Digital marketing in China is constantly evolving, and keeping up with the latest trends is essential for success. What is important to understand is the fact that China’s digital market is different than all the other markets in the world. Chinese social media platforms are entirely different than ours, Chinese consumers have different shopping habits, online advertising is not the same and you need separate search engine optimization for your website in China, as Google is banned for all Internet users there.
If you’re doing business in China, it’s important to adapt your digital marketing strategy to the latest trends in the Chinese market, so that Chinese consumers get attracted to your offer.
In this article, we present 10 trends you need to know about. From WeChat marketing to live streaming, these are the top ways to reach Chinese consumers online.
Contents [show]
Overview of China’s Digital Ecosystem
Millions of people in China go online every day, and the country has one of the most active digital ecosystems in the world. Chinese consumers are avid users of mobile payments, social media, and e-commerce, and businesses are increasingly looking to tap into this market.
But this is where the struggle begins. Chinese Internet users have access to completely different websites, social media platforms, online marketplaces, and search engine options than ‘the rest of the world’. Most of the foreign companies entering the market don’t even realize, how different the digital sphere in China is.
Let’s look at the graphics above. Do you recognize any of those logos? We don’t use any of them. The most popular search engine in China is Baidu, accounting for more than 70% of the market share. Baidu is a whole ecosystem itself, offering many forums, video platforms, encyclopedias, libraries, and more.
When it comes to social media, the most popular social media platform is definitely WeChat, gathering more than 1.26 billion monthly active users. Other popular applications are; Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and Kuaishou.
When it comes to e-commerce platforms, Alibaba Group is the definite leader of the market, being an owner of the biggest B2C platform – Taobao, and the biggest B2B platform – Tmall. But there are also many other platforms, like JD.com, Kaola, Vipshop, and Pinduoduo, to name a few.
What is most important to understand is that the Chinese market lowes ‘super-apps‘, so all the apps and platforms, from social media to e-commerce, have multiple different functions and features. Chinese Internet users are used to extreme convenience and simplicity, having access to almost everything they need, inside one application. This is why, when working on digital marketing strategies for the Chinese market, it’s crucial to have an overall approach, to leverage those applications in the best possible way.
Best Digital Marketing Strategies in China
As you have an overall understanding of how the digital world works in the Chinese market, let’s take a look at the trends shaping digital marketing in China in 2024.
Branding & Storytelling are the key
Social media as a brand awareness tool
E-Commerce is becoming more social
Influencer Marketing
Explore niche and specialized platforms
PR, Chinese forums, and content marketing
Chinese Website and Baidu SEO
Live-Streaming
Video focused content marketing
Metaverse
User experience and customization
Localization by professionals
For the past decade, numerous global brands have entered China. And now they see it as their main arena for growth as well as new, smaller businesses looking for opportunities to make a fortune in this country. The most important question remains as to what digital marketing strategy works well in China.
1. Branding & Storytelling are the key
Nowadays, branding and content are the most important factors when optimizing your marketing strategy. Chinese customers are not patient and are really selective, if they don’t like it, they will just pass on it.
It is not exaggerated to say that Chinese consumers are scared of new and unknown brands.
China is huge and thus the Chinese market is a complicated one in the sense that there are countless producers. Yes, merchants are selling everything you need for life here. Meanwhile, the legal system to protect consumers from fake goods is not yet as fully developed as in the West.
Young Chinese consumers are more aware of the environment and global changes and they start being more selective when choosing brands they want to buy from. They want to be more sustainable and invest in products that don’t harm animals, the environment, or the economy, so it’s important to be transparent and tell the story of your brand and its values instead of just promoting the products.
If you have attractive, well-designed content, you will not only attract your customers but you will encourage them to buy and even make them become loyal to your brand (this is harder as Chinese customers are not really typically loyal if they find something better they will often change). Branding is very important for consumers in China, and no one will buy from unknown brands with unclear values.
Many consumers have been cheated with counterfeit products, fake reputable brands, and domestic brands that are expensive but of poor quality. Accordingly, they become paranoid and cautious toward less recognized or unbranded products.
