The Complete Guide to Online Marketing in China

China Number of Internet Users 2020

China now has 903 million internet users which is the highest number of internet users of the world (4.33 billion total).

• 99.3% of Chinese internet users access online via mobile devices
• 46% uses desktop
• 36% through laptop
• 28% tablet

Rural netizens: 255 million (28.2%)  |  Urban netizens: 648 million (71.8%)

Since the start of the pandemic, live streaming, online education and mobile payment apps have seen user numbers soar.

Average time spent online also increased by 3.2 hours compared to 2018 to a total weekly average of 30.8 hours as of March 2020.

What is the Great Firewall of China?

China has been very effective in protecting their internet from Western influence. They essentially have their own version of the internet that they can control.

Which websites are blocked in China?

There are too many to name here, but from this list, the following websites and apps are blocked: Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Whatsapp, Youtube, and Quora.

Which Chinese websites or apps are blocked in the US?

Only TikTok and WeChat will possibly be blocked. It is important to note that most of these companies exist because of the Great Chinese Firewall.

How does the Great Firewall of China work?

Three state-owned internet providers in China: China Unicom, China Telecom, and China Mobile.

Four filtering mechanisms:

Establishing your brand in China

1. Market research — Are Chinese consumers willing to buy your product or service?
2. Competitive analysis — Learn from competitors' sales methods
3. Set KPIs — Set short term and long term goals
4. Create online presence — A China-ready website and social media strategy
5. Online marketing — Organic and/or Paid advertising

How to sell your product through Cross-border e-commerce in China?

Tmall only accepts well-known brands with ±$100 million in revenue per year. JD.com is cheaper and accepts medium-sized businesses as well.

China cross-border payment methods

Assuming you don't have a Chinese business with a Chinese bank account registered, you will need a PSP (Payment Service Provider) to help you with the cross-border transactions.

• You'll be able to receive money from Mainland China into your overseas bank account
• Your PSP will charge around 2% to 3% for each transaction
• Make sure your PSP has good customer and tech support (Regulations change all the time!)

The most common payment methods in China

China Mobile Payment Market Share 2019 Q3

• Alipay — 54.5%
• Tenpay (WeChat Pay) — 39.5%
• Yi wallet (Ping An bank) — 1.5%
• Others — 4.5%

China online shopping growth 2020

Before COVID-19 we already saw a steep year on year growth in the number of people shopping online in China. That number has since increased significantly to 710 million users.

670 million use the Taobao app to do their online shopping. Taobao is part of the Alibaba group and is the biggest online marketplace in China. Tmall is also integrated into this app and is connected to the Alipay payment provider.

Touchpoints before a Chinese consumer buys your product

There is one major noticeable difference between Western and Chinese consumers: before making a purchase, the Chinese consumer is always asking whether the product is real or a copy. If the Chinese person does not know for sure that the product you're selling is authentic, they most of the time won't buy it.

How does the Chinese consumer know the difference between real and fake?

1. Chinese like to buy from a marketplace like Taobao or Tmall. Tmall has real brands only.
2. An official website that is being linked to from the English official brand site shows the Chinese website is the real thing.
3. A WeChat verified account that shows the brand is the account owner.

China leading B2C e-commerce market share 2019

• Tmall (Taobao) — 50.07%
• JD.com — 26.5%
• Pinduoduo — 12.79%
• Suning — 3.04%
• Vip.com — 1.88%
• Others — 5.52%

China Internet Economy Revenue 2020

The revenue of China's internet economy was 3.66 trillion yuan in 2017. With roughly a 42% year on year growth rate, annual revenue increased to 7.37 trillion yuan in 2020.

China online advertising market 2020

Online advertising took a massive hit during COVID-19. From Q4 2019 to Q1 2020 we saw a 35% reduction. The good news is that Q2 showed the online advertising market bouncing back.

China search engine growth 2020

In March 2020, 750 million Chinese users are using the Chinese search engines — 83% of all Chinese internet users. Baidu is still in the lead owning 67% of all online searches. Sogou is catching up, especially on desktop, so consider including Sogou in your China online marketing strategy.

