Qihoo, also known as 360Search and So.com, is the second largest Chinese search engine. By various estimates, it holds between 15 to 25% of the search market share and is fairly popular among younger users.

It is also often noted that Qihoo search results tend to be more accurate than Baidu’s and advertising with Qihoo is also a bit cheaper. Despite once posing a real threat to Baidu’s dominance, Qihoo is still trailing Baidu in terms of overall popularity.

Qihoo Index is the keyword research tool that can be used to complement Baidu’s. Also, it doesn’t require registering an account which makes it a bit easier. Other than that, the functionality and the type of data Qihoo Index generates is quite similar to Baidu Index which was covered earlier.

Here we are using the same keyword “iPhone8” to see the results. The first panel presents the total number of searches and the trends overtime. Just like with Baidu Index, the data can be displayed for the last 7, 30 or 90 days as well as for custom date ranges.

The top panel shows 5,340 searches for iPhone 8 over the last 30 days which is about 5 times less searches on Baidu for the same period.

Similar to Baidu, Qihoo index indicates various kinks, peaks and valleys of the curve with a letter corresponding to a specific media mention. Hovering over those letters opens a pop-up with more details on the source linked to an article:

Another Qihoo Index graph specifically focuses on media mentions. Just like with Baidu, each change in the curve can be further examined for more details related to a specific news source.

The graph above displays search activity in the last 24 hours. Quite predictably, the search reaches two of its peaks in the morning and afternoon with a dip in between (a lunch break?) before flattening out during the night hours.

Next diagram shows related keywords in key phrase surrounding the main keyword. Analogous to Baidu, the keywords are grouped based on search volumes and relevant position:

Related searches data displays the keywords searched by users before or after that specific search term. In this case, “iPhone 8 price” was the strongest related key phrase. Also, users seem to be often searching for iPhone 8 pictures:

Also like Baidu, Qihoo Index also shows geographic distribution of searches. It seems that most iPhone 8 related searches were coming from the richest Chinese provinces and cities which reflects traditional popularity of Apple products in those areas.

Insights into audience are largely similar to the results we have seen with Baidu for the same term: men represent the majority (70% vs. 30%). The age brackets used by Qihoo are a bit different with Baidu: almost half of the people interested in iPhone 8 were aged between 25 and 34.

Another dimension that is available only with Qihoo Index is classification of the users by attributes. Apparently, Qihoo uses other search terms attributed to the same user in order to build what is called “persona” in marketing. Learning more about customer profiles through this method can provide further useful insights for a marketer.

Continue to Weibo Index tutorial >>>

Here are our tutorials on China keyword research tools:

Keyword research on Baidu: Baidu Index

Keyword research on Qihoo: Qihoo Index

Keyword research on Weibo: Weibo Index

Keyword research on WeChat: WeChat Index

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Being the largest search engine in China, Baidu keyword research should be the one to start with. Currently, Baidu offers Baidu Index tool that is free for Baidu advertising accounts, offering some basic information to users.

Here is an example of searching for keyword “iPhone8” (most Chinese users would typically type in “iPhone8” without space between the two words).

First, Baidu Index would match it with a keyword in the database before displaying the data. This means that for some rare keywords or those with low search volumes, this tool may not show any results. For those cases, a more powerful keyword research tool within Baidu advertising account must be used.

The top section shows the numbers for search volumes on PC (25,999) and mobile (20,070). It is remarkable to note that the overall search volume for this particular term is only 20% larger on PC vs. mobile.

Some points on the graph are also marked with letters: A, B, C, D etc. Those can be linked to a particular events such as mentions in media. Viewing the relevant content can give a researcher further insight on what was behind peaks and valleys of the chart.

Next, Baidu Index shows some more data on related keywords and how they are related to the original one in a key phrase (sometimes called long tail keyword). The size of the bubble illustrates the search volume and the color – the relative position.

Manipulating the slider allows viewing snapshots of the related keywords at different time periods. It can also help getting an idea on how the searches were changing over time.