Additionally, Chinese people buy brands not only for the functions they have but also to reflect their social status. Moreover, they improve how other people perceive them. Chinese consumers are willing to pay more if the brand can bring them prestige and respect in their social circle. That’s why luxury consumer products enjoyed such phenomenal growth in China for the past 2 decades.
Brand awareness should be your priority of focus if you are new to China. So, how to increase your brand awareness?
2. Social Media as a brand awareness tool
95% of people who live in large Chinese cities have an account with at least one social network.
Not only that, but China’s social media users are far more active than in other countries. With 91% of them saying they had visited a social app site in the past six months.
Social networks also have a larger impact on the buying decisions of Chinese consumers than on those of any other country.
We cannot really call social media a trend now, it has been a must-have for many years, but its importance and influence on shopping decisions on Millennials and Gen Z is growing rapidly. Most brands are present on social media, what is actually the trend now is to know how to link the advertising campaigns effectively to the social aspect.
Apart from WeChat which we talked about before, there are many other platforms that are super popular in China. The most popular are; Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin. All of them have different audiences and will be suitable for different brands, but it’s best to leverage all of them for your digital marketing in China.
Social media platforms in China are more complex and convenient than the Western ones and can really help you make your brand known in China. You can use them to promote your products, collaborate with influencers, sell your products directly in the app through social e-commerce or simply contact your consumers, as they don’t even open emails, so you can’t count on Newsletters like we do in the West.
If a Chinese consumer sees a product being discussed positively on an SM, especially by a friend or acquaintance, they are far more likely to actually purchase the product than their counterpart in other countries. Peer recommendations have a huge influence on Chinese culture, as formal institutions are less likely to be trusted.
China’s social network landscape is fragmented and sophisticated. Today, we are taking a deeper look at WeChat and Weibo in comparison as well as other more niche and specialized platforms so that brands have an overall picture. For a better deep dive into all major Chinese social networks, please, check our Top 10 Chinese Social media guide where we look at all the marketing features of these channels.
Wechat, China’s ‘super App’
WeChat is the most powerful APP in China.
WeChat, which started as a simple messaging social media app, nowadays is a whole ecosystem itself, offering multiple functions. Examples include; messaging, video calls, official accounts, short-videos sub-platforms, WeChat payment method, e-commerce stores within the app, access to other services, like taxis, bikes, medical help, and much more.
Wechat is a great app to generate private traffic through an official account and every other tool available to businesses on the app. The aim of private traffic in China is to build loyalty through traffic acquired on social media accounts.
However it is not an easy social media to enter, Wechat is not based on exposure or influence but more on a one-to-one, personalized and dedicated communications with users.
Wechat is perfectly understanding the huge success and booming of mobile and is taking advantage of it by offering brands the opportunity to combine social aspects and commercial ones. The app tends to be what we can call a “social e-commerce platform” enhancing social media and e-commerce activities in conjunction with one another (more on that below).
The app has perfectly understood the benefits of embracing mobile technology in China. As you can see in the graphic above, WeChat offers WeChat Stores, and most of the brands in China and foreign companies use this function to offer their products inside the platform.
Apart from that, WeChat also has a great online consumer management system, you can be integrated with consumers by sending them newsletters, special discount coupons, or even private messages. There are also functions like WeChat H5 brochures, where you can present your brand in a short, interactive mini-app. And of course, all your products can be purchased with the use of WeChat Pay, without the need of leaving the app.
Weibo, the Chinese ‘Twitter / X’
Meanwhile, Weibo is a more open platform where users come to socialize with friends and new people. To entertain themselves, they watch videos as well as discover trendy topics or hot social information.
Celebrities, famous bloggers, media outfits, government departments, and ordinary users all create and share content on Weibo, making it a very bustling and exciting social hub to hang out.
Xiaohongshu, The Chinese Instagram
Xiaohongshu is often called “Chinese Instagram” because the core of the platform lies in user-generated content. The app was created mostly for women and they are the main audience, making it a perfect platform for beauty, lifestyle, and fashion content.
