Up2China

Last week, over 60 Israeli companies gathered in Mianyang, in Sichuan province for 3 days for a high-tech expo as part of the 25 year since China-Israel bilateral relationships. Israel was the honoured host and the expo had a record breaking number of Israeli firms, more than have ever taken part in any expo in China. This indicates China’s increasing diplomatic ties with Israel. Overall, over 700 firms from more than 40 countries attended the expo.

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The Israel-China relationship has strengthened in recent years and 2017 is the first year of the China-
Israel innovation partnership. China is Israel’s third largest trading partner and in the first half of 2017, Chinese companies invested almost $40m into Israel, furthermore Israel’s investment into China is growing. This clearly indicated the growing relationship between the two countries and the expo acted as a great way to promote coordinated development and allowed the Israeli consulate and Sichuan province to agree on a plan of action to promote cooperation in 10 industries.

Up2China attended the expo and represented ourselves and 5 companies (Zero gravity, Natural Sea Beauty, Curalife, Botanifique and Acoustiguide). We reached out to each of these companies to make them aware of the expo, we designed individual booths and catalogues for each company.

We also had 2 of our employees working at each booth, providing demonstrations of the products and sales pitches. This increased awareness of the products, promoted the brands and increased sale volume. Sales volume reached more than 60,000CNY over the three days.

In addition to this, we also worked with an array of our other clients whose booths we did not run, but we organised for them to be there.

Furthermore we organised B2B meetings in order to meet distributers. Increasing our exposure and visibility and improving relationships in order to promote brand awareness.

Each stall gained a lot of interest and we set up a game prior to the expo which allowed individuals to scan each of our QR codes in order to win a prize. This increased exposure and awareness of each of our clients.

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Overall, the Mianyang expo was a very successful 3 day endeavour that enabled Up2China to successfully promote many of our clients, increase visibility, improve brand awareness, as well as a great opportunity for us to reach out to distributers and to understand even more about the Israel-China relationship.

Picture: China takes centre stage at BRICS 2017 conference, Xiamen, China, 4 September 2017¹

Background

China is, arguably, the largest economy in the world, with many sources claiming that China, has in fact, overtaken the United States, to claim this title. Whether or not you agree with China being number 1 or number 2, you cannot question China’s global importance, impressive growth, and staggering trade volume. China’s rapid development has resulted in China becoming an appealing destination for many businesses.

Evidently, China is a very large and important player in the international market. Thus, in order to take your business to the next stage and expand internationally, getting access to the Chinese market is clearly an important consideration and would most certainly prove rewarding. The sheer size of the market and vast population size allows firms to gain access to a greater market and a large pool of consumers.

What makes China stand out?

Not only is China one of the largest economies in the world, but it has connections with countries all over the world. However, the interesting feature here, and the reason that China is so different to any other country, is the fact it is so closed off. This makes China a very difficult market to tap into and our future blogs will provide useful tips and key considerations in doing so, particularly in terms of the differences between Chinese and Western social media and marketing platforms. Being able to tap into the large Chinese population, the growing middle class and their rising western tastes is definitely an appealing proposition. In order to get your brand out there you need to go beyond the great firewall and the closed nature of China!

Considerations

In light of all this positivity on expanding and marketing your brand in China, a crucial question you need to ask is “will my brand will have an influence on Chinese consumers?”. To ensure that it does, marketing must be effective and must target the correct market in the correct way.

A perfect example is the extent to which social media platforms differ in China. WeChat, a multi-feature application, is used widely in China, with approximately 963m active users²who spend 40 minutes (on average) on the app per day³. Using WeChat is a great tool to access the Chinese market and help grow your business. This is clearly very different to the Western world and is one of the many modifications that you will need to make in order to be successful. As a result, expanding into China can be a difficult, but rewarding task and using WeChat to market your company is one of the many ways to access millions of Chinese consumers.

Picture: WeChat interface and QR code⁴

Another example is WeChat pay. WeChat pay is a very popular payment feature on the WeChat application. The feature has over 200m users⁵, and is a brilliant and convenient way to make payments. It means that China is rapidly moving away from physical cash, and this sort of innovation is an important consideration for any business expanding into China. Utilising this payment system allows you to gain access to Chinese consumers easily. This is one of the many ways you need to alter your marketing and payment landscape in order to appeal to Chinese consumers. We will discuss this, and other, payment features in future blogs, so stay tuned!

Picture: The power of QR codes in China: Alipay (left) and WeChat (right) ⁷

Not only is it critical to market yourself on the correct Chinese platforms, it is also essential to ensure systems are compatible on Chinese phones and marketing is available in the Chinese language. China has become the “undisputed leader in mobile transactions”⁶ so don’t miss out on this trend! Making sure your online services are compatible on Chinese smartphones and utilise Chinese payment methods is a great way for your brand to leave an imprint in the Chinese market!

The social media and marketing landscape is clearly very different in China compared with in the West. This is something that we work to achieve and in future blogs we will continue to provide valuable content to help you understand the Chinese marketing landscape. So if you are looking to grow your business, then expanding in China is an important move, and doing so in the correct manner is critical!

References:

1 - http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/8th-brics-summit-goa-declaration-here-is-the-full-text-adopted-by-the-member-nations/

2 – Q2 2017 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/255778/number-of-active-wechat-messenger-accounts/

3 – Apr 15 - http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/wechat-statistics/

4–Peterson, 2015, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/wechat-better-than-any-social-mobile-app-comes-out-silicon-peterson/ and Werner, 2016, https://www.cultofmac.com/430119/wechat-is-more-than-a-messaging-app-it-might-be-a-mobile-os/

5 – Jan 16 - http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/wechat-statistics/

6 - https://www.applause.com/blog/mobile-payments-global-adoption/

7 – Xiao, 2017, https://www.techinasia.com/fake-qr-code-scams-china and Benji, 2017, https://www.marketingtochina.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-qr-codes-in-china/