Econsultancy have held their second Digital Cream senior marketers round table meeting in Shanghai. China is of corse one of the major players in global markets, and with such a massive population global brands would love to tap in to the massive potential customer base, and digital is properly the best way to crack this market.

Statistics on the Chinese internet market are staggering to comprehend. Here are some fascinating stats from www.chinainternetwatch.com:

• China mobile bank transactions in Q3 2013 reached 3.7 trillion yuan (USD 604 billion), with a 35.9% QoQ increase.
• Take Ecommerce by itself, by the end of June 30 2013, China ecommerce transactions hit 4.4 trillion yuan (USD 713.27 billion). This is up 24.3% compared to last year.
• B2B transactions in themselves hit 3.4 trillion yuan (USD 551.17 billion), a 15.3% YoY increase.
• Baidu, still China’s dominant search engine although facing stiffer competition these days, announced its third quarter finance report recently, with its Q3 total revenue reaching 8.89 billion yuan (USD 1.453 billion), 42.3% more than in Q3 2012.

Below are some of the problems facing brands trying to break the Chinese market, and some discussion points from the Econsultancy meeting.

Why is mobile marketing becoming so important in China?

Not many brands are doing mobile very well at present, but everybody recognises its importance in China.

Key challenges ahead:

• How to integrate mobile into overall digital strategy?
• How to link mobile to other platforms?
• How to connect online to offline experiences?
• Once you have the app, how to drive traffic to the app?
• How to monetize the app?

Key insights from the discussions:

• An app is not necessarily the right tool for every brand. An app has to have a utility, otherwise you are likely to be setting yourself up for failure.
• In terms of platforms, it’s all about WeChat (Weibo is in decline) – e.g. new option to create HTML mini site within WeChat.
• It’s crucial to personalise messages to customers in order to not be perceived as spam / annoying.
• In terms of innovation, the next big thing is predicted to be iBeacons / NFC technology,which allows messages to be pushed to users’ phones based on their location (e.g. if they’re in the supermarket in the wine aisle, they could receive a message about a special promotion from one brand that has placed an iBeacon/NFC there).

Social media in China, the ups and downs

• Every brand has set up its own official Sina Weibo account. But all of them think Weibo’s influence is declining rapidly these days, even though Weibo is still considered as the core platform on social media at present.
• Every brand has either launched or is planning to launch its official account on WeChatand they also think WeChat is definitely the “NEXT BIG THING” to happen across social media.
• The positioning of WeChat towards brands is questionable. The brand has struggled to position WeChat as CRM, Customer Service, Interaction (Two way communication)…
• Brands tends not to hire agencies to manage their social platforms, as they think agencies usually don’t fully understand their brands’ heritage, products & details. On the other hand, brands are willing to employ agencies to help develop ideas for their social campaign activities.
• On KPIs, brands think the mixture of being impacts (outcomes) & numbers focused is important, especially as the ‘number’ on its own is not too trustworthy in China market, as it can be easily ‘bought’.
• On social commerce, many brands have mentioned the latest feature of WeChat, Social Purchase on WeChat, and are very interested in exploring this more in the future.