Xiaohongshu is very popular among Chinese influencers, it also offers e-commerce services etc.
Douyin, The Chinese version of TikTok
Douyin is a fairly ‘new’ revelation in the Chinese social media landscape. This short-video app, known as TikTok outside of China, managed to climb to the place of the second most popular social media platform in the country.
Douyin is popular thanks to fast, funny content but it also offers many bu
Generate awareness through content marketing
No matter which platform you choose to do your branding on a Chinese social network, high-quality content that users repost or share is the most important element. Unique, informative, and interesting content will engage followers and attract new ones.
After registering an official account on social media platforms of your choice, brands can post content or push feeds to their subscribers.
Weibo, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu are open platforms where even non-followers can view your posts and the posting default setting is public. In addition, everyone can also see the reposts, comments, or likes.
Therefore, they are very suitable for viral campaigns or viral content, which aim to boost brand awareness extensively and help you grow your potential Chinese customers base.
WeChat is a closed community. Normally, WeChat users can only see posts pushed by official accounts to which they subscribe. So your followers on Wechat tend to be more condensed and targeted.
In terms of content type, on Weibo, businesses can make use of the media-rich nature of Weibo to create multimedia content including things like videos, pictures, live streaming, and adding emojis to their posts. Besides, the “@tag” function enables users to tag relevant parties in the posts, while the “#hashtag” function leads users to a dedicated page that garners all posts with the same topic.
On WeChat, the content that users like to repost is interactive with text and photos/audio/video. This makes it a good place for long, detailed articles to introduce a business but also mainly to share interesting tips.
The language style is also more formal and professional. Remember to highlight the most essential parts so that it’ll be easy for readers to skim. Attractive visuals and a well-designed layout are also important to retain readers.
Other platforms are dependent on the type of your brand. You can post videos on Douyin and Xiaohongshu, use influencers, sell products directly on the platform, and promote products through live streams, challenges, etc. They give more opportunities for promotion but are more dependent on the type of products or services you offer.
3. E-Commerce is becoming more social
Social commerce is gaining traction in China. This is understandable when social media is already a place for Chinese consumers to discover new brands, and read reviews/ opinions/ experiences of other people with products and services before making purchases.
The online shopping function of Chinese social networks just makes the whole buying process faster, and more convenient, and thus the conversion rate of social commerce is very high.
Buyers can easily access and browse shops smoothly as well as make purchases with one-click payment without leaving the app for an e-commerce platform.
M-Commerce (short for Mobile Commerce) is clearly booming because the Chinese are spending a lot of their time on their mobile devices. The place to reach your customer is on their mobile, it is more convenient and they are more willing to receive advertisements. Customers spend most of their time on Chinese social media platforms, therefore this is where e-commerce is heading in China.
Social eCommerce is just beginning to know a bright future in China. Especially Wechat which is on the way to becoming the future e-commerce platform in China with brands able to launch micro-stores within the application itself. In fact, most Gen Z is purchasing through WeChat Stores, believing it’s the most convenient way.
Most of the apps are integrating e-commerce within social media, which is becoming very useful for consumers. It’s partially due to the popularity of influencers and live-streaming, where it’s very convenient to put links directing consumers to the product page within the platform so that they can buy the item in just one or two clicks.
Another reason is the fact that, as we mentioned earlier, Chinese people prefer word-of-mouth marketing and they strongly value the social aspect of digital shopping. They want to see the reviews, engage with other users of products they want to buy, and so on. This is why platforms like Xiaohongshu or Douyin integrate e-commerce in their offers, and e-commerce platforms like Taobao or Pinduoduo add social features to their platforms.
4. Influencer marketing
So-called KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) and KOCs (Key Opinion Consumers) are Chinese influencers that have huge power over the shopping decisions of Chinese consumers. They became popular a few years ago and today the use of Chinese influencers in your digital marketing strategy is almost essential, especially in sectors like fashion, beauty, baby products, new technologies, etc.
