5 Effective Tools that Can Boost Your Brand Image in China
What Makes You a Good Marketer?
What Makes You a Great Marketer?
Feel the Difference?
There is a whole generation gap between the two questions. What will make your brand stand out is the trigger to create a strong brand image? Each country has a distinct outreach for market and targeting consumers but what makes you stand out in the market is your practice and self-driven goals that will skyrocket your business to the top.
When you think of approaching a foreign market, be as native as possible. Well, you do not want to feel it like a wild goose chase so to make an approach worth the effort there are certain ways to ensure a safe passage into a market. In China, consumer behavior is far different as compared to the US or UK. People prefer to move towards the local products and services instead of reaching offshores.
Why Become the Flower of Attraction for the Bees?
What is your ultimate score? To be able to reach millions of consumers despite the political and geographical boundaries.
In China, you have to play it smart and something out of the book of general thumb rule. To brand yourself in Chinese market there are few pointers you need to memorize;
- China is not a single market but an integration hub for the foreign and international markets.
- Prepare your strategies that will educate Chinese consumers about your product or services
- Ensure government policies and rules do not conflict with your policies.
- Conducting a thorough survey is the lead to ensure future sales in the Chinese market.
- Use Chinese translation services with impeccable quality to promote the brand and the list just goes on.
5 Ways One Solution: Boosting Brand Image in China
A starting point for any brand is to be able to differentiate amid other brands. Because reputation in China means everything, it’s a vital lifeline for all business to survive in the long run.
It will not matter whether you are a famous brand in western countries, if you are unable to appease the Chinese consumer in terms of localizing the product or service, then you are out!
To collect the scattered dignity back, you need to focus on the following techniques to make your way in the Chinese market.
Forget Google, Say Hi To Baidu
Businesses rely on Google as a human relies on oxygen for breathing.
Chinese are pro-creators i.e. they can imitate a product and name it, market it, and make it an overnight success. But it is also not without a proper struggle. Can you think of using another browser server instead of Google?
In China, Baidu is the new Google. Anything you want to search from their perspective is on this platform. Baidu targets the Chinese market and at a strong level at that. As long as you are under the working code of Baidu, use the local versions of the following platforms will help to proceed with the repute;
- Baike – Chinese Wikipedia
- Baidu Zhidao and Zhihu – native Quora
- Tieba – Chinese platform for forums
People follow Baidu blindly, whatever search it offers is wired in consumer’s mind and they do not second guess for other options either. It’s hard to convert from Google, but oh the things you do for business…
Tangible Forums Are Your New Friends
Local forums are one of the most interactively integrated platforms, to learn about the industry and the public. Chinese people are always curious about the products and services and do not shy from providing feedback.
However, if you get a bad review from any single user, you are doomed for good, such as the power a consumer hold over your brand. Instead of targeting a wider audience, it’s advised to focus on a segmented forum at your initial stage. Start slow, but start from a strong base. Once you reach the desired quality of reviews, you can further expand your product or service to another segmented audience.
But remember you aim to elevate brand awareness through these forums. Do not let your business die when it’s only starting to breathe.
Eat and Breathe E-Media
Electronic media plays the role of Superman in this case. From the comic-cons to fashion magazines, people now target e-magazines to learn about the latest updates. These platforms are trustworthy in the eyes of Chinese consumer. Especially, for the technology sector, people do not easily rely on any new player in the series, they trust the old one even if it provides old features.
It’s all about reputation. People are never happy to take risks in foreign brands as long as you can localize your brand in the language your consumer understands you will see hurdles even to target the right e-media.
Most articles, forums, blogs, etc. are readily occupied by the native influencers that are the new style icons for the Chinese consumers. Approach the apps, localize, translate, and think like a native.
Social Media Is Your International ID
Long gone are the days when Myspace or Orkut were the high media platforms. Even with the ongoing strength of Facebook, internationally, people of china are more reluctant towards using it. Why? They want the comfort of their language and do not want to keep translating everything.
Despite the variety of social media platforms, Chinese, as always, produce a native version for everyday use such as;
WeChat is one of the popular trendings in use these days. It’s a marketing goal to nurture new prospects that will upgrade your advertising and maintain a high profile for the support. Alongside you have Little Red Book and Douyin on your list of items too to engage people on a well-approached platform and help you display products, let users engage with videos and story highlights. Make a name for yourself in these social media slash business profiles.
Celebrity Who? It’s the Season of Kol
We are living in an era of influencers. Influential market, relatively the latest concept, has taken up by the storm and changing the brand endorsement game altogether. When brand ambassador as a predecessor, these days thanks to YouTube channels, there are certain vloggers a little upscale heavily influencing their followers. Followers are subject to their influencers the way they talk, eat, what they wear etc. these Key Opinion Leaders act as a new hope for the brands.
These KOL are the trendsetters and also consumers like the respective niche. With million followers they can make or break the trend of a brand.
Approach them in good terms, use their popularity to your advantage but with a mutual benefit of course.
Final Thoughts
With the latest tools and perfect synchronized collaborations can save the day and make you the apple’s eye of the Chinese consumers. Take keen steps and earn what you rightfully deserve.
