Chinese market commands localized insights for foreign brand success

With China’s advanced developments in technology and drastically different consumer behavior, marketers cannot simply reuse global insights.

Findings from IPinYou are showing that the unique consumer culture in China requires marketers to develop a fine tuned strategy with relevant data. More than 730 million consumers are Internet users in China, which makes digital crucial to conquering the market.

“Many foreign brands assume that they can simply reuse their global audience insights when entering China market; however, due to the special media landscape, the performance of campaigns might not meet advertiser’s expectations and might neglect other high potential audiences in this unique Chinese consumer environment,” said Ann Yang, manager of marketing and PR at IPinYou, Seattle.

“Therefore, it is crucial for brands partnering with a reliable partner in China with both international experience and local knowledge to represent client’s interest and succeed in China market,” she said.

Importance of programmatic
The substantial number of online users in China can make it difficult to sift through and discern data, which makes it important to adopt solutions to help accomplish this.

It is important not to look to previous global insights in regards to campaigns in China. For instance, a luxury children’s brand looked to iPinYou to help with its campaigns.

Louis Vuitton in China

The brand discovered that while its global audience is made of up 90 percent women, its Chinese audience is only 50 percent women. This changes the direction the brand needs to take in advertising content.

Marketing and data
Artificial intelligence, the Internet of things and identity resolution technologies are three of the best ways to future-proof consumer marketing tactics in the immediate future, according to a new report from Forrester.

The report, "Top Emerging Technologies For B2C Marketers," examines the ways that technology is influencing marketing tactics in this rapidly evolving era. From this chaos, Forrester has pinned down some of the technological areas that marketers should keep an eye on to make sure they are not left behind by the marketing tech revolution (see more).

As advertising strategies continue to adjust to the digital age, many marketers fear that an obsessive focus on data is having unintended consequences.

A frequent complaint among observers in recent years is that an over-reliance on data and targeting strategies has detracted from the development of high-quality creative that grabs consumers’ attention and moves them to act (see more).

“With the rapid rise of the spending power of its middle class, China presents enormous potential for foreign brands,” Ms. Yang said. “Yet the completely different dynamics of the China market and the complicated Chinese media landscape, it is challenging for complies to effectively find, target and reach Chinese consumers.

“Programmatic buying can help the foreign brands to gain audience insights and connect brands with Chinese consumers by using the most effective and efficient marketing and advertising approach,” she said. “iPinYou is the leading ad tech platform in China. We have integrated over 92 percent of high quality media inventories in China and we can effectively connect foreign brands with Chinese audiences.”