The Importance of Digital Marketing in China

“Nowadays, doing business in China means doing business with digital in China”. Thanks to Andrea Fenn, co-CEO Adiacent China, for moderating the third session of the webinar series "Entering China through Digital", during which our experts provided valuable insights on digital marketing and legal and IP perspectives in China.

How big is the impact that digitization has had on China in recent times?

With 1 billion active users online, China is the country with the most digitalized consumers in the world.

Companies should approach the Chinese market with a focus on the medium-long term; establish their presence on e-commerce platforms and build their reputation using Social Media and KOLs to engage their audience while paying close attention to their branding strategy.

Unsurprisingly for a country with 1.4 billion people, a huge amount of citizens use social media. In this respect, the country beats Japan, the United States and South Korea. China's social media users are far more active than in other countries.

With more than 1.2 billion monthly active users worldwide, WeChat is by far the largest and most popular Chinese social media app. WeChat users value its all-in-one functionality to search, chat, connect, buy, book, order, pay, and more.

"Generate awareness through content marketing. No matter which platform you choose to do your branding on Chinese social media, 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.
— Anna Gai, General Manager of Eastant Communications & Events agency

The second speaker was Andrea Viganò, Global Ecommerce Manager at Alfaparf Group, a leading Italian company in the beauty sector. At the beginning of their business, their idea was to enter a market with enough space for a new brand. So in the 1980s, they followed an internationalization strategy starting from South America and the United States, then came back to Europe and only recently looked to China and the rest of Asia. When they planned their approach to the very competitive Chinese market in 2022, they decided to boost brand awareness and visibility through marketing and platform events while managing and strengthening sales through a Tmall Flagship Store. They also focused on producing very specific content to suit local taste and set up different collaborations with influencers.

Livestream collaborations, TMall platform events and cooperation with KOCs/KOLs seem to have been quite successful ways to increase traffic so far.

"Advertisement represents the brand image and it could be double edged sorrow if it was arranged improperly; there are all kinds of laws and regulations but all in all it was based on two simple principles: be sincere and be honest to the public, and only work with reliable partners."
— Elle Hu, Regional Head of Legal at OTB Group

The last speaker concluded the webinar focusing on the legal and IP perspective. Elle Hu, Regional Head of Legal at OTB Group, stressed that there are many forms of digital marketing that can be used by companies. Social media is obviously the most popular, but other relevant forms include search engine optimization, promotion on websites, and advertising in movies and TV series. In creating their content, companies need to pay attention to risky points such as collaborations with extremely young spokespersons, the appropriate use of words and images, and careful management of the intellectual property.