September 9, 2022

China Marketing Insights Monthly Newsletter [November 2020]

Hello,

Welcome to our November Newsletter.

November is traditionally the “shopping month” with Singles day the sole highlight of the month. Last month we had provided our insights, guide & strategy for effective 11.11, and we were spot on with our recommendation on effective strategy. This year the sales did not disappoint – another record breaking year – close to 500 Billion RMB, more details in our 2020 post event insights.

Once again travel in spotlight, this time we have compiled Chinese Government’s report on 4 & 5 Star hotels in China.

Our partner Miaozhen has released new measurement solution for OOH Monitoring to further the digitization and transparency of the outdoor advertising industry.

In our marketing ideas section we talk about a complete guide to mini-programs. While WeChat is the most predominant platform for mini-program, there are other apps that have built a successful ecosystem including Alipay, Baidu, Bytedance, etc. We have also done several alternate marketing strategies using live streaming & private traffic – read about our experience & success in our other marketing idea.

We round up this newsletter with App of the month featuring JD.com.

From all of us here at OctoPlus Media, wishing you and your family good health and safety.

Sincerely,

Mia C. Chen

CEO & Co-Founder of OctoPlus Media

CHINA STAR-RATED HOTELS REPORT

Recently China Ministry of Culture and Tourism of China released a statistical report on star-rated hotels. As of Q2 2020, China had 9,923 star-rated hotels registered in the national statistic management system, including 850 five-star hotels and 2,564 four-star hotels.

Key Insights from the report:

Bulk of the revenue came from non-rooms

Total 6,345 properties passed the review of provincial cultural and tourism administrative departments. The total revenue of these hotels was RMB 21.8 billion (USD 3.25 billion) in the quarter, with room revenue accounting for 38.91% of the total. The revenue of four-star hotels was RMB 7.97 billion, exceeding that of five-star hotels.

Lower ADR and occupancy rate

In terms of major indicators of hotel performance, the average daily rate (ADR) of five-star hotels was below RMB 500 (USD 74.5), and the occupancy rate was 30.1%.

Five-Star hotels experienced sharpest decline

However, compared with the same period of last year, five-star hotels experienced the sharpest decrease in all key indicators, with RevPAR dropping by 64.4%. By contrast, one-star hotels recorded a 34.1% of increase in RevPAR.

For detail report (in Chinese) click here.

MIAOZHEN OOH-MONITOR 2.0

Miaozhen Systems, a leading Chinese third-party advertising technology company, announced that the company has officially launched a new measurement solution named OOH-Monitor 2.0 to further the digitization and transparency of the outdoor advertising industry.

Key component of OOH-Monitor 2.0 include systematic self-monitoring, device-level log-level full monitoring, and minute-level real-time monitoring. While fully protecting the rights and interests of brand release, outdoor media value is presented more truly and accurately.

At present, OOH-Monitor can cover nearly 10 million screens in 100+ cities from tier 1 city to tier 5 city, including smart screens, LED screens, LCD screens, car screens, etc. Covering buildings, MRT, airport, outdoor screen, hotel, cinema and other major work and life scenes. Based on different monitoring requirements, OOH Monitor can use SDK, API, customization and other measurement technologies to realize monitoring, and at the same time provide offline audience measurement services based on OTC (advertising visibility measurement) technology.

We use Mioazhen tracking as a default in all our campaigns unless the client requests otherwise. To learn more about how you can use Miaozhen in you campaigns contact us

Or subscribe to Miaozhen wechat by scanning below code.

FRESH INSIGHTS REPORT FOR 2020.11.11

The world’s largest shopping festival – Singles’Day has been ended in 2020, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba records 498.2 billion RMB (US$ 75.1 billion) in first post-virus Singles’ Day sales, beating 2019 high, and another giant JD.com reached 271.5 billion RMB (US$ 41.1 billion), up from 204.4 billion RMB in 2019.

In order to explore the marketing tactics behind Singles’ Day, TopKlout Index monitored and observed all major platforms and anchors during the Double 11 period.

