Some Key points when building brand in China's "Digital World"?
After many years of working in multinational FMCG company and Alibaba, here I decided to share some of my insights on "how do build or incubate a brand in China's Digital World"
Brand building isn't something new in China as all people who are working in FMCG industry know. However, the way and the essence of how to get it done is evloving all the time. Nowdays, if you want to ask a guy how to do offline KA business, most of the veterans who have beening work in FMCG will give you more or less very accurate answer on how to get it done. However, if you ask someone that might even an expert on how to incubate brands in nowdays Chinese social medial landscape, very few of them will give you all-around answers. Not only because most FMCG practitioner know parts of the whole picture, but also the fast change digital world that keeps those practitioners from learning quickly enough.
The reason for the above could be seen from:
1,the digital world is changing so quickly that marketers have to focus on very different things from year to year. In 2016 we focus on phenomenon events, in 2017 IP, in 2018 transboundary, in 2019 short videos and livestreaming, no one knows what will come up in 2020. 2,The MKT battlefield has shifted from traditional to mainly on line,which could classified into 8 main categories: Ecommerce platform, social media,live-streaming, Long video, short video, content community, vertial platform and news APP; No one could be an expert in all of those areas;
The digital world is changing so quickly and media landscape is getting more complex, most of the time it's really something confusing for the brands that want to come and succeed in China. Here, I'd like to raise some of the key points that may helpful for those marketers and well as brands. As different organizations have different workforce, professionalism and budget, so I would try to just state the key point that works most possible for them.
Key point 1: Incubating brand is not and never should be the job of marketing or digital-marketing team, but something that has to be worked out together by Digital-marketing, Operation( FGS, consumer assest, livestreaming, product line) and channel sales. Three of the parts have to highly synchronized as one, and the simple reason for this is: we are all always talking about seeding, grass-cultivating and harvest. If there's seeding and no grass-cultivating, it will only boost A and I people; if there's no successive grass-cultiviting by cross-function, then the grass will just die gradually; If there's cultivatiing and no harvest, the ultimate target of boost sales and consumer base will never happen, and there won't much P and L. So, the detialed plan has to be made at least 1.5 months before the campaign begins with exact product line, timing, activity, budget,promotion and price. So, be aware if the channel team is put in sales team, or if the digital-marketing team is put in marketing team, or if there's no operation team at all, better do some optimization now!
Key point 2: Assess the current status you are facing, and then examing the product line carefully and then come up with plans. Do never copy someone that has already succeeded in China, coz most probably you will ended up in a failure.For example, some beauty and cosmetic brand will imitate Huaxizi/Florasis or Perfect Diary with the same strategy that they carried out when incubating the brans. But the thing is you may have different product line and product design with them, and also you may never know whether the team, the circumstances and so on. So, make up the plans with what you are facing and what you want to get. Here are some example for you: (a)if the brand is just created or just entered into China, best way for it will be examing the market and claim/design the product with accurate target and choose the Key SUK that best examplify the brand for the resources to contralize on. Then work on 2 parallel things: centralize all the digital MKT traffic to the Key SKUs in FGS, distribute product to particular stores that has traffic and target consumers to make "sizing city by seizing village first" stragtegy. (b) If the brand has built considerable brand awareness, then speed up the digital MKT investment like livestreaming and socal media from off-Ecommerce platform, and in the meantime, try to build sales-ecosystem by not only TMall FGS, but also JD FGS, VIP FGS offical store with peripheral stores like Taobao store,TM specialty stores and so on; (c) If the brand is already a hug brand with more than 100 million GMV, then it could choose to use celebrity and top KOL to form a KOL matrix combined with Ecommerce platform IP likelittle-black-box or super-brand-day. Always remember 1st to operate with on-ecommerce-platform and off-ecommerce-platform, and 2nd to design the MKT strategy exactly based on what the status is.
Key point 3: Always remember that content is key and high qulity content is the king. Also, there's nener too much to invest in basic content. Some brand made lots of content and distribute into different channesl, while end up very frastrating. Most of them know the improtance, but few of them knows how to get it done correctly. Whereas the logic is quite simple, because no matter how much traffic you will get from either on-platform or off-platform, the final conversion rate will be decided by the basic content, including short video, main photo, first 3 screen of landing page, consumer-show and consumer comment. You could never expect a good conversion rate when the basic content is not good enough. we have best basic content material, we then make sure that we will most likely to capture traffic when it comes. Once the basic material is ready, then we go second stop to off-platforms to reach out to potential consumers. we could never reverse the steps.
Key point 4: Never neglect the importance of offical account. For very exceptional channels like livestreaing, that shopper buy at first sight. Most shoppers will have to be reach for 4-5 times by the brands and then make the final decision to buy. And before the shopper buy the brand, they will search for information that will once more assure them to buy. So, they will search from: Baidu, Zhihu, Weibo, Little-red-book, Wechat, Douyin, Kuaishou……；So, imaging, what will the shoppers think if there's no offical account existed? So, befor mass marketing, be sure the offical account is done in each of the platform. Actually the offical accounts set on each of the platforms could be leveraged very well when there's good content or big promotion event.
Key point 5: Spend the digital marketing budget in 2 ways: (a) in a step by step and steay timeline other than once for all method; Normally I would suggest do some small digital campaigns first to creat some basic content and gain first batch of consumers to learn more about the consumer-feedback and smoothen the cooperation with MKT agents, then come up with big plans. Never expect there will be perfect plan with big investment will just work things out when the brand awareness is relatively low. (b) arrange the KOLs with a matrix other than just aiming top ones or cost-effective medium ones; Only if the brands have sufficient budget and in order to make the brand exploisve in a short time and hence budget is not the first concern, then quick plan with matrix of top KOL is applicable, other wise, follow what i suggested above.
Actually, there's more key points need to attent to when doing digital MKT in China. and also for each of the above ones, it is the execution that really really matters. As my computer is running out of battery, I will stop here. Hope my first post about digital MKT will bring some help to you.
Best Wishes!