KOLs are internet celebrities and most of them are specialists in their fields of interest, attracting many brands, that want to collaborate with them.
On the Chinese market, KOLs can be bloggers, celebrities, authorities, or professionals in a certain industry who have a huge number of followers/ subscribers.
The social influence of KOLs is enormous. Their posts not only reach a large and loyal audience but also influence significantly the purchase decisions of their fans.
A good influencer campaign can bring millions in sales, as word-of-mouth marketing in China is far more effective, due to many scandals and counterfeiting products on the market. Chinese consumers trust recommendations from their friends, family, and favorite influencers more than official brand announcements.
Today we see a shift in the strategy, and many brands, also the biggest ones, decide to work with KOCs instead of KOLs. KOLs are big internet personas, gathering millions of followers. But recently China has seen many scandals with KOLs being involved and the audience is slowly losing trust in all those stars. Instead, they move on to KOCs, which are ordinary users of products they promote to a smaller audience, gathering more engaged followers and gaining trust among their fans.
Brand awareness will expand and brand equity will be reinforced through the credibility of KOLs with whom they cooperate.
The most common form of cooperation with KOLs involves sponsored content creation. Brands find a KOL who likes their products and is a good fit for their positioning. They then negotiate and arrange for them to write promotional articles and recommend their products or services.
KOLs can also share/ repost messages of brands or co-organize online campaigns.
The other benefit of KOLs is market segmentation. You won’t hire the same Kol to reach Chinese customers in lower-tier cities as you would for Shanghai or Beijing for instance.
5. Explore niche and specialized Chinese social networks to reach a super-targeted audience
A solid presence on WeChat, Weibo or Douyin is a must. However, it is increasingly competitive to get your brands noticed by customers in the noise of millions of posts, tweets, and campaigns happening every second on those well-known sites.
Meanwhile, you can take a look into more specialized platforms that serve unique niches. These smaller, passion-based networks allow Western companies to connect with conversations that really matter and drive authentic traffic to your business.
Here are some niche social media platforms that are growing in popularity:
Xueqiu (Snowball): Equity & Finance Social Network
Founded in 2010, Xueqiu is the one-stop platform to discuss and learn about a wide range of financial services. This could be the ideal platform for foreign companies in the financial or real estate industries that want to enter the Chinese market and reach out to target Chinese consumers.
Keep: The Hub of Health and Fitness Enthusiasts
Launched in February 2015, Keep is a platform dedicated to the health and fitness niche. This platform is a great choice for international companies and brands that want to take part in the rise of the fitness industry in China market and create relevant sports marketing campaigns.
Mafengwo: Chinese people’s favorite tour guide
As Chinese travelers are increasingly sophisticated and knowledgeable, they prefer to create their own unique travel experiences. Many navigate to Mafengwo to help them plan their trips.
For businesses in the tourism industry, this is the ideal place for marketing in the Chinese consumer market.
6. PR, Chinese forums, and content marketing
Another powerful strategy is to tap into the large and active user groups on local forums. Forums in the West may be outdated but in China, it’s still significant. Large communities of similar interests gather on different forums to discuss their favorite topics.
For international brands, forums can be a source of valuable insights into your targeted customers as well as a place to seed your content strategy to increase brand awareness, expertise, and image.
In addition, peer reviews are highly influential in a collectivist society. Consumers really care about feedback from other consumers. Positive discussions about brands online can greatly lead to more trust and sales, but negative ones spread fast like cancer and damage the brand image.
Therefore, it is critical for brands to involve, monitor, and promote a positive reputation across forums.
Another advantage of being active on forums is that posts on forums rank highly on Baidu, thus contributing to your visibility on the most popular search engine.
Here are some of the most popular forums in China:
Baidu Tieba 百度贴吧
It is known for allowing users to create their own “吧” (sub-forums), about any topic under the sun, such as your favorite idol, your favorite game, your city, or even your high school.
