The Advantages of Advertising on Weibo
Weibo is often considered to be China’s own version of Twitter and this micro-blogging platform is also a way into the Chinese market to sell your products or services with interesting content and campaigns. The platform has many advantages as can be seen with other social media platforms. Weibo advertising can give your business a huge boost when done right. Here is how paid promotions on the platform help.
# 1 – A huge reach
There are over 400 million active users present on Sina Weibo. This large a number presents you with the opportunity to reach out to many customers and even potential buyers by simply placing ads that pop up when through the course of the day when these users interact with their family, friends, and colleagues. The user base is not limited to specific parts of China but all across the country, thus enabling you to target larger geography and build a large fan following with minimum spends.
# 2 – Targeted advertisements
When you advertise through traditional means, there is very little control you have over who views them. Most times, they are delivered to people who hardly care about your product or service and show and yet, you still have to shell out huge amounts of money in the name of marketing. Sina Weibo brings digital advantage to marketing. By allowing for targeting people with specific interests or demographics, this platform helps you make your products or services to people who will genuinely be interested in them. This is a boon as interested prospects are more likely to convert into well-paying customers than random users who have displayed ads through traditional means.
# 3 – Increased website traffic
You may just advertise on Weibo but the platform can direct visitors to your website when tuned accordingly. This can complement your search engine optimization efforts and work like pay per click search result ads, making your business website more discoverable. Better traffic to the website also means better chances of conversions. Given that your website has content and interfaces that appeal to Chinese folk, you improve your chances that these visitors will explore your offering and make a purchase. Thus a social media ad that you post on Weibo can result in actual sales on your website.
# 4 – Improved brand awareness
If you are a brand that is looking to test waters fresh in China and have very little recall among customers, Weibo advertising can help you. Targeted ads, when they appear repeatedly in customer’s social media feeds, can make your brand more easily recognizable among prospects. They may not necessarily take action on your post, but over time, they will remember your name and your offering more easily in a crowded space. What’s more, when interested people share your content among their circle or discuss your offering among their friends and family, your brand becomes more popular and well-known to your target audience.
# 5 – Better value for money
Weibo advertising can give you better results for the same amount of money as compared to other traditional marketing techniques. The search engine provides multiple formats of advertisement with different options for placement. While it may seem daunting at first, a little patience and effort can help you understand and choose the best one for your goals. Also, there is greater flexibility as you can work with minimal budgets and adjust them based on how each ad is performing. There is always the choice to pump in more money or tweak budgets from time to time as you measure the results of these campaigns on a real-time basis. Unlike traditional ad formats where you need to earmark a specific budget and commit to it, advertising on Sina Weibo gives you more flexibility, and thus, more value for money, even on shoestring budgets.
Weibo advertising is an important component of digital marketing, especially for businesses who want to tap into the Chinese market. Established and professional Chinese digital marketing agencies can get your brand established on Weibo in an effective manner, especially when you have constraints with resources in new geography.
WeChat Marketing Guide for B2B
WeChat was launched as a messaging app. Even though it still serves this function; WeChat developed into a much larger application with plenty to offer to the users. You can make payments, shop, book flights, and even look for other people on WeChat in nearby locations.
The app has really robust m-commerce capabilities. It allows businesses to leverage it and connect directly with consumers. WeChat offers different features enabling businesses to market their brands really well through the platform.
Here’s more information on how to go about WeChat marketing for B2B.
Open WeChat Account
For B2B WeChat marketing, you will first need to open your company’s official account on the app. Your options are to choose from subscription, service, and enterprise accounts. Depending on the nature of your business, you can choose any one of these to get started with WeChat marketing.
Create and Post Useful Content
You will need useful content to connect with your direct customers on WeChat. The content you create must be original and relevant to your customer base. If your content is worthy of sharing with others, it will gain more traction as more WeChat users will find their way to your business through it.
Initially, it is a good idea to gear content towards establishing your brand authority with product insights, industry knowledge, and useful blogs that can help your consumers in some way. It is also important to post content on your official account related to the company’s founder/s, history, and interesting tidbits related to your business. Such posts humanize a brand and help consumers connect better with them. It can also be helpful for you to share images or videos of social events celebrated in your company.
The content needs to be varied, updated regularly, and really needs to be engaging for your consumers and prospects.
QR Code It
WeChat platform heavily utilizes QR codes for businesses. WeChat users use QR codes to buy goods, services, and book tickets for a flight, movies, etc. Businesses need to integrate QR codes in all promotional materials across the WeChat platform.
Engage and Communicate with Customers
WeChat offers numerous ways to engage directly with your customers. You can use instant messaging and group chat features to communicate with your customers or followers.
For B2B companies, it is more essential to engage with their customers as the actual sales may occur only after the prospects visit their websites and gather more information about their products. B2B purchasing decisions often also require longer time periods than B2C.
Active Participation
There is no fixed time period for WeChat marketing. It has to be an ongoing effort. B2B companies not only face competition from other brands in the same space but also from B2C companies on WeChat that are more easily able to gather a following on the app simply due to the nature of their business.