The data is further detailed in the list of top related keywords that come before or after this specific keyword. This panel also lists the sites that have received most hits as a result of this keyword search:

Unsurprisingly, the most common key phrase was about the timing of iPhone 8 release.

Next graph specifically focuses on media mentions of the keyword. From here, user can view the actual article. This helps figuring out which type of news helped driving more searches and which had little to no effect.

The following series of data focuses on the audience. The map below illustrates search volume distribution by province. From here, the data can be further drilled down to the levels of area and city.

Finally, the audience is broken down by age distribution and gender. According to Baidu, iPhone 8 was mostly searched by males between ages of 20 and 39.

Continue to Qihoo Index tutorial >>>

Here are our tutorials on China keyword research tools:

Keyword research on Baidu: Baidu Index

Keyword research on Qihoo: Qihoo Index

Keyword research on Weibo: Weibo Index

Keyword research on WeChat: WeChat Index

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If you are familiar with Google AdWords, Baidu PPC conversion types are quite similar. Unlike Google AdWords, the conversions must be first set up within Baidu TongJi, the equivalent of Google Analytics. Then, they can be tracked in both Baidu TuiGuang (Baidu’s “AdWords”) and Baidu TongJi.

First, here is how search engines define a conversion: each instance of visitors completing a desired activity on your website, such as registration or download, is recorded as a conversion.

Here are the examples of conversion targets:

• Obtaining users’ info: registering online, creating an account etc.;
• Contact objectives: requesting consultation, sending a message, calling a phone number, etc.;
• Interactive goals: video playback event, placing item into a shopping cart, sharing content etc.;
• Revenue target: tracking online orders, payments etc.

4 types of Baidu PPC conversion that you can set up for your campaign:

Page conversions

This type of Baidu PPC conversion is triggered whenever a visitor reaches a specific URL. Each such visit will be registered as one conversion. This is the most common type of conversion used by most advertisers.

For example, a “thank you” page can be set as an URL that triggers conversion. So, whenever a visitor buys a product, signs up for a newsletter, downloads a file etc. – the next page they reach will be that “thank you” page. As soon as this event happens, Baidu knows that this is a conversion and update the report.

Setting it up is straightforward: all you need is the destination URL that triggers the conversion and define recording method (visits, page views, URL variable). You can also assign a conversion value and track conversion revenue performance.

In more advanced settings, you can also setup a path – the sequence of pages which you want your visitor to go to first before reaching the final conversion URL, in other words, a type of a sales funnel.

Even conversion

It is a bit more advanced way to set up Baidu PPC conversions than a simple. The event conversion is triggered whenever a visitor performs specified actions, such as registration, purchase, download, play, and so on.

It can be set using a preview method: user chooses the element on the page and set the conversion event page. If the page where the event is located is not unique, you can use variable part of the URL as a wildcard..

Another method is manually adding event conversion using event element ID.

This type of Baidu PPC conversions also allow you to set conversion value and track revenue.

Duration conversion

This conversion is triggered whenever visitors stayed on the site for longer than the specified time or stayed on a specific page for a specific time duration. This type of conversion can help you to understand whether users have actually read content on the page rather than skipped it.

The setup is quite simple: you set the conversion goal as the total time duration of a visits in hours, minutes or seconds.

There is also an option to set monetary value for this type of conversion.

Page visits conversion

This conversion is defined as the total number of pages opened by a visitor in one session.

You can simply define the number of pages that must be exceeded in one session and that would be recorded as the conversion. Baidu recommends to set this number to minimum 3 pages.

This type of conversion can also be tracked as the revenue once it has been assigned value in the setting but it is optional.

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Just one year after its launch in China in 2013, Evernote was already claiming 4 million users. Last year, China has become its second largest market with reported 20 million users. Yinxiang Biji, it’s Chinese company, has recently announced its plans to go public in China.

In fact, Evernote has succeeded where many famous Western tech giants, such as Google or Facebook, have failed miserably. So, what was it that they were doing right? Let us break down main factors of Evernote’s remarkable success in China.

