Hi everyone and welcome back to another edition of The Pulse, where I share a collection of noteworthy China marketing campaigns and content trends.

I cover quite a few topics in this July episode including:

• Trending domestic travel destination in Ningxia nicknamed “China’s Route 66” and  “China’s Morocco”
• The massive growing demand for edible Bird’s Nest and the two brands that ranked 1 and 2 in Taobao’s Pharmaceuticals category during this year’s 618 shopping festival
• My tips for how brands can leverage the super popular reality show “Sisters Who Make Waves”
• Some examples of how brands besides Perfect Dairy are using private traffic
• Nayuki Tea’s very transparent food safety article
• A great example of how brands can be leveraging the fan economy done by C-beauty brand Colorkey
• How top live streamer Viya is expanding her presence to other social platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu and capturing people’s hearts

I filmed videos to go along with this episode and provide more visuals. I have linked to the ones that are already published and as we edit the rest of them I will continue to link them up here!

The post The China Marketing Pulse: July Edition appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

Private traffic (sīyù liúliàng 私域流量) was one of the biggest China marketing trends of 2019. It has become even more popular in 2020 as an increasing number of brands and livestreamers have begun implementing this tactic.

While the term is thrown around a lot, many listeners may still not have heard of it. Tune in for answers to the following questions, and more:

• What exactly is private traffic?
• Isn’t it just private WeChat groups?
• Why has this tactic become so popular?
• Is it a tactic my brand should be using?
• How does private traffic actually work and is it scalable?
• How can we track the ROI?
• Are there any case studies for my industry?

If you or your brand are facing questions such as these, you’re in luck! Today’s episode is the audio from our Private Traffic 101 webinar co-hosted with recent podcast guest Doris Ke.

You should be able to understand the content without visuals, but if you’d like to check out the presentations, you can watch the webinar replay here.

The post Podcast: What is Private Traffic & Should My Brand Be Using it? appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

One of my most popular podcast episodes to date was a brief one I recorded last summer explaining the concept of ‘private traffic’ (私域流量).

‘Private traffic’ was one of the biggest China marketing buzzwords of 2019 and has only become hotter in 2020 as an increasing number of brands have begun implementing this tactic.

But while the term is thrown around a lot, I bet many of you have still never heard of it, or are wondering…

– What exactly is private traffic?
– Isn’t it just private WeChat groups?
– Why has it become so popular?
– Is it a tactic my brand should be using?
– How does private traffic actually work?
– Are there any case studies for my industry?

Well you’re in luck!

I’m teaming up with private traffic expert Doris Ke to bring you a free private traffic 101 webinar on June 23rd! Doris runs a popular multi-week online course (in Chinese) about private traffic so she certainly knows this topic in and out.

The webinar has already ended! Watch the replay below!

The post Private Traffic 101: Breaking Down China’s Hottest Marketing Trend appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

HBR found that acquiring a new customer is 5 to 25x more expensive than retaining an existing one and that increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits from 25-95%. Bain found that returning customers spend 67% more than new customers. And Temkin found that loyal customers are 5x as likely to repurchase, 5x as likely to forgive, 4x as likely to refer, and 7x as likely to try a new offering. 

Retention marketing is an important topic that brands need to be thinking about, especially in China where advertising and paid marketing costs have skyrocketed over the past few years and now oftentimes customer acquisition costs are higher than the lifetime value of the customer. 

Today, I invited Elijah Whaley, CMO of China influencer marketing platform PARKLU, to come on the podcast and break down his recently published 100+ page guide to retention marketing. 

This podcast and the concepts we discuss will be valuable to brands of any size in any stage of their China marketing journey!

Download PARKLU’s 100+ page Retention Marketing Strategy Guide

The post Retention Marketing Masterclass appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

Never’s image is featured on one of the eyeshadow palettes in the Discovery Collection. The shades in the palette are created by Austin and inspired by Never’s personality. Profits from the palette will be donated to an animal protection fund in Beijing. The product is going fast – during the live streamed launch Austin already sold out 180k palettes. 

Read more: 美人计｜连李佳琦的狗都开始联名带货了

Key Takeaways From Questmobile Report on Young Consumers in Lower Tier Cities

As of November 2019 there are over 200 million post-90s consumers located in 3rd-tier and lower cities in China. This is 10.1% growth YOY. In Chinese these consumers are referred to as 小镇青年 (Xiaozhen Qingnian) or “small town youth”. Here are some key takeaways from the report: 

• Their average monthly screen time is 127.9 hours, slightly higher than young people in 1st and 2nd tier cities (127.3 hours).
• Students and white-collar workers make up 60% of Xiaozhen Qingnian. Their income is lower than 6,000 RMB. The average amount per month is around 4,000 RMB.
• Yet since living costs in lower tier cities are much lower, they have more disposable income. 
• Xiaozhen Qingnian’s favorite topics to search online are: food, travel, fashion, ecommerce shopping, auto, and wealth management. 
• Xiaozhen Qingnian spend on average 7.1 hours/month on ecommerce platforms. 
• The top 3 e-commerce platforms they use are Taobao, Pinduoduo, and Xianyu. 
• The group places more value on recommendations from friends and acquaintances, and often group buy together. 
• They are sensitive to price and are willing to spend more time browsing other platforms to compare prices. They love searching for coupons and discount information as well. But when it comes down to it they care even more about quality and brand name.  
• They show great interest in second-hand products. 
• When it comes to planning travel, Xiaozhen Qingnian’s interest in vacation rentals like Airbnb has increased significantly since 2018. 

