Key Marketing Trends you should know for 2021

By Wilson Lin(Target China)
15 Mar 2021

In 2021, the China market became more important than ever for brands around the world. Today, we are going to introduce the key marketing trends for you to consider when you enter the Chinese market (applicable for both China and Australia).

1.KOL Marketing

Chinese consumers are wary of trying out products from brands directly without consulting a friend or any other third person who has used the product. This dependence on the third-person opinion has given rise to KOL (Key Opinion Leader) marketing. KOL shapes public opinion in their respective industry and drives sales for many brands.

2. Video Marketing

China has upscaled its video marketing content into sections through apps like TikTok. Chinese users watch movies, short films, stream music videos and exchange messages on the platforms. This has enabled marketers to leverage the platform effectively for ads to target customers based on their video preferences. Brands like Michael Kors, Adidas and Pizza Hut ran successful campaigns on TikTok (Douyin).

3.Online to Offline Marketing

While Omni channel marketing made its rounds in western society, O2O marketing has been prevalent in China. O2O stands for Online to Offline, it blurs the online and offline gap. O2O is a strategy that links a digital connection to offline sales and has evolved with QR code technology. O2O marketing is important because e-commerce comprises of a portion of the total retail sales globally.

4.Mobile Marketing

The Chinese skipped an entire generation of ‘desktop’ usage because mobile usage penetrated much later into the country after the digital sprout all over the world. The Chinese are adaptive to using their phones for buying groceries to hailing a cab.

If you want to do marketing in China, mobile should be first. For example, Bytedance’s short video platform, TikTok (Douyin), has emerged as one of the most popular mobile marketing channels nowadays, has garnered 300 million MAU (monthly active users) in China alone. Many marketers in China have already started testing campaigns on the platform.

Moreover, Little Red Book is also one of the most important tools when it comes to Chinese Marketing. According to the research, 97% of the users prefer to use Little Red Book on their mobile devices. As a result, mobile marketing is definitely something that you should consider when targeting the Chinese market.

To sum up, the Chinese market can be different to all the other markets. It is important to know the culture, trends, restrictions and language. The good news is, Target China is a professional marketing agency that has extensive experience in the media & marketing fields. We can easily assist you in reaching the brand promotional goal and also grow your sale!

Speak to us today if you have any queries about marketing, we are more than happy to help! 😉

Wikipedia. 2021. Online advertising in China. [ONLINE] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_advertising_in_China