Navigating around Chinese censorship

Evernote has always stressed its main functionality as a private data storage for individuals, not a social platform and broadcasting service. Although, the original version does include some social functions such as note sharing, they have been either removed or played down in the Chinese product. This enabled Evernote to stay away from troubles with China’s powerful internet censors.

Speed and functionality

The company has realized that the key to good usability in China is the speed of synchronization and access – the core of its functionality. Keeping data centers in US would severely impact connection speed and turn away potential users, making it impossible to acquire critical mass of local early adopters. Hence the decision to setup local data center, which was also its first one outside of US.

Privacy assurance

Company’s CEO, Phil Libin, has published a letter assuring subscribers that Evernote takes securing the privacy of user data in China very seriously. The letter emphasized Evernote’s adherence to its three laws of handling user data by making it personal, protected, and portable.

Employing social media

Evernote quickly embraced Weibo and WeChat, two most popular Chinese social media platforms. The company has also been publishing its own blog filled with useful tips about efficient usage of its services while tailoring the message for the local audience. The blog was encouraging users to write about their personal travel experience with connection to Evernote apps – another good example of user engagement.

Localized customer service

When it comes to Chinese users, Evernote quickly understood the importance of speedy and high quality customer service . The company has been recognized for its efficient response to issues and complaints, both through social media, like WeChat channel, as well via chat on their website.

Successful choice of brand name

Evernote has made a smart choice in picking its Chinese brand name that proved to be an excellent fit on many levels. Evernote’s Chinese name is Yinxiang Biji (印象笔记) and can be translated as “memory notes”. Incidentally, the name also incorporates character 象, an elephant, that is used as Evernote’s logo. The name is both memorable and descriptive of the core functionality of the service.

Integration with local services

Part of Evernote’s China localization strategy was releasing API for integration with local apps. As a result, along with its support for traditional services like IFTTT and Pocket, its Chinese product integrates local services such as WeChat, Weibo, Duoguo (a restaurant guide website) UC browsers and others.

Localized Evernote Market

Most recently, Yinxiang Biji has launched its local version of Evernote Market store with products specifically selected and marketed for Chinese customers. Evernote’s fully functional web-based outlet was noted for its good user experience and original offers. It also itegrates Alipay as its online payment solution.

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If you are on a bootstrap budget, the first thing to try would be finding a freelance translator through sites like Upwork or Freelancer. It’s by far the cheapest option but could also be a hit and miss. Typically, we always suggest to have your site translated to both Simplified Chinese for Mainland China  audience and to Traditional Chinese used in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Even though, both Taiwanese and Hongkongneese  would have little problem reading content in Simplified Chinese, having those two choices would be seen as showing respect to millions of Traditional Chinese readers. Large number of corporate executives and managers of companies in China are from Taiwan and Hong Kong and it would certainly be a good idea to offer them proper translation as well.

Many freelance translators, who are native Chinese speakers, don’t have a good grasp of Traditional Chinese and would simply use machine translation program, like Baidu or Google Translate, that simply substitute Simplified to Traditional characters. As a result, Traditional Chinese translation would often look awkward and, sometimes, completely unreadable. If you use any of the freelance translators, make sure to test them first by asking them to translate a paragraph to both languages and have it verified with a native Taiwanese or Hongkongnese.

Never hire translators who are not native Chinese speakers, this would be a complete waste of your money. You should also make sure to verify the work before you release the payment.

Localization is not the same as translation of the content, although translation is the major part of it.

Another option is to hire a professional translation company but, unfortunately, many of them are simply a one-two man operation, regardless of what they say about themselves on their website. Large number of them would use machine translation software with some corrections afterwards. Be prepared to shop around for a while as, in our experience, 80% of such firms provide very low quality work.

Just like with the freelancers, you should test the quality first by asking them to translate one paragraph and, if you suspect that machine translation has been used for any of the languages (most likely Traditional Chinese), don’t hire them.

