In previous posts, I have talked about some e-marketing phenomenon in China. Due to the complex environment, what works in western country may not apply in China. The cultural diversity is an important factor. For instance, Chinese people consider modest as the favourate virtue. Whereas many western country praise highly aggressive organisational culture. Chinese consumer likes to bargain with sellers no matter if they get the real benefit. Therefore, many giants did not survive in China’s online market. On the other hand, many domestic firms achieved great success despite they have limited asset and power but they hold insightful understanding of the current trend and value perception in China. For example, taobao beats e-bay as easy as a pie with limited industry experiences and asset.
The social media marketing is emerging and developing rapidly in China. China has large amount of netizen which offers both opportunities and challenges to company. The biggest advantage of online marketing is the broad coverage and cost-effective. If marketers use social media in a proper way, the effect will be over estimated. For example, the Jia Junpeng event that I have talked in the previous post.
There are lots of funny internet events and phenomenon in China. For instance, Xiao Yueyue becomes the latest internet celebrity in recent weeks. This event was dominated by a famous online forum ‘Tianya’, which aims to increase the awareness and get the attention of advertising client eventually. I f your are interested, please go online and search Xiao Yueyue, you will be amazed about the influence of social media marketing in China.
Thursday, 14 October 2010
Who is Jia Junpeng?
You may not aware of who Jia Junpeng is, but in China, almost all netizen are familiar with this name even some of them have no idea why did this name become so famous.
The whole story starts with a post in an online game forum on July 16,2009. The topic was ‘Jia Junpeng, your mom is calling you home for dinner!’ The thread of the post was only 2 letters ‘RT’ which simply means as title suggests. Amazingly after 6 hours, there were over 400,000 reviews and 17,000 replies of this post. Many replies were pretended to be posted by Jia or Jia’s relatives, friends and even puppy. Then this miracle was reported by print media and TV show. People are all talking about this name and many photoshoped images spread on network.
The NetEase.com stands out and admits that the entire event is planned and operated by them on July 23, 2009. Because NetEase just took over the game World of Warcraft from The 9th City, and all the servers have been shut down for several weeks for waiting the new operating permission. This event has successfully grabs public attention and the search ration of this game has increased 120%.
So why did this succeed? There are several reasons behind.
a) Exoteric. The information is easy to remember and the post is something would happen around people.
b) Spreadable. The topic can be easily spread and everyone can transfer the name with others. Hence, the interaction enables more people to disseminate the information.
c) Diffusion over multi-media tools. The responses can be put on blog post, social network website, print media and TV. Hence the coverage is maximised.
d) Multiform replies. It enables the message to communicate with different forms, such as photoshop content, video and even merchandise in online shopping website such as T-shirt.
There are also dangerous issues of using this tactic. Firstly, the opinion leader is important since the virus marketing may be deviate from the objective by the participation of a great amount of people.
Secondly, it is important to grasp the period: since this may not able to last long time, so it needs to grasp every opportunities to spread the message out.
However, it may also generate negative association if the brand was promoted too obviously. And the brand maybe ignored if the message is not that apparent.
The whole story starts with a post in an online game forum on July 16,2009. The topic was ‘Jia Junpeng, your mom is calling you home for dinner!’ The thread of the post was only 2 letters ‘RT’ which simply means as title suggests. Amazingly after 6 hours, there were over 400,000 reviews and 17,000 replies of this post. Many replies were pretended to be posted by Jia or Jia’s relatives, friends and even puppy. Then this miracle was reported by print media and TV show. People are all talking about this name and many photoshoped images spread on network.
The NetEase.com stands out and admits that the entire event is planned and operated by them on July 23, 2009. Because NetEase just took over the game World of Warcraft from The 9th City, and all the servers have been shut down for several weeks for waiting the new operating permission. This event has successfully grabs public attention and the search ration of this game has increased 120%.
So why did this succeed? There are several reasons behind.
a) Exoteric. The information is easy to remember and the post is something would happen around people.
b) Spreadable. The topic can be easily spread and everyone can transfer the name with others. Hence, the interaction enables more people to disseminate the information.
c) Diffusion over multi-media tools. The responses can be put on blog post, social network website, print media and TV. Hence the coverage is maximised.
d) Multiform replies. It enables the message to communicate with different forms, such as photoshop content, video and even merchandise in online shopping website such as T-shirt.
There are also dangerous issues of using this tactic. Firstly, the opinion leader is important since the virus marketing may be deviate from the objective by the participation of a great amount of people.
Secondly, it is important to grasp the period: since this may not able to last long time, so it needs to grasp every opportunities to spread the message out.
