When it comes to a successful marketing strategy, businesses will likely make the mistake of thinking that one type strategy is enough for every location or market. But defining a marketing strategy suitable for all countries or an entire content is the wrong tactic for business growth. Localising your marketing is one of the fundamental pillars of your strategy.
A successful marketing strategy means that you first need to decide the market you want to enter, the goal and then the action you want to take for localising the strategy. Pay attention here: this is not only about translating the content in another language, in our case, in Chinese.
How to localize your business in China
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Translate your website in Chinese: users and online shoppers prefer to read websites, web pages, information about services or products, or blog articles in their native language, this is a matter of fact. It’s gonna be easier for them to navigate on your website and will also influence their customer experience. Beware of the results of automatic translation tools, better call a native speaker to take care of it.
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Offer native payment methods: In China, there is the option of paying with a credit card or on delivery, but they mostly use WeChat Pay and Alipay, so they must be added to your payment methods.
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Offer services and products based on their interest: Chinese people have different tastes and like different things compared to westerners, so you need to adapt your service, products, and design to their interests. McDonald’s is the perfect example, they knew that beef burgers couldn't become a bestsellers, so they introduced new dishes just for their Chinese menu.
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Take into consideration cultural sensitivity: avoid taboos, and topics that are sensitive for the audience, and respect their way of thinking, point of view, and traditional customs. For example, the famous Dolce&Gabbana brand in 2018, made an inappropriate joke in one of their advertisements and causing a huge and negative impact on their sales.
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Choose the right social media platform: even though it has already been said a lot of time, it’s worth reminding you of the platforms that are most used in China, like Wechat, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Weibo etc.
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Create Native Ads: text, images, banners, and keywords used they all must be in the native language, following the native trends, and be advertising on native platforms.
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Keep up with trends: China is a high-speed technology-based country and when we talk of trends on the internet, the users’ interests change in a flash. The moment you manage a topic/tool well, a new trend is already behind the corner.
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Target Generation Z: in China most of the sales increased thanks to this new independent, globally aware, and privileged generation. Of course, the segmentation of the target group must be suitable for your service/products but having Gen Z in mind can always be helpful in the future.
All these points described above bring to one important and effective solution to create the perfect localized content in China: have a local partner!
With an efficient and smart communication strategy in your marketing, with the help of local partners, you can build a successful brand in Mainland China.
If you need step-by-step support for your marketing in China don’t hesitate to contact us. We will be happy to answer all your questions.