If you are prepared to spend anywhere around $1,000 or more, make sure to have a written contract with such company. The contract should stipulate that the company must correct the translation within 2-4 weeks after submitting it to you if you find any issues. There must be a legal recourse clause in the contract in case of substandard quality of the translation but it’s always time limited, so make sure to check their work carefully as soon as you receive it.

In the coming post, we will discuss other aspects of web presence localization specific to China market.

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When considering China SEM strategy, Baidu is usually the one that gets most attention from marketers. It is primarily due to its larger reach – by different accounts, Baidu holds between 60 to 70% of China search engine market. On the other hand, Baidu doesn’t enjoy the same type of dominance as Google does in the West. It is also becoming more difficult every year for Baidu to maintain its lead as it has to fight off increasingly aggressive and sophisticated competitors.

One such powerful competitor is 360 Search which has been a solid number two in the market for the last few years. By different estimates, it currently holds 25-30% of Chinese search engine market share. Its main search so.com, is the 4th most visited website in China (after baidu.com, qq.com and taobao.com).

360 Search covers about two thirds of all Chinese internet users and claims to develop its own unique ranking algorithms. It is also the first Chinese search engine to offer online fraud compensation.

Search engine is not the only product of 360 Search. The company also owns several popular internet properties such as 360 directory – the most visited portal in China, China’s number one Android app store, China’s second most popular internet browser and the most popular anti-virus program.

It also produces its own mobile phone brand, car accessories as well as various electronic devices ranging from security cameras to smart watches.

Why 360 Search SEM can be an effective addition to China marketer’s toolbox?

First of all, in general, 360 Search keyword bidding price tends to be considerably lower than Baidu’s. It is not unusual to see 360 Search bidding price to be half of that of Baidu’s for the same keyword.

Second, marketers report that, on average, the conversion rate is about 15% higher with 360 Search vs. Baidu. This fact alone is a good enough reason to include 360 Search in the overall marketing strategy alongside, or sometimes, instead of, Baidu.

Third reason why some marketers may favor 360 Search SEM is the fact that it is easier for a foreign company to register an advertiser’s account with this search engine compared to Baidu. Although, all Chinese search engines have to follow the same rules set by China’s internet authorities and require similar paperwork, processing of an application with 360 Search is often faster and more straightforward.

When it comes to initial costs, 360 Search and Baidu also differ significantly. Unlike Baidu, 360 Search doesn’t charge account setup fee. However, the initial ad spend deposit requirement is higher compared to Baidu: it is currently set to minimum RMB 30,000 vs. Baidu’s 5,000 (it is negotiable in some cases). On the other hand, there is no time limit on how long it should take to spend that budget on the ads.

Finally, the campaign management backend is also somewhat easier to navigate compared to Baidu’s (although both are only available in Chinese).

In subsequent posts, we are going to take a closer look at different 360 Search marketing options.

Interested in reaching millions of Chinese with 360 Search SEM?

We can help!

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In this post, we attempt to summarize various pros and cons of having your site hosted in China.

The pros of hosting in China

Loading speed

Having a site hosted abroad, especially on the servers that are geographically remote, often affects loading speed. This, in turn, will most definitely hurt the ranking on Baidu, the main Chinese search engine. In addition, slow loading tends to turn off users resulting in increased bounce rate. By hosting a site in China, the loading speed will definitely improve.

Another reason for sites that are hosted overseas to load slower has most likely something to do with various filters related to censoring. An easiest way to see it is to load the same site with and without VPN, thus bypassing the Great Firewall. In most cases, the difference would be fairly apparent.

Geo-targeting

Although, most search engines like Google  assign less weight to a physical location of a site these days, one should keep in mind that Baidu is always a couple of years behind with their search algorithms. It is very likely that all other factors being equal, a site with the local domain (.cn or .com.cn) and with the local IP will be ranked higher than a foreign one.

The jury is still out on how much server location and .cn domain affect Baidu search results but, in my opinion, it still does quite a bit.

