Massive Internet Marketing Success in China

This is very interesting, good research syndicator! It gives e a lot to think about. I am still pretty new to IM, but in the next 5-10 years this could open up a new world of possibilities.


I wonder how the west will interact with the east? Whether or not English will grow more common or Chinese will start to take hold. Either way, I bet there will be a big pot for IM'ers who can read and speak English. Then again, with the translation tools that are available it may not make such a big difference.

I agree that the cultural differences with be the biggest hurdle. Having never visited the orient, I do not know many of the customs, but have a decent understanding.

I wonder if they are as susceptible to the western style of selling that I fall into way too often.

This is really exciting for me to think about. Makes me want to travel. Thats the whole point of IM right?

Interesting stats but the ecommerce stats and the predicted growth are of more benefit here.

I've been keeping a close eye on the Indian market. Whilst there may be obvious language barriers there, the target population have an excellent command of the English language. And money to boot due to the huge disparity between the upper class (the target population) and the lower classes.

So India may even have more potential than China.

From what I have seen, the Indian market has a stronger command over personal electronics too. From just reading what people write, it looks like India has a fair amount of middle class internet savvy young people. There doesn't seem to be as much of a presence of Chinese, but I may not be looking in the right places.

Not meaning to distract from the original purpose of the thread, but Syndicator, how do you like living in China? Are you from the US? If you don't mind answering a few questions about lifestyle and interaction with the culture, how much would renting an apartment + living expenses roughly equate to in dollars? Has the sentiment toward the west changed after the Beijing Olympics?

There's just too many questions I would like to ask. I am living in the US, but your profile sounds interesting, traveling around the East on a mixture of personal and business life.

Lucas

I actually found that internally the systems are quite good. You can walk off the street into a major bank and leave equipped with an online account and USB smartcard and it's quite easy to pay for things online as long as they are domestic. Transferring funds out however is a different story - I tested this out once by transferring a hundred bucks to a US company. OMG what a rigmarole. So many forms in triplicate, big red stamps all over the place, close scrutiny of credentials and visas as well as a couple hours total in the bank.

This is certainly a down side to marketing to the West from China but like you say there are local equivalents and some of them are pretty impressive too. QQ is one that amazes me - it's kind of like Facebook, Myspace, Skype and more all rolled into one and it works very, very well.

Agreed on the cultural thing. I started coming here in '97 and am still learning the cultural subtleties. The other thing is I have *never* seen a digital product selling for amounts like those which are acceptable in the west. Fifty bucks for a pdf? Never. I think part of the problem is the perception of the value of intangible products. I've seen a few people selling DVD sets and think that info products would need to either be delivered as hard media or bundled with physical products to sell for a worthwhile price.

While I believe that paypal.cn can accept payments from overseas I don't think the reverse is true, at least last time I checked.

There is a payment processor over here that is much bigger that Paypal called Alipay which I use to pay for items on Taobao ( this is like a huge Chinese eBay ). Interestingly, last time I bought something from Godaddy I was surprised to see they now accept payments from Alipay, so the times are a changin'. Also, while setting up my Alipay account I had a friend call them up to clarify something and we were patched straight through to a friendly help desk - nice.


Phil

I agree the numbers do not lie there is massive business potential in China to say the least. I put a Google translation bar on my blog for my foreign visitors this helps translate it from English into their native language.

The questions you have to ask yourself are what do the people living in China want? I know their buying cars left and right. What else would make them purchase from you? These are a few questions you should ask yourself before you penetrate the Chinese marketplace. But I definitely agree it is a huge huge market that should not be ignored!

Hey Syndicator,

Great insights there....

I still remember I've created a thread asking if IM in Asia should be the next big step we move towards but there isn't much response because we are all still busy competing in Developed Countries.

China and Taiwan is definitely 2 countries to look into penetration if we can, they have their own search engines (baidu.com), video sites (tudou.com) and most of their IMers market through yahoo store (although they have their own retail stores) to their own people and normal ecommerce websites to developed countries.

These really shows that Asians are buying heavily online since don't how many years ago.

That's why right now I'm also trying to learn about PPC and SEO in Chinese using their search engines because even though they understand English, they still do searches in Chinese.

Regards,
Darren

More than half of my writing clients have been from the UK and Hong Kong.

I am honestly mystified as to why other people aren't targeting these markets.