Top Chinese Search Engines 2020 Q1

Baidu SEO

Since Baidu is the most used search engine in China, here are our top optimization recommendations:

1. Test your website from mainland China! Test the loading speed and learn where the bottlenecks are. Aim for a quick loading website.
2. Use the Baidu keyword tool for your keyword research. The search volume is still pretty accurate. Find out the competition for the keywords — if there are more than 1000 title results it gets pretty competitive. TIP: Use a keyword in your Chinese brand name — your brand name is your most important keyword.
3. Optimize your pages with Meta Keywords. Google doesn't use these anymore, however Baidu loves it when you use meta keywords on each page.
4. Write a title filled with keywords. The title can have max 80 characters (40 visible in Baidu SERP). Meta description max 200 characters (65 visible in Baidu SERP).
5. Don't use direct translations when your Chinese website is on another domain. Rewrite parts of your content so Baidu does not punish you for translated duplicate content.
6. Submit your website to Baidu and add the sitemap.

Baidu SEO Case Study

How Michelle's new website went from 0 to 36,359 visitors in the first 6 months through SEO only.

Michelle decided to have an English name generator website created for naming newborn babies or for Chinese students studying abroad who require an English name.

The amazing thing to note is that all these visitors came to the website via Baidu and Sogou, just through organic SEO. $0 was spent on advertising!

1. First, we did the keyword research and found a keyword with little competition that exactly described the service: "Custom made English name" (定制英文名). There's loads of search volume for it and little competition.
2. We decided to use this keyword as the company/website name — because Baidu treats your brand name as your most important keyword.
3. By implementing all the other steps (fast hosting, optimizing text/meta tags, etc) we ranked in the top 3 search results pretty much from day one.

Baidu Advertising

The Chinese equivalent of Google Ads. Requirements to register an advertising account with Baidu:

1. Submit a copy of your (overseas) business license
2. Bank statement
3. A screenshot of your country's official business registration website showing your company is registered
4. A domain that contains Chinese language, with acceptable loading speed from Mainland China, and matching company name/address to your business license

Once set up, you can top up the account with advertisement credit and create your campaign. You can submit documents to Baidu yourself at e.baidu.com, or use an agency that already has an established agreement with Baidu.

Baidu Analytics

Baidu Analytics is very similar to Google Analytics. To get a complete picture consider setting up: Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Baidu Analytics, and Baidu Zhanzhang (similar to Google Search Console). The good news is that setting up Google Analytics does not slow down your website in China.

Regardless of whether you're selling B2C or B2B, your potential customer will search your brand on Baidu to see if you're the real thing.

Three things to consider when designing a Chinese website:

• Having a website hosted in Europe means slow loading speed from Mainland China
• Chinese design — especially on mobile, the Chinese internet user navigates differently
• Remove all scripts/files loaded off-site — this increases your website speed significantly since scripts from Google and other websites will time out or load very slowly
• Ideally have Mandarin as the only language on the domain. If that's not possible, direct the Baidu user-agent to the Chinese language

How to speed up your website speed from China?

1. Remove scripts loaded from domains that don't load from China (like Google Fonts)
2. The best hosting up to date is Aliyun/Alibaba Cloud. They have servers in Hong Kong with a special line into mainland China which significantly increases website speed
3. Use a CDN — Alibaba offers a CDN that works well in China

Choosing the right hosting in China

How to create a Chinese website?

• Use Simplified Chinese (Mandarin)
• Focus on funneling traffic to your WeChat Official Account so you can re-target the visitor any time in the future
• Using a contact form is fine, however don't expect the visitor to email you
• Host in China or Hong Kong
• Maintain a design that Chinese are familiar with
• Remove all scripts/files loaded off-site

How to get an ICP license in China?

It's possible to host on a Chinese web server when your domain has applied for an ICP license. Alternatively, you could host your website in Hong Kong, which does not require an ICP.

• The first requirement for an ICP license is that your domain is registered with a Chinese registrar, like Aliyun
• The second requirement is that only a Chinese company can apply for an ICP license
• Once both requirements are met you can start applying

China Top social media users 2020

As of March 2020, out of all Chinese internet users: 85.1% use WeChat, 47.6% use Qzone (QQ), 42.5% use Weibo. WeChat should be included in everyone's China online marketing strategy.