For instance, it is easier to make a decision about buying a pair of shoes, a bag, or a toy than to purchase software just by looking at its description on a social page. Consumers are more likely to take their time to mull over their software buying decision, compare similar ones available in the market for pricing and features, and analyze its utility before buying it.
So, it is important to continuously offer your followers fresh content in a variety of forms and keep your account updated.
Be in Analytic Mode
WeChat marketing requires businesses to be in an analytic mode always. Yes, the platform offers access to billions of users in the competitive Chinese market. But this also means immense competition from thousands of brands in your business category alone if not more. Then there are other distractions for WeChat users (including your consumers) on the app.
So, for effective B2B WeChat marketing, companies need to not only measure the success of their campaigns and efforts. But they also need to be vigilant about their competitors’ marketing efforts on the platform and their effectiveness.
You will need to check the users’ pages to know more about them and understand their requirements. You will then need to provide them with the content they are looking for and actually need.
The Importance of Search Engine Marketing
Search engine marketing is an integral part of business promotion nowadays. In today’s world where consumers are willing to shop for everything online; businesses need to mark their presence on the Web with clever and useful marketing strategies.
Search engine marketing is a way for businesses and brands to promote their services and products. It is also a way for them to connect with their consumers and prospects.
Search Engine Marketing – a Business Necessity
Search engine marketing is now necessary for optimum business success. Even if your business consists of a brick-and-mortar shop, you can use search engine marketing to help your prospects find their way to you.
Whether you are a small business owner or run a corporation, it can be immensely helpful to leverage the power of search engine marketing for greater visibility in new markets. For instance, you can gain greater visibility through search engine marketing in China in case you are launching a new business in this vast country or simply opening a new standalone store.
Search engine marketing involves practices that enable your website to rank higher on search engine result pages (SERPs). These practices come under search engine optimization (SEO) work. When people looking for a product or service in your business category will search online for it then SEO techniques will aid your search engine marketing efforts.
It is simply not possible to remain visible in the crowded online space without SEO. Without a robust search engine ranking and online visibility, it is difficult to remain at the forefront of the mind of your customers and prospects.
Search Engine Marketing – Lending a Helping Hand to Businesses
Search engine marketing is a worthwhile business investment. The return on investment (ROI) on it can be manifold depending on the job done. If search engine marketing is done well, you are definitely going to benefit from it without a doubt.
Depending on your business needs and marketing budget, you can hire experts to perform all the tasks related to search engine marketing. For instance, if you are launching your clothing brand in China then you will need experts to perform search engine marketing tasks using resources relevant for the Chinese territory. There are different search engines and social networks in China not present elsewhere in the world. Your search engine marketing team will need to possess the knowledge of the Chinese market and the way to utilize SEO for the work. Without search engine marketing, it is difficult to experience business success in any territory especially new ones.
A big component of search engine marketing is the distribution of content on different social platforms that are relevant to a business. It helps businesses connect with their existing and prospective customers in a meaningful way. It helps them to form deeper business partnerships with their customers. It is a way to develop trust between customers and brands.
When people connect with a brand or trust a company to offer them the best of products or services; it can have a lasting impact on a business. Your satisfied customers can spread the good word about your business through their interaction with your brand, which will be visible to their entire network or beyond depending on their privacy settings on a social channel.
Search Engine Marketing – Solid Efforts Leading to Solid Results
Search engine marketing is not a magic trick. It requires work on your part. But every effort you put in it is guaranteed to produce solid results if done well.
Merely creating content and distributing it on every social channel is futile when it comes to search engine marketing. Everything needs to be relevant to your business category and the needs of your customers.
SEO involves a lot of technical work other than content creation and distribution. Search engine marketing experts conduct thorough research before starting any work related to it. Research helps them to identify the key areas and tasks required for a successful search engine marketing strategy. They also continue to analyze the results of their work to measure the performance of all the activities related to search engine marketing.
With the aid of such dedicated search engine marketing efforts, you can witness robust results for your business.
The Benefits of Advertising on Weibo
Weibo, China’s most popular social media platform is a great platform for advertisers to advertise their product and reach out to their potential customers. More and more companies are investing in Weibo advertising to penetrate into the Chinese market.
Weibo advertising offers a vast range of benefits. In this post, we will look at them.
1. Massive exposure
Weibo has more than 400 million monthly active users. Who would want to miss the opportunity of reaching out to such a huge audience? Weibo has different advertising options which allow you to interact with your target audience. You can reach out to your target audience and build a large fan base. Weibo has a great penetration rate in the Chinese audience. People from all corners of China use Weibo to interact with their friends, family, and colleagues. Weibo provides massive exposure for brands to target the Chinese audience all across China.
2. Increase sales
Weibo is a great platform for advertising. You can target your potential customers based on their demographics and interests. This ability to target customers based on demographics and interests increases the chances of sales. For example, if you want to advertise for a sports bra, you can choose the women of age 18-50 with interest in shopping and health. You can also choose the location to show the ads to people in the targeted area. You can display ads, run campaigns, form groups, promote content in user’s newsfeed and directly sell on Weibo. You have more control over the audience you want to target in Weibo advertising.