Minimizing risk of being blocked

It is often said that even if your site is hosted overseas but you are making sure to steer away from politically sensitive or illegal topics, you should be fine. However, there is always a risk of being unlucky enough to share a server with a site that gets banned by the government. There were instances in the past when some “innocent” sites got blocked just because they happened to be on a blacklisted server. It is, however, much less likely to end up on such server in China due to much stricter oversight over local ISPs.

The cons of hosting in China

Hassle of obtaining ICP license

Every site that is hosted on a Chinese server is legally obligated to obtain ICP license (Internet Content Provider or ICP备案 in Chinese). It is a little number that is usually displayed in the footer of every Chinese site. All websites with their own domain name that operate within Chinese borders are required to obtain that license, and China-based Internet service providers are required to block the site if a license is not acquired within a grace period. ICP licenses are issued at the provincial level and the application period may take up to 3 weeks.

Substandard local ISPs customer service

If you are used to customary high level of tech support by Western hosting services, you may be quite disappointed in China. HostGator type of support is quite few and far between, not to mention language problems. I’m sure that the situation will continue improving but, in the meantime, prepare  to lower your expectations.

Questionable value of .cn domains

Search ranking apart, having a .cn or .com.cn extension may not improve a click-through rate as some might expect. In fact, it is often noted that .com domains still command higher authority than the local ones. It may be especially true for the Chinese who may even distrust .cn site in favor of .com or .net one.

Ideally, you could own both .com and .cn domains and, incidentally, Chinese government now allows foreigners to register and own them, which was not the case until most recently.

In conclusion, my advice would be to focus on your site performance, most importantly, loading speed. Then, based on that, decide on the optimal hosting location. If you conclude that the loading speed difference is too large to ignore, than consider hosting in China. Alternatively, you may want to explore a possibility to host your site in Hong Kong or Singapore which are geographically closer to the Mainland and have plenty of excellent ISPs with English support.

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First, let start with the definition of – a landing page (or LP) is where your potential customer “lands” first after clicking your link in the search results, social media or an email. Making sure that landing page design is clear, focused and the content is easy to understand is the key in converting visitors to customers.

Before we look at the specific guidelines that are relevant to building a Chinese landing page, let’s make sure that the general page structure follows best practices applicable to all types of landing pages.

Let’s start off with a quick rundown of those guidelines that are applicable to all types of landing pages:

• Having clear and concise headline up top
• Strategic placement of a large and distinctive CTA (call to action) button
• Using interesting and visually appealing images
• Making sure that the main text clearly explains the offer and is going from general to detailed description as the reader moves down the page

Now, let’s list the specific requirements for Chinese landing pages along with the common mistakes that companies often make in creating them:

Chinese landing page design: do’s and don’ts

#1 Use native translation

While using native translation should be the obvious rule, a surprising number of foreign companies still cut corners on this one. Re-purposing original landing pages for Chinese market by using machine translated text or simply relying on low-quality translations would make such landing pages completely useless and counterproductive.

Always use a professional translator to write proper copy for your Chinese landing pages and make sure that they are proofread by native Mandarin speakers.

#2 Remove links to blocked social media

While re-purposing landing pages for Chinese market, many companies forget to remove standard links to their social media accounts that are inaccessible in China anyway. Not only those Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Instagram links will appear broken and wouldn’t even display an icon, they will significantly slow down Chinese landing page loading time.

Ideally, a page loading time should not exceed 5 seconds, although that is often hard to achieve with overseas hosting (more on it below)

#3 Optimize your Chinese landing page loading time

Loading time is almost always an issue for sites hosted outside of China. As long as your company doesn’t have a local business registration – hosting in China is not permitted. The next best option would be to get a hosting in Hong Kong. Some Hong Kong based hosting providers would often advertise “fast China route” options without physically having to host on the Mainland’s servers.

Alibaba Cloud is a popular hosting solution that is cheap and easy to sign up for. However, make sure that you select Hong Kong based servers when buying their hosting package.

