Building brand awareness in China is extremely important. Brand awareness is generally regarded as the first step in the buying process, and the most important point is, without awareness, the consumer will generally not consider your brand for purchase. There are rare cases (e.g. impulse buying, or some lower engagement categories), those purchases may take place without knowing the brand. But normally, increase brand awareness can help you reduce the reliance on consumers finding you by chance, because you’ll find them.
Leverage the power of social media to build your brand awareness in China
There’s no question that social media is an powerful tool for building your foreign brand in China. By creating a strong social media presence, you can connect with Chinese consumers in a way that’s meaningful and relevant to them. You can also create a more personal connection with your target audience, which can help build trust and loyalty. Here are some of the most useful tips;
WeChat will help you engage with followers
WeChat is one of the most popular apps in the world and in China, with 1.26 billion active monthly users as of 2022. It’s one of the Chinese super-apps, where you can check news, companies’ profiles, services in daily life, updates from friends.
WeChat has many great features, it help brands reach their Chinese consumers in many different ways. It has public accounts, newsletters, videos, ads or shops, and mini-games. It can be used for shared content, as a CRM, or as an e-commerce platform.
Weibo is good to increase brand awareness and going viral
Weibo is one of the most popular social media platforms in China, it is similar to Twitter. It offers many services, such as social activities, creating micro-blog, sending messages, following brands, KOLs, and trends, live streaming, and gaming activities.
It is a one-to-many platform. Weibo is a great tool for reaching out to a bigger audience and gaining more consumers. you can redirect the audiences to your brand’s website or WeChat official account. Although WeChat has more impact on call-to-action campaigns, Weibo is a better tool to reach out to new consumers and build brand awareness. It’s best to have an account on both of them, because the marketing campaigns and audiences are different on both of these platforms.
Weibo helps to increase brand awareness, ensure great visibility for events and promotions through ad-hoc communication. With user-friendly content, insert external links to the brand’s e-commerce, it can lead to word of mouth. Thanks to hashtags, you can build a real community around your products and gain visibility in China.
Other social media platforms to build brand awareness in China: Little Red Book, Douyin
Apart from the two main social media platforms in China, which are Wechat and Weibo, there are many more apps that can help you build good branding in China and reach out to Chinese consumers. When it comes to the ones most trendy among young people, we can choose Little Red Book and Douyin.
Little Red Book app is one of the most popular apps of recent years. It can be compared to Instagram, but with more features. Companies can sell their products through a built-in marketplace. Consumers use the app mainly for inspiration, and the majority of users are women. They share tips, check their favorite influencers and brands and many more.
Douyin is a social media platform in China that is owned by Bytedance, the same company that owns TikTok. It lets users create and share short videos with friends and other users on the app. Videos can be up to 15 seconds long, and users can add filters, music, and text to their videos. Douyin also has a live streaming feature that lets users live-stream videos to their followers. There is also a marketplace where companies can sell their products to Douyin consumers.
KOLs are the best option to advertise your brand on social media
KOLs (Key opinion leaders) are influencers on Chinese social media. Internet users trust KOLs a lot, a partnership with the right KOL that shares your values could bring popularity to your brand, even if you’re a small company. Nowadays influencers are a key factor to consider while planning a social media marketing strategy.
If you want to increase brand awareness, you should consider working with KOLs. If you don’t want to invest that much since KOLs are fairly expensive, you can think of working with smaller influencers, so-called KOCs (Key Opinion Consumers), which are normal consumers that can promote your brand for less money or even for free, in exchange for gifts.
Branding in China Sum Up
When planning your strategy for the Chinese market, never forget the power of a good reputation and branding. The word of mouth is the keyword to keep in mind, be patient to work hard to spread your value.
Contact Deep Digital China for more details.