However, it may also generate negative association if the brand was promoted too obviously. And the brand maybe ignored if the message is not that apparent.
Ways to make email-marketing more effective
Email-marketing sounds out-fashioned, many people would say, it is wasting time, because consumers always not reading the email at all and drag those email into junk folder directly. But actually email-marketing is still popular in contemporary marketing since it has broad coverage and email becomes an inalienable part of people’s life. I personally could not even sleep if I did not check email every day. This post proposes some tips to raise the readability of email and increase the effectiveness of email-marketing.
1. Avoiding repetitive information. The worst thing that consumer hates about promotional email is the boring content. Once would be enough, no matter how important is the information. Since if that is what consumer really need, then they will notice at the first time. Otherwise, the possibility of reading the email becomes very small.
2. Attach with annotation if there is special terms or expressions in the email. Otherwise readers will feel at a loss.
3. Catch readers’ eyes by one or two key points. If the email is about introducing and promoting a product or service, then it is important to specify and emphasize the unique features of your product, which other competitors are not able to achieve. Then it would be more persuasive. There is no need to cover the waterfront.
4. Cut down unnecessary words. I am so sick to read long articles, so not to mention a long email. To keep the email as simple as possible, to avoid formulate, to make it easy to understand. Otherwise, the possibility of being read is likely to be diminished.
1. Avoiding repetitive information. The worst thing that consumer hates about promotional email is the boring content. Once would be enough, no matter how important is the information. Since if that is what consumer really need, then they will notice at the first time. Otherwise, the possibility of reading the email becomes very small.
2. Attach with annotation if there is special terms or expressions in the email. Otherwise readers will feel at a loss.
3. Catch readers’ eyes by one or two key points. If the email is about introducing and promoting a product or service, then it is important to specify and emphasize the unique features of your product, which other competitors are not able to achieve. Then it would be more persuasive. There is no need to cover the waterfront.
4. Cut down unnecessary words. I am so sick to read long articles, so not to mention a long email. To keep the email as simple as possible, to avoid formulate, to make it easy to understand. Otherwise, the possibility of being read is likely to be diminished.
don't judge a book by its cover-MSY is a good boy!
The nearest MSY store here is on Waverly Rd. It is just 5 minutes walking distance from my accommodation. So I shop a lot there.
Early of this semester, I thought I really need a small laptop which I can bring to the lecture, so that I can check out the Facebook and Twitter, play games when I’m feeling the lecture goes boring ( I swear I never did this in your lecture, Peter.). Then I’ve checked the Officeworks, JB-HIFI and MSY. There were massive information on Officeworks’ and JB-HIFI’s websites, and I need to click sub-sub-sub category under a sub-sub category under a sub category… Indeed, the product descriptions and details are ample and clearly, the webpages are colorful, however, all I need is just a laptop which is light in weight and low in price.
There is another computer shop in Waverly rd which is only 2 mins walking distance for me. So one day I copy the name of that shop down and searched on Google. Unfortunately there was no online catalogue available, just very short description of the business. I hate the stores that without price tag for merchandise, no matter it is a real store or online shop. So MSY seems like the best choice to me though it has an authentic old school website. No massive pictures of merchandise , no annoying flash bar, banner ad and pop up ad which will slower my computer’s operating speed. I just need to open the online catalogue and find out what will fit me, done, such a lifesaver. It took me less that 1 hour from decision making to picking up.
MSY is doing an appropriate way for consumer who knows exactly what they want. Sometimes they are poor guys like me with a limited budget, sometimes they are geeks like &*# who require specific parts to assemble their own desktop. Anyway, there is reason of MSY has been operating for over 14years (I got this figure from MSY website)!
Early of this semester, I thought I really need a small laptop which I can bring to the lecture, so that I can check out the Facebook and Twitter, play games when I’m feeling the lecture goes boring ( I swear I never did this in your lecture, Peter.). Then I’ve checked the Officeworks, JB-HIFI and MSY. There were massive information on Officeworks’ and JB-HIFI’s websites, and I need to click sub-sub-sub category under a sub-sub category under a sub category… Indeed, the product descriptions and details are ample and clearly, the webpages are colorful, however, all I need is just a laptop which is light in weight and low in price.
There is another computer shop in Waverly rd which is only 2 mins walking distance for me. So one day I copy the name of that shop down and searched on Google. Unfortunately there was no online catalogue available, just very short description of the business. I hate the stores that without price tag for merchandise, no matter it is a real store or online shop. So MSY seems like the best choice to me though it has an authentic old school website. No massive pictures of merchandise , no annoying flash bar, banner ad and pop up ad which will slower my computer’s operating speed. I just need to open the online catalogue and find out what will fit me, done, such a lifesaver. It took me less that 1 hour from decision making to picking up.
