and services directly to the Chinese market.

In the report, Tencent highlighted that the number of transactions on WeChat mini-programs have grown by more than 100% in one year.

As such, the value of the transactions on this “WeChat APP” have exceed 800 billion CNY in  2019;

Discover the best websites to sell online in China

WeChat Pay - Over 1 billion CNY in transaction every day !

One of the daily usage of WeiXin in China is payment. Every day, Chinese people are using the APP to pay everything online and offline, from their 7-Eleven shopping, taxi or medical expenses.

Because of this mobile payment habit, WeChat Pay now handle over 1 billion CNY of transaction every day. In the meantime, WeChat pay is actively used by more than 800 million consumers and 50 million merchants !

A daily support during the Covid-19 outbreak

As China was severely by the Covid-19 early this year, WeChat has provided an incredible amount of support to the Chinese people. 

First, the APP has allowed millions of people to connect smoothly as they were separated from each other during a main family celebration: Chinese New Year.

In the meantime, thanks to WeChat Work, millions of companies have leverage the platform to facilitate business. They use it to allow remote work from home of thousands of employees. Of course, WeChat Work provide support to keep servicing clients efficiently.

As such, WeiXin has been a vital daily tool of the Chinese society during the Covid-19 outbreak.

More advertisement and spending by advertisers

WeChat has demonstrated how relevant it can be for brands and companies to reach out to Chinese consumers. As such, the Wechat figures for advertising revenue has strongly increased in 2019 by more than 30%.

Find below all the numbers and insight from WeChat annual report:

Get advice on how to do marketing on WeChat from a digital marketing agency like Next Ren Shanghai.

Next Ren is a WeChat digital marketing agency in Shanghai.

Follow us on LinkedIn and WeChat to stay updated on WeChat trends. 

The post WeChat – Key Figures, Insights and Trends of the No.1 Chinese APP appeared first on Next 人.

• First, reviewing the current challenges and issues RED is facing
• Then, analysing the strengths of the XiaohongShu and the digital marketing opportunities for brands
• And, finally giving our opinion on how and when a brand should consider leveraging the Little Red Book in China 

RED: content quality and platform management is under fire

A few days ago, XiaoHongShu has disappeared from Android stores in China. This situation fostered a lot of discussion online in China with close to a million discussions on Sina Weibo.

In the meantime, Netizens used this opportunity to be very critical of the platform. They feel the content quality dropped and the volume of ads and fake reviews increased.

This suspension of RED from the android platforms is happening a bit more than a month after the platform being warmed by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on user data collection. This situation make you wonder if the two are connected ? Is RED in serious troubles ?

The Little Red Book management team is well aware of those challenges. They already have intended to improve the quality of the platform with a serie of measures. In January, they created a brand partner program so paid marketing post by influencer appeared as such on the platform. They continued their “cleaning” effort in May by busting over 10,000 key opinion leaders with less than 5,000 followers.

Authenticity and trusted user generated content are the key values for users to come and spend time on the platform. As such, the recent backlashes might have a direct impact on the growth and the engagement of XiaoHongShu community.

XiaoHongShu: A mix of Social and E-commerce full of digital marketing opportunities

For foreigners, RED can be seen as a mix of Instagram for the user interface and Amazon for the customers review.

Born in June 2013, RED, is now 6 years old. It has attracted a community of 200 millions users with 80 millions active users. 

So far, XiaoHongShu did not grow as fast and as quickly as WeChat. And it has a long road before reaching the billion users. However, it has reached a point where it is ticking a lot of boxes to attract brands.

Red was initially design to help Chinese easily shop foreign products abroad. But it has quickly become a place where users reviewed, discussed and buy foreign products. This mix of social discussion and e-commerce is one the key value of XiaoHongShu for digital marketers.

RED discussions focus  mainly on cosmetics and skincare. But, now they expanded to other topics like travel, food, sport and of course fashion.

Today, this XiaHongshu user is a young and urban woman in China. 88% of its community is female, 60% is less than 30 years old and 57% live in the top-tier city. This demographic mix of millennials and Generation Z is the key target audience for most brands in China.

With its user generated content DNA, RED is the place to be for influencers (Key Opinions Leaders - KOL) in China. Today, the platform hosts thousands of influencers. They leverage their reach to negociate paid post with brands. Some KOL are charging 1,500 USD for one post to a community as small as 10,000 followers !

Leveraging KOL in China has been a challenge for several years. The results for brands are not always been great, with a lot of fake engagement and followers. RED is no exception to those challenges. It has become one of the key platform for brands and KOL collaboration in China.

With those strengths, the platform has know attracted over 6,000 brands including Fendi, MAC, Yves Saint Laurent or Shiseido.

RED: when and how to leverage it for your digital marketing ?

The more your brand / company is matching the following statements, the more RED should be part of your digital marketing approach in China:

• RED community match your brands target audience profile: young urban Chinese Woman.
• Your brand is related to the skin-care, cosmetics or fashion industries
• You are a foreign brand looking for e-commerce options in China
• Your company has already built a strong presence and engagement on WeChat and Sina Weibo
• KOL and influencers in China is part of your strategy in China

Here at Next Ren, we believe XiaoHongShu like WeChat in the past is at a turning point. It must find the right balance between marketing / monetization and value creation. He will also need to garantee a safe environment in term of data collection to keep user trust. 

Today, brands can already leverage XiaoHongshu to build their digital marketing strategy in China. But they must keep in mind the maturity and the size of the platform is not comparable to the bigger brothers like WeChat or Sina Weibo. 

RED is not niche anymore but as some way to go before becoming as mainstream as WeChat.

Contact us at Next Ren Shanghai to discuss your digital marketing in China and how to include RED

The post Is XiaoHongShu (RED) relevant to market your brand in China ? appeared first on Next 人.