MarketingSherpa, the popular research site, has released the first of a free two part series on marketing to China.
Special Report Part I: Marketing to China — Overcoming the Top 5 Challenges
The biggest mistake companies make is “approaching China as a single, huge market when in fact, China is a series of markets that vary widely by geographic location and population characteristics,” states McIntosh.
All of our experts emphasized the importance of “Guanxi” or the building of personal relationships/networks. In the West, we know networking is important and most of us do it to a greater or lesser extent (i.e. we network when we’re looking for a job). In China, however, Guanxi is essential if you want to be successful – whether you’re a Marketing VP closing deals or a MarCom Manager trying to get Web content and collateral translated into Chinese.
This report is free to view for the next 10 days and well worth a read (view here)
Part 2 is set to be released in Mid-April. Where they will focus specifically on interactive marketing in China, particularly mobile marketing, search marketing, and Internet ads.
Source: MarketingSherpa
7 responses
Great info Nick. The article was excellent for anyone interested in doing business in China. As far as the advertising or marketing arena, attending shows like adTech or Search Engine Strategies is a good start. Meeting face to face is critical in developing the “guanxi” that everyone speaks about. I look forward to Part 2 since there are 400 million mobile phone users in China and that market is more mature than in the US.
Yes the article suggested in several points the importance of networking (bringing the CEO on a road trip!). We’ll have to keep an eye on the Chinese Marketing Tour site for the 2007 plans.
I would very much like to target this area better myself. We do a healthy trade in Russian domains to Chinese clients which is very strange but working on the Russian market takes most of my time! There are very strong trade ties between Russia and China though so this is an area a lot of businesses here are interested in.
Thanks for posting such nice comments about our article here. Please do let our research team at MarketingSherpa know if you’d like to be contacted as a possible quoted source for our upcoming Part I on Net marketing in China which will have a section on Search. The email for us is feedback@marketingsherpa.com, and I can promise you we read and respond faithfully!
Thanks Anne that is very kind of you. Keep up the good work over there, your newsletter (and case studies) are essential coffee-break reading in my inbox!
Dear Sir
I want to buy marketing guide to china. How can buy it? Pls send me inform my mail, ı am very happy.
Best Regards
Tunc Tufan ERACAR
Hi Tunc
Yes I am afraid the guide is only put up on the MarketSherpa web site for 10 days. It looks though like they still have it available in their libary. Part 1 and Part 2 here.
HTH