Digital Marketing in China – Key Challenges and How to Overcome Them

HONG KONG, Sept. 4, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Everybody is talking about the huge differences between running digital marketing campaigns in China compared with both the rest of Asia, as well as the West. However, it is hard to get anyone focussing on concrete issues, which marketers and professionals should be aware of when trying to break into the Chinese market through digital and integrated marketing campaigns. Through a number of interviews with SES, an educational event series for today's experienced marketing and advertising professionals, industry experts taking part in the forthcoming SES Hong Kong conference on 11-12 September 2012 highlight key challenges to consider and how to tackle them: e-Commerce: Jackey Wang, China country manager of HP, said that "The biggest challenge HP is facing is understanding what our customers' needs are when they visit HP.com to buy something. How do we differentiate our platform image from the various e-Commerce brands on the ground?" To overcome the challenges, HP utilized the data from both web analytics and usability testing to better understand China market behaviours. "A marketing strategy balance between the HP official store and e-retailers is still essential for our China business based on the unique market behaviour we observed," was Jackey Wang's final comment. Cross Border Social Media: Having set up and managed both English and Chinese social media platforms at Swire Hotels, Juliana Loh, Social Media Consultant at JLOH Communications, believes that one of the top challenges is "to launch campaigns and ideas with legs that have longevity." She added: "Very often we see big campaigns going viral, and a huge spike in sales / traffic, but how do we sustain that and across different markets? What do today's fickle consumers want and how do we adapt the campaigns across different markets to achieve the same ROI?" Besides time, research and creativity, Juliana Loh advised marketers to test, track and analyze results of their campaigns and to keep refining and improving their actions. "I think it's still very much an arena that requires trial and error." As Ali Bullock, a global digital marketing and social media veteran, put it: "The key challenges for a successful social media strategy are the words 'social media'. People need to stop thinking about social media and think about communications and communities across every platform and how these will work together." As the main focus, Ali Bullock declared that, "The key priority should be, 'What are we trying to tell our audience of consumers / get them to do?' Start there and move through your channels (PR, press adverts…) as one unit, absolutely powered by social media." Search Engine Optimization (SEO): In a recent video interview, Glen Chu, co-founder and director of Digital Butter, stressed the massive influence and scalability that the growing internet and social media penetration generate for brands in China. He also drew attention to the way search engines refine their methods to match new trends and evolving user online behaviours. In this direction, he concluded that "achieving effective SEO requires constant effort, but having an understanding ofobjectives and pairing them with the right strategy will pay dividends." Analytics tools and large scale data integration: In another video interview, SES met with Charlie Wang, director of digital at Mindshare, based in Beijing, and a seasoned professional, well versed in digital analytics, digital campaign production, marketing data integration and large scale data-warehouse implementations. After giving details of the extreme segmentation of digital analytics tools in China, where there are currently millions of options to choose from, Charlie shared the same views as Avinash Kaushik, who believes that "the focus should not be in the tool but in the analysis of the data." Finally, Charlie Wang recommended Chief Marketing Officers to work closely together with their Chief Technology Officers and their appointed agency to improve large scale data integration, where all consumer data, from social media analysis to internal and transactional data, is integrated and used in targeted and more efficient ways. If you are a senior Asia-based marketer and would like to learn how to resolve these and many other digital marketing and advertising challenges, and to learn from over 50 international experts, contact the SES team at [email protected] or on +852-3411-4844 to join SES Hong Kong on 11-12 September 2012. Media Contact: Pablo Cot Gonzalez Tel: +852-3411-4829 www.SESHongKong.com SOURCE SES Conference & Expo