MSY is doing an appropriate way for consumer who knows exactly what they want. Sometimes they are poor guys like me with a limited budget, sometimes they are geeks like &*# who require specific parts to assemble their own desktop. Anyway, there is reason of MSY has been operating for over 14years (I got this figure from MSY website)!
what makes websites useless?
Now almost every company has its own website, no matter it is simple (as MSY….) or complex. But what does website reward to the company? Well many managers may say that the website brings them nothing but high cost and bunches of junk mails. So what are the reasons behind?
Firstly, many minor firms did not promote the website well. The organisation website is a huge information carrier and it can be seen as a ‘super brochure’ in marketing point of view. To establish a website is like to print out brochure. If there is no promotion for the website, it is equivalent to leave all the brochures inside the company instead of send to consumers. There is certainly no benefit for the company if no one is able to see the brochure. In fact, many minor firms only set up their website and ignore the promotions.
Secondly, the position of website did not design in marketing perspective. The website itself means nothing to a company, what a company needs from website is to expand brand awareness, increase sales and communicate with consumers. Many firms outsource the website design to design company. However, the design company may start from technical view and to preach ‘function’ and ‘stylish’ etc. The complex design will increase the cost and even affect the marketing result. For example, the access speed will be slower if a website contains too many multimedia effects, whereas consumers become impatient and switch to other websites.
Thirdly, the lack of regular maintaining of website. For example, the page cannot found, the error of interlinking and the lack of contact information. Some information was even posted in one year ago. Consumers can not get access with updated data. Moreover, if consumers send email to the address that listed on the website, I guess not many consumers will get the feedback instantly. It is not only useless for the firms, sometimes the negative effect maybe generated, since consumers will think the firm is inefficiency.
In conclusion, no individual website is useless, the point is how are you gonna operate the website.
Firstly, many minor firms did not promote the website well. The organisation website is a huge information carrier and it can be seen as a ‘super brochure’ in marketing point of view. To establish a website is like to print out brochure. If there is no promotion for the website, it is equivalent to leave all the brochures inside the company instead of send to consumers. There is certainly no benefit for the company if no one is able to see the brochure. In fact, many minor firms only set up their website and ignore the promotions.
Secondly, the position of website did not design in marketing perspective. The website itself means nothing to a company, what a company needs from website is to expand brand awareness, increase sales and communicate with consumers. Many firms outsource the website design to design company. However, the design company may start from technical view and to preach ‘function’ and ‘stylish’ etc. The complex design will increase the cost and even affect the marketing result. For example, the access speed will be slower if a website contains too many multimedia effects, whereas consumers become impatient and switch to other websites.
Thirdly, the lack of regular maintaining of website. For example, the page cannot found, the error of interlinking and the lack of contact information. Some information was even posted in one year ago. Consumers can not get access with updated data. Moreover, if consumers send email to the address that listed on the website, I guess not many consumers will get the feedback instantly. It is not only useless for the firms, sometimes the negative effect maybe generated, since consumers will think the firm is inefficiency.
In conclusion, no individual website is useless, the point is how are you gonna operate the website.
let's go online
Many traditional firms in China now step into the online market such as Skyworth and TCL. Both brands are famous for producing television. TCL occupies over 18.9% of market share in China. The participation of traditional firms will bring more vitality and diversity to the industry. It sounds like TCL and Skyworth should have strong competitive power since they all have strong back up force. However, there are many issues that need to be overcome.
The organisational culture may hinder the development of online business. The internet culture is open, creative and passionate. Whereas the traditional firms are more likely to follow rigorous and professional. The manager and marketer need to consider the conflict between organisational culture and online industry culture.
The consumption pattern is another challenge for traditional firms. In traditional perception, the operation of business starts with the manufacturer- they produce product and take the product into the marketplace, then consumers come to the mall and buy what they need. However, in online market, consumers are the centre of the business. Hence the firms need to establish professional teams to conduct consumer research which in order to find out what consumer demand for. Unfortunately, most managers of traditional firms are unlikely to change the perception.
So what do the traditional firms need if they are entering into the online market? Firstly the technical talents. Just copy from others and build an online platform is not going to succeed. There is a common phenomenon in China, that once a website or company has succeeded, there will be hundreds followers in overnight. Those followers lack of innovation, they don’t do the market research and analysis and the resources are not well-integrated. Therefore, the company needs technicians to creative novel model that could make it stands out from competitors. Secondly the online marketing professionals. Online marketing can go wild. Social media marketing, community marketing, virus marketing etc…. there are so many tools that can be used in e-marketing, which the marketers of traditional firms may not be aware of. Therefore, online marketing professionals could help the firms to achieve incredible brand equity.