Zhihu 知乎
Zhihu provides good information and analysis on a wide range of topics, and there are lots of famous people actively participating in discussions.
If you want to know the opinions of “intellectual elites”, Zhihu is the best place to go.
Douban Group 豆瓣小组
Douban has a reputation for being a community of young intellectuals. Anything from literature to minimalism to travel is being discussed here within communities of like-minded people.
7. Chinese website coupled with Baidu SEO
You will need a website in China, and you should see it not as a separate hub of information but as a part of the digital ecosystem that consumers would pass till they reach the buying stage.
What to keep in mind before launching your website in China
Well-integrated with social media
When you create a website, you need to look at all the points at which social media popular in China can be utilized. For example, WeChat or QQ should be used for logins to a website built for China.
While virtually every Chinese netizen has an email address, it is used far less than you might expect. Inputting a mobile phone number and receiving a unique SMS confirmation, is much more widespread.
Youku or QQ video should be built into a Chinese website for embedding videos, and WeChat pay and/or Alibaba’s Alipay should be the payment method integrated.
Design and UX
UX or design requires thoughtful and methodical consideration of factors such as environment, attention span, and screen space. As with anywhere, it is highly important that the purpose and audience are clearly defined when creating a website for China.
China is a mobile-first country, so your website must be adapted for mobile device usage. Additionally, integrating the website that you create for China with WeChat or building a Chinese WeChat minisite will create a more seamless user experience.
Besides, when looking to build Chinese websites, the content architecture, image choice, and user flow must be evaluated for Chinese audiences.
To succeed in China, a Business Localized content instead of translated content
The Chinese language is full of high-contextual meaning and your website will have to be using the Chinese language (Chinese characters). International businesses can not afford to be cheap! You should hire professionals for your china content.
When creating a website for China, it is important to keep in mind that the content should speak directly to your target market: the Chinese consumer.
Rather than hire a translator, hire a copywriter with knowledge in your specific industry that can adapt and polish your content for a Chinese audience.
Domain and Hosting
If you want your website to rank on Chinese search engines, your website must be hosted in China.
To host your website in China, your Chinese website domain name must be managed by a Chinese registrar, your organization must be registered in China, and you must apply for an ICP license.
An ICP license is a permit issued by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology that is mandatory for China-based websites to operate in China.
Applying for an ICP license can take some time, so it is important to plan this in advance when you build a Chinese website.
A website is pointless if not seen on Baidu
Similar to the West, search engine optimization is one important pillar of your digital marketing plan. And in the Chinese market, Baidu is the king.
Considering that +80% of Chinese consumers conduct intensive searches online (either on search engines, social media, or e-commerce platforms) to learn about products or services, being visible on Baidu is critical to capturing targeted traffic to your website and ultimately generating sales.
In China, Baidu holds the most market share. A myriad of smaller and vertical search engines like Google CN, Sogou, Soso, eTao, and Qihoo 360 exist – each caters to a specific target group.
Knowing which China Search Engine to invest in and the right budget allocation makes all the difference in your search ROI.
In addition, an integrated search engine strategy that combines both China Search Engine Marketing (SEM PPC) and China Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is also important to your overall China Search Marketing ROI.
8. Live-streaming
Live streaming is one of the biggest revelations of recent years and it became especially profitable and popular during the COVID-19 pandemic. As people were locked at home, they started watching streaming videos, to see the quality and usage of products they were interested to buy. Live streaming is a huge industry in China, attracting more and more consumers and streamers every day.
One of the main reasons for its popularity is the fact, that due to many scandals with fake products and bad quality of services, most consumers don’t trust the official promotion of brands. They prefer to rely on friends’ and influencers’ opinions and recommendations. Live-streaming is another step, as they can see products live, in real use.
There are many streaming platforms, like Taobao Live, Douyin, and Wiya, where there are long live streams, showing how to prepare meals, or do perfect make-up. There are also streams of people picking vegetables, showing the exact quality of products that are available to purchase. Live-streaming is one of the leading tools in digital marketing in China in 2023 and it’s worth investing money and time in leveraging this function for your brand.