China Mobile Internet Users 2020

Since COVID-19, the average time spent online per day has soared to over 7 hours per day in March 2020 — a 29% increase from the same period in 2019. People are spending an increasing amount of time on instant messaging and online video apps.

WeChat

WeChat has 3 types of accounts:

QQ

Instant messaging app QQ still has 705 million monthly active users. From Tencent, it has been around since 1999 — way before WeChat. A lot of customer service in China is still being done through QQ.

QQ vs WeChat:

• Both apps are from Tencent
• QQ has open groups that anyone can join — the most used functionality WeChat doesn't support
• QQ allows sending big files (WeChat limits to 20MB per file transfer)
• WeChat has far more functionality — also called a "Super App"
• WeChat has around 200 million more users than QQ; teenagers are flocking to QQ since their parents are on WeChat

Weibo

The Chinese version of Twitter has around 459 million monthly active users. There are 2 types of Weibo accounts: Personal and Company. Both can be verified by submitting the right documents. Weibo charges $1,000 for verifying a company account. You can upgrade to a VIP account for $15 per year.

Douyin

Short-video app Douyin is the Chinese version of TikTok, created by Bytedance. It launched in late 2016 and already has 518 million users in 2020, making it one of the fastest-growing apps. Douyin generally attracts users below the age of 24 in the more educated first and second-tier cities.

China online video users growth 2020

China has seen massive growth in its video apps with both Douyin and Kuaishou covering most of the monthly active users. From 2019 to 2020 we saw a 12% growth, reaching 850 million in March 2020.

KOL stands for Key Opinion Leader — also known as "influencers". One of the most popular ways to sell your product in China. Most popular industries for KOL marketing: Beauty, Fashion, Fitness, Parenting, F&B, Travel.

China online shopping market 2020

In Q1 2020, Chinese spent 2,116 billion / 2.1 trillion yuan on online shopping. If you're selling a product in China, shopping festivals are key to your online marketing strategy. Make sure you book your KOL well ahead of time before a shopping festival starts.

China Top 20 Mobile Apps by MAU 2020

China Top internet application categories 2020

China internet access by devices 2020

In the past year we saw a 5% drop in desktop users. 99% of Chinese netizens access the internet via mobile phone. Since Chinese are spending over 7 hours a day on their mobile phone, that's where you will want to focus your online marketing efforts.

China avg weekly time spent online 2020

In March 2020 the average time spent online per week is 30.8 hours across all devices. COVID-19 had a significant impact on how much longer Chinese are spending their time online.

How would you like to introduce your brand to your Chinese target audience? There are multiple efficient ways to do this:

1. Deliver your company introduction with great content on your website and social media: your company's values, vision, target audience. Be consistent and communicate with emotion. Advertise on Baidu and use Native ads.
2. Place posts and guest posts on China's biggest platforms like WeChat, Zhihu, Baidu Tieba, Baidu Zhidao. These posts rank well in Chinese search engines and create brand awareness.
3. Use a KOL (influencer) — build a relationship between your brand and the KOL. Implement steps 1 and 2 first to increase conversion rates.

How to create social proof in China for your brand?

• Have positive feedback about your brand on China's most famous Q&A platforms (Zhihu, Tieba, Baidu Zhidao, iask) — so when people search for your brand on Baidu they find positive feedback
• Have a Chinese person — preferably with a social media following — review your product on video. This creates a sense of security for the buyer that the product is real and of high quality

Zhihu

Very similar to Quora where people can ask questions and experts can answer. Benefits: you can fill the question with keywords and the page will rank very well in Baidu once indexed. Lots of visibility — each post shows the number of views. Great for brand awareness even though advertising is not allowed.

Baidu Tieba

A unique platform with no direct Western equivalent. There are topics called "Ba's" — you could create "American Cosmetics Ba" for people to share questions and ideas. Titles can be filled with keywords and they rank very well in Baidu. It creates an online community for specific topics.

Baidu Zhidao (Baidu Knows)

Undoubtedly the biggest Q&A platform in China — Baidu is not shy about ranking Baidu Zhidao results very high in its own search engine, often with multiple results on the first page. You can fill questions with keywords. Advertisement is not allowed, but you can still post positive things about a brand.

Entering the Chinese online market is not for everyone. There are some noticeable differences compared to setting up a marketing campaign in the West.