#4 Embed videos from local platforms

It is often a good choice to have embedded videos on a landing page, however, if it is a YouTube one – it won’t work in China (YouTube is one of the blocked sites).

The solution is to setup an account on YouKu, Chinese YouTube equivalent, upload your video there and link to it from your Chinese landing page. There is one caveat here however – the video will be preceded by an advertisement and those are notoriously long and can even run for up to 90 seconds. The only way to play videos without pre-roll ads is to sign up for a paid YouKu account. Although not cheap (currently RMB 5,000 per year), it would make sense to purchase if you are planning to host more videos on the platform in the future.

The last tip about the videos – if they are in English, make sure to either provide a Chinese voiceover or, at the very minimum, Chinese subtitles.

#5 Integrate share buttons and links to Chinese social media

If you already have Chinese social media presence on Weibo, YouKu, WeChat or other platforms, make sure to include links to those sites on your Chinese landing page or, in the case of WeChat, display official account’s QR code. This will not only demonstrate to your visitors that you have an established local presence but will also help in getting more followers to your Chinese social media channels.

In case you didn’t yet setup those social media account in China, at least include sharing buttons to Weibo and WeChat.

#6 Localize the contact form

If your Chinese landing page is designed for collecting users’ data, make sure that the contact form is properly translated to Chinese and don’t leave any English field names to avoid confusion.

Also, keep in mind that while your English form may have separate fields for first and last names, Chinese equivalent would typically use just one name field for both the surname (one character) and the given name (one or two characters).

#7 Optimize for mobile

Mobile optimization of a landing page is extremely important for Chinese market as most traffic will come from mobile devices. It’s essential to use responsive design for your Chinese landing page ensuring that it displays correctly on most type of mobile screens.

Once the landing page is displayed on a small mobile screen, it is critical to make sure that most relevant information such as the headline and CTA (call to action) shows up “above the fold” rather than relying on users to scroll down the page.

#8 Test, test, test

Finally, your Chinese landing page is ready to go live and now you can just sit back and relax. If only that was true… The fact is that you can never be 100% sure that your page works correctly unless you, or someone else on your behalf, would test it from within China.

Although, there are some online tools available to test loading speed and accessibility of sites in China, they cannot be relied on completely as they wouldn’t show common display problems, broken links or other errors. Therefore, it is best to have someone to test your Chinese landing page in China using inspector browser option (F12 hotkey in most browsers) to note and record any errors and loading time.

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In China, Sina Weibo and WeChat are two most popular platforms. Sina Weibo has evolved around desktop use while WeChat only works with mobile. I have already those platforms in much more details in this blog. For now, suffice it to say that, for the purpose of market research, Weibo is much more suitable and this is what I will be focusing on.

Using Chinese Social Media Channels for market research

First of all, searching for something like “sunglasses” on Weibo is unlikely to be a very useful exercise – most results would probably quite irrelevant returning mostly some news or pictures of people wearing sunglasses.

While searching Chinese social media channels, it is much better to make a more focused searches such for specific brand names of competitors for example.

In any case, when it comes to searches for social mentions Weibo is fairly similar to Twitter with the difference that instead of preceding a term with #, it should be enclosed with # like this: #太阳眼镜#.

One useful aspect of a search for a broad term is finding out who is advertising with that keyword. Here is the screenshot of a sample search results with the ads shown on the right panel:

The best way to use social media search is to find out about the competition and how they are using this channel. For example, let’s search for one of the famous brands for sunglasses – Oakley (the brand name searches don’t require #):

The first result would usually be the official brand account followed by news and social mentions which also can be quite useful.
While browsing competitors accounts it is a good idea to note how many followers they have, how frequent they post and whether they receive engagement on their tweets.

In the above example, Oakley’s account reveals a fairly active channel with over 80K followers and 5.5K tweets (as of November 2015). The company seems to be engaging in promotions via sponsored sports events and many tweets feature new designs and product launches:

In summary, social media searches on Weibo are best for researching competitors and their ways of using this highly effective marketing channel. It can help you to figure out how much emphasis on social media your marketing campaign should include and what you should be tweeting about to keep your targeted audience engaged.