Key Insights from the report:

The two e-commerce giants, Tmall and JD.com, used short videos and talk shows to seize user psychology during the pre D-day session of Double 11 this year.
Douyin and Kuaishou, two major short video platforms also participated in the event, cooperating with celebrities, KOL, and brands to conduct live-streaming, interact deeply with fans, and improve the atmosphere of e-commerce;
Tmall moved 17 live-streaming rooms to the studio. The stage and the live- streaming room enabled two-way traffic, and entertainment experience and shopping experience can be enjoyed at the same time; Tmall cooperated with Jiangsu TV to connect celebrities, content and users to create an ecological evening party belonging to Kuaishou.
On social platforms, celebrities and anchors attracted users and traffic through content on weibo, while Tencent helps brands expand their influence through its WeChat mini-program, WeChat video channel, WeChat store and other functions.
It is an inevitable trend for live-streaming to sell goods. Content + e-commerce will bring ecological integration closer. Celebrities + anchors can increase topicality and create personal IP
Generation Z user will be the main people leading the market.

GUIDE TO MINI-PROGRAM

Mini-program ecosystem has exploded within WeChat friends’ circle and gradually improved its ecology since 2018.

Subsequently Alipay, Baidu, Toutiao and major mobile phone manufacturers launched mini program one after another.

Focusing on the product development, mini programs are being redefined, improved in capabilities and advanced infrastructure towards traffic distribution, accelerating the ecommerce process. Let’s list some of popular mini-program platform on the market.

Wechat Mini Program

WeChat was the first to enter Mini Program, the ecosystem was mature, forming a complete closed loop of traffic. The user enters the mini program from the WeChat official account, chat window or external APP and other traffic portals, and then returns to the official account, chat window or external APP through the payment, sharing, and redirect capabilities of the mini program.

Baidu Mini Program

Baidu intelligent mini program is based on the concept of openness, breaking the traditional island-style traffic flow, realizing that the traffic can reach users in the whole domain. Users can access the mini program through Baidu search portal or fixed entry in Baidu products, but also through such as 58.com, iQiyi and other APPs.

Alipay Mini Program

Alipay’s mini programs focus more on business services and government life services. After entering the mini program by scanning code, by using live number, collection and other ways to retain users, merchants utilize message notifications and other functions in Alipay to complete the user’s recall to re-purchase.

Reach out to us if you are interested to learn more about mini-program marketing in China.

LIVE-STREAMING CASE STUDY

Covid-19 played a big role changing internal organization and huge shift to online leveraging Live-streaming, and livestream selling is all the range in China now. Various platforms and companies have increased their investment in live streaming. At the same time, the scale of anchors and users are also growing rapidly. We recently planned and executed two overseas live streaming of cross-border e-commerce in Hong Kong and Macau.

Mead Johnson on Singles’ Day in Hong Kong

Promoted via a 3 pronged strategy – Live Streaming, KOL Article & Private Traffic.

3 famous Mommy and Baby KOL from Mainland hosted live, accentuated the promotion and the worthiness for purchasing Infant Milk Formula (IMF) on WeChat Live

KOL WeChat Article Write-up to hype on the products and WeChat Live

Fission through Wechat Private traffic

2020 Taobao Macau live-streaming on Singles’s Day in Macau.

Try the form of “show + sell product” for the first time on the countdown night of Singles’ Day.

Cross-border marketing cooperation – Taobao × Suncity Macau

Multiple creative TVC

If you are interested to learn more, Reach out to us.

APP OF THE MONTH – JD.COM

JD.com, Inc (京东), also known as Jingdong is a Chinese e-commerce company headquartered in Beijing, China. The company was founded on June 18,1998 by Liu Qiandong and went online in 2004. Jd.com is one of the two largest B2C online retailers in China by transaction volume and revenue. JD.com is also ranked #139 on the 2019 Fortune 500 List.

JD.com Overview:

More than 270 thousand available in the platform
More than 387.4 million active users
More than 26 thousand of employees
RMB 20,854 billion GMV by year 2019, increasing rapidly throughout the year
Strategic partners include Tencent, Walmart and Google

Both the website & app provides a clean design to easily search and purchase products:

JD.com provides various avenue for advertising, head over to our newly created ad repository to find all available ads or contact us to explore further partnerships.