9. Video is the future of Content Marketing in China
The number of Chinese video users is constantly increasing year after year, this number is also due to the booming of smartphone users and the booming of the digital era. It is not only about watching movies, short films, or music video clips. You can deliver a message, target a customer, engage your customer, display a video ad, and make consumers buy.
A video is an all-in-one tool; utilizing visuals, text, and audio, which is the reason why it is a really efficient tool. Apart from longer videos, the digital marketing landscape in the Chinese market is being flooded by applications and features offering short videos.
The most popular one, Douyin, known as Tik Tok outside of China, is one of the most successful mobile apps worldwide. In China, Douyin offers much more functions, with integrated live-streaming and e-commerce features, offering consumers an all-in-one experience.
Apart from Douyin, there are other apps, some are dedicated to short videos and live-streaming only (like Kuaishou), while others add the short-videos feature to their existing offer (like WeChat Channels in the WeChat app).
10. Metaverse, phygital and virtual realities
You have probably heard many times about O2O, it is the new trend that you need to optimize if you want to succeed in your marketing campaign.
Now that AI dominates the headlines, the Metaverse seems like yesterday news.
And while I by no means would advise to make it the central pillars of your Chinese digital marketing strategy, it has its uses as a complementary channel. And in some cases can help you go viral on Chinese social media.
The connection between online and offline seems to be closer than ever. Consumers are discovering products online, making a selection of the products that they like the most, they can then experience it offline by going directly to the showroom or to the stores, the whole process can still be linked digitally with interactive WeChat accounts and websites.
Another thing that really speeded up in 2023 is the metaverse, and the use of virtual reality in marketing and e-commerce. Something that is still rather unknown in the West, is a whole big thing, leveraged by most of the biggest brands in China.
Companies like Maybelline, Gucci, Coca-cola are opening their metaverse stores, collaborate with games to create engaging content for younger generations, that are very excited about the new trend and want more. There are virtual fashion shows on Xiaohongshu, or virtual collections of NFTs to purchase. We can say, that this is definitely the hottest trend of this year and it will definitely stay.
11. User experience and customization
Because of the huge number of marketing campaigns, you have to focus on your customers’ sensibilities, and experience and you have to understand your customer’s needs and create a real, meaningful experience. However, the point here is to be creative, you have to engage your customers not only by sending them advertising messages but also by encouraging their self-expression and individual participation.
More and more brands are turning their consumers into designers or brand representatives. Consumers are not loyal to brands and can easy switch to other foreign companies offering similar products, if they have more attractive branding or more engaging UX design.
Young consumers want their products to be unique and personalised, so that they can show off something different than all the rest. Many companies offer customized products or engaging experiences, to attract young consumers to their brands. Offering something unique is also very helpful in creating buzz and attracting Key Opinion Leaders, that might get interested and start to talk about your brand.
12. Localize your Digital Strategy to China
Last, but certainly not least: focus on local marketing strategies.
You may have probably heard this a million times, but focusing on local doesn’t mean that you will need to completely change your products, tastes, and preferences to local ones. The idea is actually to understand the customer’s needs and adapt your product whilst not forgetting one’s core product strategy.
For example, have you ever tried those colorful burgers at KFC, a pink spicy hamburger? This is roasted cheese spicy chicken with pink bread. The brighter colors proved to be a strong novelty in China and effectively generate sales for KFC, they kept a distinct brand whilst responding to consumer demand. Below you can see another of localized products in KFC – Chinese hot pot.
Another example is Starbucks, that, apart from coffee, offers a big variety of tea flavours in its cafes. The most famous and the biggest one, located in Shanghai, offers more than 20 different tea flavors.
![邮件咨询 zhanfa.tuscbec.com](javascript:Site.hoverQrCode("//32708349.s21i.faiusr.com/4/1/ABUIABAEGAAg_8W3uAYozsLc2AcwmAM4nQM.png",this,{"tips":"请使用微信扫一扫"});){kind=link}