The post Competitive Research in China, Part III: Chinese Social Media Channels first appeared on Sampi.co.

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On the other hand, many foreign brands, who want to jump in on WeChat, don’t realize that the platform comes with the number of limitations. While in some cases and if done right, WeChat marketing can be incredibly effective, in other cases the results can be quite disappointing.

5 Common Misconceptions about WeChat Marketing

#1 Followers will find you

Unlike other popular social networks, WeChat’s private nature makes discovery quite difficult. WeChat’s own search function only allows looking for an account containing the exact match to a specific word. Even with that, the search results are often inaccurate. There are only a few ways you can acquire a follower:

• Have them scan your QR code placed on other media (website, banner ad, print, billboard etc.);
• Have someone forward a link to your account on WeChat to their friends (essentially word of mouth);
• Having someone to post a nice comment about you in their feed (moments) with the link to your account (KOL);
• In-app advertising – more about it below;

Here is more about getting WeChat followers organically.

#2 No one else can use my brand

Many popular brands who are just getting around starting their WeChat marketing campaigns in China often find out that someone else is already using their brand name and logo. Once an account has been created by someone it can be quite hard to have WeChat remove it. However, ignoring the problem is not a good idea either.

If, following the complaint, the owner of “squatter” account is refusing to comply by changing their WeChat account’s name and logo, it is possible to file a complaint to Tencent by filing proper paperwork. To be successful, the legitimate brand owner has to prove their ownership of the trademark in China which is the whole new topic. More on registering trademarks in China can be found in one of my favorite resources online at China Law Blog.

#3 In-app mobile advertising within WeChat is effective

In fact, advertising within WeChat is notoriously ineffective while also extremely expensive. Click through rate (CTR) of such ads is usually quite low for a number of reasons. The main problem is that once clicked, the user than will be taken out of the app elsewhere, usually to a built-in WeChat browser. Since most people don’t casually browse WeChat but have some purpose while using it, they wouldn’t typically abandon their activity in the middle to be redirected elsewhere.

The ads within user’s Moments (WeChat’s version of feed), are also rarely relevant and are not displayed consistently. Here is my other post about the issues with WeChat advertising.

#4 Recycling of posts from my other social media channels will do just fine on WeChat

Although, it could be an effective strategy to reuse content from other social media channels or blogs for WeChat, the posts are often not optimized for this platform. For example, articles that are too long or those relying too much on the graphics may not render well on WeChat’s smartphone screen.

One of the keys for WeChat marketing is figuring out the posts format that is just right in both size and layout. The graphics should be clear enough while displayed as a thumbnail in multiple picture posts while not looking pixelized when extended to the full screen. That would require some tweaking and testing to get everything right.

Also, if there are external links, they should lead to properly responsive pages that are optimized for mobile.

#5 WeChat marketing allows accurate targeting

We wish that one was true. Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to segment WeChat marketing messages, which is also true for its advertising. On the most basic level, the followers can be segmented only by their location and gender. Even the location is based on whatever WeChat subscriber has set and not on the actual geolocation. Whenever a more granular approach is needed,  each individual follower can be tagged and grouped. This would allow sending more targeted messages to a specific audience.

Such segmentation can be either manual – often an extremely time and labor consuming effort, or automated with some 3rd party backend platform customization. The biggest disadvantage of the platform, as compared to other popular social media channels, is its lack of tools to target followers based on their behavior, a crucial component in many effective digital marketing strategies.

In conclusion, while WeChat can be a powerful marketing tool in China, it’s important to realize what it can and cannot do. The best use of WeChat would be to deploy it as a one of the marketing elements, closely integrated with other channels, not in isolation.

The post 5 Common Misconceptions About WeChat Marketing first appeared on Sampi.co.

The post 5 Common Misconceptions About WeChat Marketing appeared first on Sampi.co.