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11/18/21, 6:34 PM Five China Marketing Trends You Must Know In 2021

https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurenhallanan/2021/02/08/5-china-marketing-trends-you-must-know-in-2021/?sh=25169af21d8f 1/11

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Five China Marketing Trends You

Must Know In 2021

Feb 8, 2021, 08:00am EST | 11,477 views

Lauren Hallanan Contributor

Listen to article 14 minutes

BEIJING, CHINA - MAY 6, 2020: People in the Sanlitun shopping area. Artyom Ivanov/TASS (Photo by ...

[+] ARTYOM IVANOV/TASS

In 2020, the China market became more important than ever for brands

around the world. While Western nations continued to struggle with the

impact of Covid-19, China was able to get the virus largely under control,

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and its economy quickly rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, even achieving

growth in some industries.

It currently appears that this situation will remain for much of 2021, and as

such, businesses are ramping up their efforts in the region. With this many

brands vying for Chinese consumers’ attention, a basic China marketing

strategy is no longer enough.

In this article I share five opportunities for brands to consider. These

suggestions are particularly relevant for brands targeting Gen Z consumers

as well as consumers from lower-tier cities, which happen to be two of

China’s most sought after consumer groups right now.

Let’s dive right in...

Bilibili BILI -17.2%  

Often referred to as the “YouTube of China”, video platform Bilibili has been

around since 2010 but took the slow-growth approach, focusing on

developing an extremely loyal and engaged user base.

But that’s changing. Over the past year, Bilibili has seen a large influx of new

users. In Q1 of 2020, it reported it had 172 million monthly active users – a

70% increase year-on-year.

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And these users are young. According to a recent report by Chinese research

firm Hunwater Media, the average Bilibili user is 21 years old, and the

average age of new users is 20.

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Seen by many as the next big thing, content creators are joining the platform

in droves. According to the same report, in Q3 2020, the number of active

content creators on Bilibili was up 50% YOY and the number of influencer

accounts with over 10,000 followers had increased 75% YoY. Nearly half of

the content creators on Bilibili only began publishing content on the

platform less than 6 months ago.

With this flood of new content creators, the average amount of content

uploaded to the platform each month has increased 79% YoY.

Despite massive growth, Bilibili has retained a highly engaged user base. In

2020, daily time spent on the platform per user soared to a record of 87

minutes.

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YICHANG, CHINA - JANUARY 5, 2021 - Bilibili is expected to �le an IPO application with the Hong ...

[+] BARCROFT MEDIA VIA GETTY IMAGES

2020 also saw an increase in brands leveraging the platform, whether that

was by working with influencers or opening a brand page. Over the summer,

Dior made a big splash becoming the first luxury brand to open an account

on Bilibili.

On Bilibili’s official noteworthy brand accounts of 2020 you’ll find Fanta,

Audi, several Chinese phone brands such as Huawei, Oppo and Honor, as

well as accounts from major tech and commerce platforms such as Tencent,

Pinduoduo, and Alibaba’s BABA -11.1% Ding Talk.

In the past, brands have been slow to incorporate Bilibili into their

marketing strategy, partly because success on the platform requires a deep

understanding of its unique culture. Bilibili users are known for their off-

beat humor, slight nerdiness, and love of creativity.

Lifestyle, gaming, and educational content make up around 64% of content

on the platform, so brands may want to think outside the box as to how they

can create content that will capture these audiences.

But, as mentioned above, Bilibili users are very active on the platform and

brands who can tap into those elements will find that their engagement on

Bilibili will far outpace any other platform in China.

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QQ

Readers somewhat familiar with Chinese social media platforms may be

surprised that I’m including QQ on this list, but just like Bilibili, this is a

trend led by Gen Z.

Launched in 1999, QQ is an instant messaging software service and web

portal developed by the Chinese tech giant Tencent. With the launch of

WeChat, QQ took a back seat. While the lack of buzz around the platform

may lead people to believe QQ is dead, that is far from true.

The platform has always remained popular among internet users in lower

tier cities and over the past few years it has seen a resurgence of Gen Z and

teenage users who want to escape the gaze of parents and relatives on

WeChat.

If you speak to young people in China right now, many will tell you that they

must use WeChat to communicate with parents and teachers, and to use

WeChat Pay, but when it comes to chatting with friends, they opt for QQ.

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Icons for the Tencent Holdings Ltd. messaging applications QQ, left, and WeChat. Photographer: ... [+]

© 2017 BLOOMBERG FINANCE LP

Just as many young people in the U.S. started avoiding Facebook after their

parents and grandparents joined, in China, everyone is on WeChat, and

even with privacy options, young people feel like they can’t post anything on

Moments (WeChat’s photo sharing feed) without their parents, relatives,

teachers, bosses, etc. seeing it.

Plus, QQ makes chatting more fun with features such as customizable

avatars, music, games, and my favorite, a little fire icon in a QQ chat that

burns more brightly the more you chat with someone. This has now become

a slang term among post-00s consumers called yang huo (养火), tending the

fire or growing the relationship.

Why is this important for brands? You may have heard of China’s private

traffic trend. Chinese consumers typically prefer marketplaces and social

media platforms for purchases and brand interactions - what marketers in

China refer to as public traffic. The downside to this is that brands don’t own

their traffic and have less control over the user experience. What’s more, in

recent years, user acquisition costs in China have skyrocketed.