The organisational culture may hinder the development of online business. The internet culture is open, creative and passionate. Whereas the traditional firms are more likely to follow rigorous and professional. The manager and marketer need to consider the conflict between organisational culture and online industry culture.
The consumption pattern is another challenge for traditional firms. In traditional perception, the operation of business starts with the manufacturer- they produce product and take the product into the marketplace, then consumers come to the mall and buy what they need. However, in online market, consumers are the centre of the business. Hence the firms need to establish professional teams to conduct consumer research which in order to find out what consumer demand for. Unfortunately, most managers of traditional firms are unlikely to change the perception.
So what do the traditional firms need if they are entering into the online market? Firstly the technical talents. Just copy from others and build an online platform is not going to succeed. There is a common phenomenon in China, that once a website or company has succeeded, there will be hundreds followers in overnight. Those followers lack of innovation, they don’t do the market research and analysis and the resources are not well-integrated. Therefore, the company needs technicians to creative novel model that could make it stands out from competitors. Secondly the online marketing professionals. Online marketing can go wild. Social media marketing, community marketing, virus marketing etc…. there are so many tools that can be used in e-marketing, which the marketers of traditional firms may not be aware of. Therefore, online marketing professionals could help the firms to achieve incredible brand equity.
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
Sina Weibo - tweet in Chinese way 1
Sina Weibo is a micro-blogging application that has similar characteristic with Twitter. It now achieved over 20 million users and the number of users is predicted exceed Twitter in next 2 years. The huge success of Sina Weibo reflect the impact of community marketing in China.
The raise of Sina Weibo is benefited by its simplicity and expansibility. Sina Weibo can be seen as a simplified product of community marketing. It allows the face-to-face communication in such a easy way by using mobile phone and internet. Sina Weibo goes beyond segmentation as an open platform and that is what most firms are doing in recent years. It broadcast millions information through a mass way and leaves users to search the information that they demand by themselves.
Not only the famous organizations but also small businesses are now using Sina Weibo as a tool of community marketing. Many users may directly escape from web1.0 and web 2.0 and they may only have very limited knowledge of internet. What they do is holding a mobile phone which with built-in application of Sina Weibo and publish what they want to let consumers know about them. Everyone can does this without complicated courses. Therefore, the simplicity of Sina Weibo contributes to the success.
Additionally, the expansibility contributes to the open platform. The traditional online forum allows internet users to communicate with particular topics but it is not able to connect with other networks. Internet users need to register into different discussion board to get access with different topic ranges. Sina Weibo, on the other hand, enables users to communicate in different ways with different topics. For example, many flight agents now are connecting with Sina Weibo, Weibo can collect the relative information to people who use those flight agent, such as, who else is going to the same destination, even the person who will take the same flight with you.
The raise of Sina Weibo is benefited by its simplicity and expansibility. Sina Weibo can be seen as a simplified product of community marketing. It allows the face-to-face communication in such a easy way by using mobile phone and internet. Sina Weibo goes beyond segmentation as an open platform and that is what most firms are doing in recent years. It broadcast millions information through a mass way and leaves users to search the information that they demand by themselves.
Not only the famous organizations but also small businesses are now using Sina Weibo as a tool of community marketing. Many users may directly escape from web1.0 and web 2.0 and they may only have very limited knowledge of internet. What they do is holding a mobile phone which with built-in application of Sina Weibo and publish what they want to let consumers know about them. Everyone can does this without complicated courses. Therefore, the simplicity of Sina Weibo contributes to the success.
Additionally, the expansibility contributes to the open platform. The traditional online forum allows internet users to communicate with particular topics but it is not able to connect with other networks. Internet users need to register into different discussion board to get access with different topic ranges. Sina Weibo, on the other hand, enables users to communicate in different ways with different topics. For example, many flight agents now are connecting with Sina Weibo, Weibo can collect the relative information to people who use those flight agent, such as, who else is going to the same destination, even the person who will take the same flight with you.
taobao V.S. e-bay
Taobao is an online auction website in China. It was established in 2003 and it stars with the basic C2C business. Taobao achieved a total trading volume of $29 billion in 2009. It occupied about 83% market share on China’s online business industry. More and more organizations have cooperated with Taobao which in order to expend their trading domain. For example, some clothing brands set the flagship stores on Taobao and they offer a wide range of product which is basically everything available in a real shop. I bet we all have online shopping experiences. Please recall those experiences, have you ever experienced that you went to an online clothing shore but there was only limited collections and they were always the worst styles.
