By Shizeng Guo

China has 234 million Internet users, many people may want to know how they can advertise their website on Chinese Internet so that they can benefit from this huge market. Well, if you already have a website, let me tell you the how-to’s.

1. You need to make a Chinese website. Yep, you will need a Chinese website. The reason is that Chinese language is the dominant language in China. Even though there is a small portion of population in China who has good command of English, most people in China speak, read and communicate in Chinese language. There are quite several Chinese dilates including Gan, Guan (Mandarin or Beifang), Kejia (Hakka), Min (including the Hokkien and Taiwanese variants), Wu, Yue (Cantonese) and etc. But in writing, there are only two types of Chinese characters: traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese. If you are targeting Chinese speakers in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, you need to have your website translated into traditional Chinese. Read the rest of “How to Advertise Your Website in China” or post a comment

ComScore recently published a statistic for the world’s Internet population. In views of the regional spread, the Internet audiences of Asia Pacific are almost equal to the combined US and Europe. China has the largest Internet population with 179.7 million. I am suddenly inspired by all these numbers and I want to share two tactical advertising approaches based on this demographic spread. This is how I am going to connect the dots.

Read the rest of “Tactics To Target Buyers In China” or post a comment >>

By Shaun Rein

At the recent ad: tech Shanghai where over 1500 people attended, Shaun Rein moderated a discussion over the future of e-commerce in China with leading experts from companies like Dell (DELL).

Moderator: Shaun Rein, China Market Research Group
Panelists: Joe Nguyen from Omniture, (OMTR) Tony Chen from Dell, Robin Zhou from TaoBao, and Lin Li from LiNing

Shaun Rein: Some analysts are not optimistic about the prospects for e-commerce in China. They argue that Chinese consumers do not trust buying items online and that there are lots of problems with payment methods since credit card penetration rates are still low in China. Read the rest of “ad:tech Shanghai’s E-Commerce Panel” or post a comment

By Paul Denlinger

One of the things past experience has taught me that while it is possible to guess that some business will take off in China, it is almost impossible to tell when. The most common scenario is that for many years, a western business will devote its people and resources to making its business popular with Chinese, it will not show results. Frustrated, it will depart China with nothing to show for its hard work and investment. (This happened frequently in the eighties and nineties; now it is much more rare.)

This rule does not just apply to business; it even applies to Chinese government policy. For years, the Chinese government actively urged the Chinese people to travel more; it even increased the number of public holidays, creating the Golden Week holiday around the May Day holiday in the late 90s to get Chinese to travel more, and spend some of their savings. For years, the policy yielded no solid results. Read the rest of “Understanding the Chinese Hockey Stick” or post a comment

By Sam Flemming
This article first appeared on Imedia connection

China’s media network makes internet word of mouth essential to any marketing communications strategy.

Recent internet-driven crises have once again put internet word of mouth (IWOM) into the spotlight. Just a few weeks ago, for example, Dior pulled advertisements featuring Sharon Stone from mainland China after the actress made comments that raised the ire of netizens.

While such events demonstrate the importance of listening to IWOM for reputation management, I would suggest that this is just one of many reasons to listen. IWOM should not just be viewed as a threat, but also an opportunity for better marketing and insight.

Below are six reasons (beyond monitoring for crisis) why brands in China should listen to IWOM.
  Read the rest of “6 reasons brands in China should listen to IWOM” or post a comment