Three questions about going overseas: How can Chinese brands master global marketing?

"Going global" is becoming a business event that more and more Chinese companies are considering this year. So, how can Chinese companies master global marketing in the process of going global, and how can they get along with the future and build global brand power? Let's take a look.

With the recent announcement by the World Health Organization that the COVID-19 pandemic no longer constitutes a "public health emergency of international concern", overseas markets that have been the first to enter the recovery stage have once again become of concern to Chinese companies, and "going overseas" is becoming a business event that more and more companies are considering this year.

The times are restless, or too restless. As the scale of development takes precedence over the quality of development, overseas companies are eager for "speed", "efficiency" and "explosive products", while the immature industry ecology and the transitional management methods have further magnified the negative side of this trend.

In this turbulent time, how should Chinese enterprises master global marketing when going overseas? Facing this acute question, the Community Research Institute hopes to give you some answers through the interpretation of relevant reports.

1. How do overseas brands make use of the “grass planting” economy?

In 2016, Kathleen A. O'Donnell published The thrill of victory: Women and sport shopping online, proposing the concept of "Sport shoppers", which is defined as "consumers who can afford goods at full price but bargain for the thrill of shopping."

Today, with abundant materials, overcapacity, smooth global shopping networks, and increasingly diversified online shopping methods that have penetrated the global society, and under the international trend of changes in global brand marketing methods, faced with the serious homogeneity of similar products, the traditional marketing methods that emphasize product features and competitive product quality can be regarded as routine operations of corporate marketing but are not outstanding. In marketing, letting consumers pay for the pleasure brought by shopping stimulation can be regarded as an advanced marketing method, which is actually similar to the C-ization of the wine industry that the author has been studying for a long time.

In the C-era, consumers' consumption behavior is random and disordered. It's like a consumer walking into a hypermarket that is having a year-end sale. They originally only wanted to buy a facial cleanser, but after bargaining, they felt it was a good deal and bought a lot of unnecessary things to take home. But at the same time, consumers' willingness to consume is easily influenced. Consumers have a strong shopping curiosity mentality, are easily "planted", and are willing to share.

This type of consumers are likely to stimulate the growth of overseas brands' performance and should be paid special attention to. So how can we carry out growth marketing targeting this type of users?

First, the brand characteristics must stand out. The 2021 BrandZ China Global Brands research report and Kantar BrandZ China Top 50 Global Brands list point out that "meaningfulness, differentiation and prominence are important drivers of brand resilience and growth."

Overseas brands focusing on the experience economy and DTC models must first upgrade from advertisers to brand owners. The brand image must have a spreadable characteristic or tone, which can not only allow bloggers to promote brands and products in the most concise way, but also reach consumers' hearts in the most convenient way. After the brand is established, brand endorsement and brand influence can solve some of the trust issues between consumers and products.

Second, partners should be diverse and combined marketing should be efficient. Sport shoppers are everywhere because of their unplanned nature. Even buyers who have a plan may suddenly buy goods under marketing stimulation. Therefore, there should be no limit to their marketing channels. Through various cooperation methods, combined marketing effects can help brands take shape faster and better, and make the transition from no brand to niche brand to well-known online brand.

2. How do Chinese companies going overseas deal with the future?

Based on the advantages of a solid and abundant supply chain foundation, the digital marketing capabilities tempered by actual combat, and the low-cost, high-efficiency, and flexible resource aggregation in the Greater Bay Area and the Yangtze River Delta, since joining the WTO, Chinese companies have gone abroad one after another, developed business in the east and west, brought Made in China to the other side of the ocean, and made Chinese production capacity accessible to all parts of the world. During this period, a large number of outstanding platform sellers and DTC brands have emerged, becoming a gorgeous aspect of the Chinese economy.

There are both immediate and long-term concerns, and crises coexist. The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly changed the rhythm of the world economy and reshaped the market space for cross-border e-commerce. At the same time, leading platforms represented by Amazon are constrained by the macro situation and frequently put pressure on Chinese merchants. In the past year, there have been multiple store closures and delistings, and the undercurrent is surging. At this moment, Chinese companies need a more standardized, more efficient, and more long-term overseas business path and brand development path.