3. Improve brand awareness
There is no secret to improve your brand awareness. You have to consistently keep interacting with your target audience. It takes time to build brand awareness. Advertising options like fan tunnel allow you to promote a specific post or your account at the top of the user’s newsfeed. When you don’t have a huge fan following, these advertising options can really give you immediate followers. And more importantly, Weibo users love to share the content they like. So if you are creating good quality content that resonates with customers, they will love to share it with their friends. This can really give a boost to your brand awareness, earn new customers and build brand recognition.
4. Increase web traffic
Weibo ads can guide users to your company’s website. It increases your website traffic. More importantly, these users are voluntarily visiting your website. So there are probable chances of conversions. When users visit your website, they can learn more about your product or services. And if they like your product, they are more likely to purchase it. Increased quality web traffic also help in SEO of your website as well.
5. Low expenses
One of the major perks of advertising on Weibo is it offers high returns on investments. To create the same impact by other marketing options, you have to invest a huge amount whereas Weibo can do the same at very low expense. You can reach out to customers all over China. And more importantly, your business is available to customers 24/7. Weibo ads are a budget-friendly option for both SME and large businesses.
6. Enhanced customer support
Weibo advertising allows easy and quick interaction between customers and business. Your customers can reach to you anytime. If they have any issues, they can message you and reach to you quickly. You can provide them better customer support by resolving their issues. This increases your brand credibility and builds brand loyalty. More importantly, this ease of interaction allows you to understand your customers better. They can comment on your post, give feedbacks and post suggestions to let you know what their needs are.
So these are the key benefits of advertising on Weibo. If you are planning to launch your product in the Chinese market, indeed, Weibo advertising is a great way to start your marketing and advertising campaign.
What Every Business Owner Must Know About Digital Marketing?
China not only regarded as the most populous nation but also the largest netizens inhabitation in the world. Through the rapid growth of science and technology, China has become a computerized country. One must consider this while doing business related to an internet domain. Everyday opportunities sprout fiercely in China but with many challenges like language problems, internet censorship, the difference in culture, complexity, etc but it is worth a try. Unlike other Asian countries, China has its own services and products of technologies rather depending on the western countries. Therefore, to have your presence in digital marketing in China you need to use their search engine and social media for becoming successful. The below mentioned tips will help you to head in the right direction.
The rapid increase in Mobile Usage – According to the Chinese Government, 802 million people are using the net as of 2018, which is 57.7 percent of the total population. Interestingly, 788 million people are mobile users that are a whopping 98 percent of the nation’s total user base. Meanwhile, the revenue in social media advertising as of 2019 is $14, 760 m and by 2023, it will result to $42, 692m where there is the annual growth rate of 30.4 percent. In 2014, mobiles ad accounted for 6 percent of the market and research suggests that by 2019 it will be 80 percent. In China, who have pay per click Baidu accounts, Baidu is trying to get more advertising dollars by giving mobile-friendly features like enhanced CPC bidding and call extension.
The vision for Digital Marketers:
Visitors always expect a user-friendly and smooth experience on your sites whether they are using a desktop or a smartphone. As different marketing tactics and paid search is driving traffic to your site, one need to be serious about prioritizing mobile optimization and evaluation of mobile site performance in 2019. The paid search marketers must carefully analyze the return on investment from desktop and mobile campaigns and allocate specific budgets across devices. While running campaigns on mobile, do not forget to check the guidelines mentioned in Baidu’s whitepaper.
WeChat plays a significant role in Business – WeChat announced at the Tencent Global Partners Conference that their app had 1,082 million active users by September 2018. There are more than 4 million monthly active official accounts that are serving over 800 million official account users. Statistics show that WeChat leads the social media industry and it shows that unlike western nations, Chinese netizens prefer using instant chatting tools for communication at the workplace. It is the most frequently used tool over QQ and phone.
The vision for Digital Marketers:
There is an increase in competition for an audience using official WeChat accounts. Business-to-Business marketers must give extra effort for getting the right audience and provide customized content for grabbing the niche content. It is a known fact that Chinese people love to use WeChat for business, so to become successful in digital marketing in China, the marketer must work closely with the sales team for providing a seamless journey for buyers and visitors. Think more about the content quality, use the platform more for communicating with the prospects like generating a conversation window that will help the visitors to quickly contact you or create a QR code so that people can easily follow your account.
Targeting the Right Audience – In 2017, more than 57 percent of the ads spend went towards the internet that means the digital marketing landscape has become more competitive. For generating a good ROI, marketers have to talk to the right people at the right time by using the right tools. Social media platforms like WeChat, Weibo, Baidu, and Tieba have launched advertising products that target audience for increasing sales and marketing performance. For example, Baidu’s product for targeting people has become more sophisticated. It has features like filtering out people’s gender and age, browsing history, keyword search history, and their interests.
The vision for Digital Marketers:
Marketers dealing B2B segment must take advantage of the targeting options available on Baidu and social media platforms. These tools help in creating an integrated marketing plan with paid campaigns that will target selected audience from various platforms.