When taobao first started its business, no one holds optimistic opinion and many insiders predicted that taobao will not survive for 18 months. E-bay uses its existing advantage to crack down taobao in the first place. E-bay made agreement with Sina, Tom, Sohu and other major portal websites which restricts these websites from cooperating with taoao. Whereas taobao is compelled to publish its advertisements on personal website. The turnaround of taobao occurs in 2005, Sina terminated the cooperation with e-bay since Sina established its own B2C website, and meantime, taobao pushed series promotions that based on a hot movie in 2005 called ‘A World without Thieves’. Millions internet users get to know taobao and started the trial.
As online auction website, e-bay is obviously the reference of taobao. The initial operations of taobao were quite similar with e-bay, however, it keeps modifying the operation model to adapt the local market in China. For instance, e-bay charges sellers while they displaying merchandise and buyers shall be collected some rates while they paying by Pay-Pal. But before 2005, the traditional marketplace was still the dominated shopping model in China. If taobao follows exactly the same model as e-bay, there would be very few brave people who would like to try that new way.
When taobao first started its business, no one holds optimistic opinion and many insiders predicted that taobao will not survive for 18 months. E-bay uses its existing advantage to crack down taobao in the first place. E-bay made agreement with Sina, Tom, Sohu and other major portal websites which restricts these websites from cooperating with taoao. Whereas taobao is compelled to publish its advertisements on personal website. The turnaround of taobao occurs in 2005, Sina terminated the cooperation with e-bay since Sina established its own B2C website, and meantime, taobao pushed series promotions that based on a hot movie in 2005 called ‘A World without Thieves’. Millions internet users get to know taobao and started the trial.
As online auction website, e-bay is obviously the reference of taobao. The initial operations of taobao were quite similar with e-bay, however, it keeps modifying the operation model to adapt the local market in China. For instance, e-bay charges sellers while they displaying merchandise and buyers shall be collected some rates while they paying by Pay-Pal. But before 2005, the traditional marketplace was still the dominated shopping model in China. If taobao follows exactly the same model as e-bay, there would be very few brave people who would like to try that new way.
Bargaining is traditional phenomenon in China even in online shopping. Taobao create a instant chat tools called ‘taobao Wangwang’ to satisfy the needs. Sellers and buyers are able to communicate with the application. Therefore, the consumer satisfaction has further improvement.
screenshot of taobao
taobao Wangwang- the instant chat software created by taobao
e-marketing in China
The following posts of my blog will be related to the development of e-marketing in China. I have stucked for several weeks since I really could not come out with any insightful ideas of e-marketing in Australia or in western society. Then my friend reminded me that, hey! why not create contents about e-marketing in China, since that would be something I will be familiar with and it is an opportunity to introduce the contemporary China to every one.
E-business in China achieved rapid development in recent decades. Not only domestic organisations but also overseas firms found the great potential of China. In traditional business or industry, the multinational firms and industrial giants are more likely to occupy the large portion of marketshare rather than raising power. However, in e-business, the logical thinking may not work, especially in China. China is a multiracial country with complicated geographic and demographic distributions. The unbalanced economic growth determines the complexity to organisations and marketers. Because the economic position directly affects the coverage and developmentstage of internet. According to a research by Boston Consultation Group, there are over 4 hundreds million netizen in China which is about 30% of China's population. The average internet surfing time per person is about 2.7 hours in China (obviously I am the one who contributes a lot to this figure since I spent over 5 hours on internet each day :P). Numbers in China are always attractive to companies. However, are you really have the ability to swallow the huge market or even grap a small piece of cake? I hope my following posts could give you understanding of e-marketing in China.
E-business in China achieved rapid development in recent decades. Not only domestic organisations but also overseas firms found the great potential of China. In traditional business or industry, the multinational firms and industrial giants are more likely to occupy the large portion of marketshare rather than raising power. However, in e-business, the logical thinking may not work, especially in China. China is a multiracial country with complicated geographic and demographic distributions. The unbalanced economic growth determines the complexity to organisations and marketers. Because the economic position directly affects the coverage and developmentstage of internet. According to a research by Boston Consultation Group, there are over 4 hundreds million netizen in China which is about 30% of China's population. The average internet surfing time per person is about 2.7 hours in China (obviously I am the one who contributes a lot to this figure since I spent over 5 hours on internet each day :P). Numbers in China are always attractive to companies. However, are you really have the ability to swallow the huge market or even grap a small piece of cake? I hope my following posts could give you understanding of e-marketing in China.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)