As such, brands have been seeking ways to own their traffic, or create

“private traffic”. The Western equivalent of private traffic would be a blog or

an email list, which are owned channels, however, in China, people are less

likely to visit websites and rarely use email, so influencers and brands are

seeking out ways to have private ‘owned’ traffic, although still on social

media sites.

Right now, the super app WeChat is the biggest private traffic channel in

China. Brands such as popular domestic cosmetics brand Perfect Diary are

using WeChat groups to create communities of consumers. Although a

labor-intensive process, it reduces the distance between the brand and

consumer and helps build loyalty.

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This is where QQ comes in.

While most brands are using WeChat for their private traffic groups, brands

who are heavily focused on Gen Z consumers, such as Chinese cosmetics

brand Girlcult, have forgone WeChat and are opting for QQ groups. As more

and more brands look to connect with China’s young consumers, they will

have to go where the consumers are, and that’s QQ.

V-commerce

In 2021, video will become a key gateway to generating sales.

A key platform to watch is Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok). Back in

June, Douyin’s parent company ByteDance announced the launch of its new

Department of E-commerce Business, an indication that ByteDance plans to

compete for a share of China’s massive e-commerce marketplace.

Currently, live streaming is the main driver for sales on Douyin. During the

2020 Singles Day shopping festival, Douyin live streaming achieved $2.9

billion USD in sales. Outside of live streaming, brands and influencers are

currently able to set up stores within Douyin which users can access from

the brand or influencer’s main account page.

This year, we are likely to see Douyin launch more integration between

video and commerce. Douyin has already tested in-video search on selected

accounts, giving brands and influencers the ability to embed links to e-

commerce within video content.

E-commerce giant Alibaba is also making moves in this space. Late last year

it added a video section to its Taobao Live app.

All videos in the app are enabled with in-video search. Users can click on a

button while watching a video, and AI image recognition will identify any

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products in the video. After choosing the item you want to search for, users

will be shown product results from both Taobao and Tmall. From my testing

the feature was surprisingly accurate.

Whereas Douyin has the content and is still working on the technology, the

struggle Alibaba faces is the exact opposite. It has the technology but

currently lacks quality video content that would attract consumers to use the

technology in the first place.

Not to be left out, Tencent has also made it clear that the development of

Channels, WeChat’s video feature launched early last year, will be a key

focus for 2021. Videos on channels can already be linked to WeChat Mini

Program stores, and during the recent WeChat Pro annual conference,

Tencent shared that it plans to offer greater integration between Official

Accounts, Mini Programs, and Channels this year.

Either way, with many big players working on it, v-commerce is likely to

take off this year.

Vtubers or Virtual Influencers

Another Gen Z powered trend that will continue to grow this year is virtual

influencers, also referred to as Vtubers. This trend links back to the growth

of Bilibili as well, as many of China’s top Vtubers have a strong presence or

got their start on Bilibili.

One of the most famous ones is Luo Tianyi who, with millions of followers,

has appeared in brand campaigns for Pizza Hut and KFC. She has even held

sold-out live concerts at stadiums in China.

To capture this trend, caming companies in China have started shifting

some of their efforts towards developing these talents, for example

Papergame’s influencer Nuannuan, a former game character turned virtual

idol.

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For brands, there are many benefits to working with virtual influencers, the

biggest one being that because they aren’t human, brands can avoid the risk

of being caught up in a scandal.

While many of these virtual influencers are powered by a team of humans,

Alibaba has been working on AI-powered avatars that help brands run e-

commerce live streams 24/7. These virtual hosts can interact with audiences

and answer their questions about products using intelligent cognitive and

perception technologies.

Further augmentation of live commerce 

As I predicted in last year’s marketing trends article, live streaming was

China’s biggest commerce and marketing trend of 2020. While the industry

may experience slower growth in 2021, live streaming has become a

mainstream shopping format in China and it looks like it is here to stay.

Alibaba's Virtual Anchors for Taobao Live.Alibaba's Virtual Anchors for Taobao Live.

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KPMG and Alibaba’s Research unit AliResearch estimate China’s live

streaming e-commerce market will total $305 billion USD in 2021,

representing 384% growth from 2019. Chinese research firm iResearch

estimates that live streaming will account for more than 15% of e-commerce

sales in China in 2021, and more than 20% by 2022.

Live streaming is an excellent channel to reach consumers in China’s lower-

tier cities, a key growth area for many brands. According to Business of

Fashion’s State of Fashion 2021 report, currently around 60% of Alibaba’s

live streaming audience are from lower-tier cities.

When live commerce first took off in China, it relied heavily on influencers

and celebrities to drive sales. In 2020, during the Covid-19 lockdowns, more

brands began running their own live streams and empowering their sales

associates to become streamers. This shift continued throughout the rest of

the year, and during June’s 6.18 shopping festival, around 40% of streams

on Alibaba’s Taobao Live were hosted by brands.

This trend of brand-run streams will continue to grow in 2021.

To keep viewers engaged with the medium and prevent live streaming

fatigue, I predict we will continue to see platforms adding in additional

features that augment the live shopping experience such as in-stream AR

product try-ons, gamification, for example earning points based on how long

you watch a stream or for sharing a stream with your friends, virtual hosts,

and more.

As brands in China seek to capture the attention of the younger generation

and consumers in lower tier cities, they will need to be willing to experiment

with new channels and content types as well as rethink the typical consumer

journey.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my

other work here.

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Lauren Hallanan Follow

I am part of the Salesforce Strategic Partnerships Team, working on our Alibaba

partnership and efforts in the China market. I am the founder of

chinamktginsights.com,... Read More

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