In fact, the key risk of brands going overseas is the inability to strategically predict the actual feedback from consumers in the market, that is, the problem of marketing feedback efficiency. Specifically, there are two issues:

First, the cost of trial and error in overseas marketing remains high. Especially after advertising and full-matrix marketing, there is a time lag in the backtracking of marketing data, and even untrue data interferes with the results of backtracking analysis, so that companies cannot accurately grasp the marketing effect, and then optimization actions are like crossing a river by feeling the stones.

Secondly, it is impossible to carry out large-scale docking and cooperation with experienced local partners in a short period of time, which not only limits the space for marketing activities, but also makes it difficult to find ways to integrate into the local market.

In view of the above risks, enterprises going overseas must choose excellent local marketing service providers to carry out localized operations. Now many high-quality marketing service providers will use the services of SaaS platforms to monitor marketing data, analyze and optimize marketing strategies in real time, and conduct anti-fraud management of data. In addition, they will combine years of localized marketing experience to select suitable partners, manage partner marketing projects on a large scale, provide multi-channel aggregation of medium and long-tail traffic, and expand the coverage of marketing.

Through understanding the rules of overseas markets, we conduct new alliance marketing operations that are close to local markets, gather off-site traffic and complete the original accumulation of the user ecosystem; through understanding overseas market consumers, we conduct content marketing operations that are close to local consumers and make up for the brand weakness of overseas products in overseas local markets. We can quickly replicate the rapid growth of the Chinese market overseas and help overseas companies to complete the commercial closed loop.

3. How to abandon traffic thinking and build global brand power?

Future Internet marketing must use a public relations perspective to build long-term brand reputation and maintain long-term relationships with partners and consumers.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, the mobile Internet market has experienced a wave of rapid growth. According to Oberlo’s statistics, in 2020 alone, there were 93 million new mobile phone users worldwide, especially in emerging markets such as Southeast Asia and South America, where there is considerable traffic dividend to be tapped.

However, it is not easy for brands to seize market opportunities and profit from traffic growth. Chinese companies going overseas are highly dependent on traditional digital advertising forms such as large platform traffic, programmatic advertising, and third-party cookie data tracking, but the effects of these "old methods" are becoming less and less satisfactory.

In recent years, competition for advertising traffic among major platforms has become increasingly fierce, prices have risen, but conversion rates have declined.

According to a Wordstream survey, the average ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sales) of Amazon US sellers in the second half of last year was as high as 30%; and Google's paid click rate for ads has dropped by 10% in recent years, and the conversion rate of 1/4 of the advertising accounts is less than 1%. The core reason for this situation is the fragmentation of Internet traffic and the resulting change in consumer mentality, so Chinese companies must abandon the traffic mindset when marketing overseas.

So how can companies build global brand power that adapts to the new era? The most important part of the answer must be KOL, or Internet celebrity marketing.

Global KOL marketing has undergone significant changes and developments due to the continuous improvement of technology, the continuous changes in consumer behavior, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other factors. Today, a large number of consumers tend to refer to the advice and content of KOLs before making purchasing decisions.

Compared with traditional brand marketing advertisements, consumers are more likely to identify with the content produced by KOLs. For them, authenticity is an important factor influencing purchasing decisions, and the suggestions given by KOLs after personal experience are more likely to gain consumers' trust. Therefore, marketing cooperation with KOLs is an effective way for brands to increase their visibility and promote revenue. For brands, KOLs can serve as a bridge to convey brand information to consumers, help brands build their image, and establish a lasting trust relationship with consumers.

Many times, it is not necessarily the case that the more fans a KOL has, the better the marketing effect will be. Today’s young people tend to pay more attention to small and medium-sized KOLs whose content is authentic and interesting. In their eyes, the content produced by their favorite KOLs will not make them feel too strongly “sold.”

Nowadays, KOL marketing has become part of the strategic planning of most marketers, and this trend will become more significant in the future. For Chinese companies going overseas, KOL marketing is also an inevitable choice for their brand globalization, and it is better to do it early than late.

Of course, the above are only partial answers to some key questions. Going overseas is a huge proposition, and marketing is also a systematic and complex project. I hope that the above content can serve as a starting point for discussion.

Author: Editorial Department of Community Marketing Research Institute; Reviewer: lidaxia

Source: Community Marketing Research Institute (ID: Community_Marketing), insights into community consumption