Is your product a fit for the Chinese market?
Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2024 6:35 am
When expanding into China it might help to imagine that you are moving several years into the future. Imagine a future where things move faster, competition is tougher and customers are more demanding. That’s China!
The movie Her was filmed in a place that looks enough like a near-future Los Angeles - ShanghaiThe movie Her was filmed in a place that looks enough like a near-future Los Angeles – Shanghai (source).
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
Do you already have a Chinese customer? If you’re doing no Chinese oman number for whatsapp marketing, sales or customer support but have picked up one or more Chinese customers regardless, that’s a great sign.
Can your product be done cheaper and better in China? If, for example, you are selling Amazon PPC ad management, that might be a tough sell, because they can do that in-house (or at least think they can). However, you might pivot to something else, such as a training course on how they can improve their English PPC ad creative writing. External courses are popular with Chinese Amazon sellers (source).
Are you willing to make things convenient for Chinese buyers? I’ll explain how in the next section.
Are you willing to speak Chinese? No, not you personally! But, can you provide your website’s key landing pages in Chinese? How about customer support? While highly-motivated buyers will navigate through an English-only marketing/sales funnel, you’ll get 10X more buyers by providing all the key materials/support in Chinese.
Remember that the niche market of Chinese companies that sell on Amazon is not the same as the whole Chinese market. They do have some ability to speak English, use foreign payment methods and generally get along with foreign businesses.
You wouldn’t be able to take any shortcuts if, for example, you were operating a restaurant catering to the general public in China. Believe me, I have promoted everything from Papa John’s pizza to real estate to plane tickets. Cross-border Chinese businesses are easier for foreign businesses to satisfy. Just remember, you cannot cut corners on
1) having a good product,
2) offering fast, high-quality customer support and,
3) Chinese-language marketing assets on the upper funnel.
How to Reach Chinese Amazon Sellers
To sell your products/services to Chinese Amazon sellers, you’ll need to create a marketing strategy that effectively overcomes language and cultural barriers.
Having been in this field for over ten years, we can offer a few insights.
Create a clear value proposition. Even if it’s more of a guess at first, list the unique selling points and how they benefit Chinese Amazon sellers. We like to use a three-page marketing plan document for this kind of thing. Three pages is enough that we don’t get bogged down in paperwork. Just write down what you know, and whatever relevant data you can obtain, then move on, take action. The plan should be updated regularly as data flows in from real potential customers.
Create a Chinese version of your website. ‘Transcreate’ your website into Simplified Mandarin Chinese. This will make it easier for Chinese Amazon sellers to learn about your services. Transcreation is part translation, part creation.
For instance, I saw a website with the prominent headline: “Grow your brand on Amazon”. Instead of just translating that, perhaps we should use some of the insights about Chinese Amazon sellers above, right? We could change it to “Grow your sales on Amazon”. That’s just a quick example. For key pages, we try to get inside the minds of the exact target customers and write specifically for them. But then for other supporting pages, translation is often good enough.
Use Baidu search ads. Baidu’s search ads work a lot like Google’s. It’s possible to show your ads to people that are searching for what you’re selling or related problems of theirs. This is one of the most common channels we use.
Use WeChat. By creating a WeChat official account, you can repeatedly share new information with your target audience. The posts you share there will show up right in the messages area of your followers, s
The movie Her was filmed in a place that looks enough like a near-future Los Angeles - ShanghaiThe movie Her was filmed in a place that looks enough like a near-future Los Angeles – Shanghai (source).
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
Do you already have a Chinese customer? If you’re doing no Chinese oman number for whatsapp marketing, sales or customer support but have picked up one or more Chinese customers regardless, that’s a great sign.
Can your product be done cheaper and better in China? If, for example, you are selling Amazon PPC ad management, that might be a tough sell, because they can do that in-house (or at least think they can). However, you might pivot to something else, such as a training course on how they can improve their English PPC ad creative writing. External courses are popular with Chinese Amazon sellers (source).
Are you willing to make things convenient for Chinese buyers? I’ll explain how in the next section.
Are you willing to speak Chinese? No, not you personally! But, can you provide your website’s key landing pages in Chinese? How about customer support? While highly-motivated buyers will navigate through an English-only marketing/sales funnel, you’ll get 10X more buyers by providing all the key materials/support in Chinese.
Remember that the niche market of Chinese companies that sell on Amazon is not the same as the whole Chinese market. They do have some ability to speak English, use foreign payment methods and generally get along with foreign businesses.
You wouldn’t be able to take any shortcuts if, for example, you were operating a restaurant catering to the general public in China. Believe me, I have promoted everything from Papa John’s pizza to real estate to plane tickets. Cross-border Chinese businesses are easier for foreign businesses to satisfy. Just remember, you cannot cut corners on
1) having a good product,
2) offering fast, high-quality customer support and,
3) Chinese-language marketing assets on the upper funnel.
How to Reach Chinese Amazon Sellers
To sell your products/services to Chinese Amazon sellers, you’ll need to create a marketing strategy that effectively overcomes language and cultural barriers.
Having been in this field for over ten years, we can offer a few insights.
Create a clear value proposition. Even if it’s more of a guess at first, list the unique selling points and how they benefit Chinese Amazon sellers. We like to use a three-page marketing plan document for this kind of thing. Three pages is enough that we don’t get bogged down in paperwork. Just write down what you know, and whatever relevant data you can obtain, then move on, take action. The plan should be updated regularly as data flows in from real potential customers.
Create a Chinese version of your website. ‘Transcreate’ your website into Simplified Mandarin Chinese. This will make it easier for Chinese Amazon sellers to learn about your services. Transcreation is part translation, part creation.
For instance, I saw a website with the prominent headline: “Grow your brand on Amazon”. Instead of just translating that, perhaps we should use some of the insights about Chinese Amazon sellers above, right? We could change it to “Grow your sales on Amazon”. That’s just a quick example. For key pages, we try to get inside the minds of the exact target customers and write specifically for them. But then for other supporting pages, translation is often good enough.
Use Baidu search ads. Baidu’s search ads work a lot like Google’s. It’s possible to show your ads to people that are searching for what you’re selling or related problems of theirs. This is one of the most common channels we use.
Use WeChat. By creating a WeChat official account, you can repeatedly share new information with your target audience. The posts you share there will show up right in the messages area of your followers, s