Read more: QuestMobile2019小镇青年洞察报告：2亿青年每月128小时都在干嘛？

Art & Aroma Essential Oil Skincare

Art & Aroma (Chinese name 芳研社) is a small Chinese essential oils skincare brand founded in 2014 by two friends, a chemist and a biologist. While still small at only 10 SKUs, the brand has been featured by one of China’s top business writers Wu Xiaobo Channel (吴晓波频道) and has a very loyal customer base, with a repurchase rate of 80%. Here are some of the things they have done to grow such a loyal customer base: 

Emphasis on Private Traffic: 
Art & Aroma focuses heavily on private traffic. They operate 4 personal WeChat accounts with a total of 4,000 connections across all accounts. All of their private traffic users are customers of their Tmall store. After each and every person purchases a product, the team will actively encourage the person to add the company’s WeChat. After adding the accounts, the users are segmented into different categories and WeChat groups, such as skincare, hair care, new products launching and discounts.

These four accounts regularly post content on Moments with 25% of content about skincare, 25% about event and live streaming notifications, and the rest is about the daily lives of the three founders and other lifestyle content. They also actively participate in customers’ lives by liking and commenting on customers’ Moments posts.

Passion for Proving Product Quality Helps Gain Visibility:
Once team members shaved part of their hair just to test whether their shampoo product could increase hair growth rate. The story was later featured by the popular WeChat Commerce platform Youzan(有赞). On that night Youzan posted the article, Art & Aroma did over 200k RMB in sales, and sold out 3,000 hair care sets within 4 hours.

Giving Consumers Ownership:
Similar to a domestic beauty brand Chioture(稚优泉), Art & Aroma invites its customers to participate in the decision making process. This includes choosing scents, ingredients, packaging styles and product names. Co-founder Qing Fen(清芬) said involving customers in this process makes customers happy while simultaneously promoting new products. 

Offline Aromatherapy Certification Courses:
In the past the brand has held offline aromatherapy certification courses. This is a great way to interact with customers in real life and for the co-founders to demonstrate their professional expertise and inspire trust. Right now a growing number of Chinese beauty and skincare consumers are known as 成份党 or consumers that pay great attention to the ingredients. Classes like this would appeal to that consumer base. 

Livestreaming:
Art & Aroma’s livestreaming is very different from most brands. One of the co-founders Xiao Ke(小珂) live streams three times a week. Unlike other brands, she doesn’t actively try to sell products. She typically sits in her kitchen or dining room drinking a cup of tea and chatting with viewers. Usually, she shares a book, a movie or her hand-made crafts. Sometimes she shares her thoughts on essential oils and skincare. 

Read more: 仅靠4000好友做到复购率80%，被吴晓波频道看中的“她”如何打造强信任关系？

China Marketing Podcast Ep. 64: An Overview of China’s Burgeoning Fragrance Market 

Today’s conversation is with Dao Nguyen, founder of ESSENZIA, a boutique marketing creative strategy agency helping fragrance and cosmetics brands reach young Chinese consumers. We dive deep into China’s rapidly growing fragrance market which has changed dramatically over the past 5 years.

Dao gave an overview of the market, answering questions such as:

• Who are the main consumers?
• What types of fragrances tend to appeal to a Chinese audience?
• Which brands are doing well in the China market and why?
• Are there any mistakes brands tend to make?

Later in the episode we also discussed China’s beauty industry and I ask Dao to share her thoughts on the rise of China’s domestic beauty brands.

Listen on Spotify, iTunes, or XimalayaFM

Women In China Marketing

This is a new online directory dedicated to women who specialize in helping brands market to Chinese consumers.

It was created by the wonderful Olivia Plotnick after a report on China marketing trends for 2020 in which only 1 of the 22 report contributors was a woman.

Check it out here
And if you’d like to add someone to the list, feel free to submit a profile!

The post Perfect Diary’s Latest Cross-Collab is with Austin Li’s Dog?! appeared first on China Marketing Insights.

As online traffic is becoming more and more expensive in China, the term ‘private traffic’ (私域流量) has become one of 2019’s content creation buzzwords. The western equivalent of private traffic would be a blog or an email list, which are owned channels, however, in China, people rarely visit websites or use email, so influencers and brands are seeking out ways to have private traffic, although still on social media sites. For example, we hear of influencers who have hundreds of private WeChat groups for their fans or are opening their own mini-programs.

The Chinese concept of ‘private traffic’ can be a confusing concept to wrap your head around. Even for Chinese people. I think partly because it’s still developing. So Kejie and I attempt to explain it the best we can. If you have any other insights on the topic, we’d love to hear them!

Like the podcast? Sign up to get the latest episodes sent straight to your mailbox!

Read more:

• 私域流量就是微商？你可能有什么误会
• English summary here.
• Excellent article about private traffic: 2019爆火黑话「私域流量」的本质和玩法
• 2000个群七万人，半年消费2亿，时尚博主于小戈的卖货之道|新榜专访

The post What is ‘Private Traffic’ & Why is it a China Marketing Buzzword? appeared first on China Marketing Insights.