Killer strategy for E-commerce marketing in China

1. Hotcake (The fastest selling product)

This is the most common strategy that works well in the Chinese E-commerce market.

You guess how many SKU listings there are on the biggest stores such as Taobao or Tmall? One billion.  If you simply list all your products on the platform, it has no reason to send the customers to you unless you have ‘something really good’ in your store.

That really good something is the Hotcake.

You will need to go over all of your products, find the one who has the potential to be a Hotcake.

• This product has an obvious advantage compared to your other products.
• You can bring its price down to the bottom.
• You have received lots of good feedback about this product on other markets.
• This product tells us who you are, what your brand is about.

Then you need to put all your resources on this product:

• Make this product’s description exceptional, with videos, pictures, reviews from other customers.
• Offer big discounts, temporarily limit the profits you will make on its sales
• Run social ads, searching ads, platform ads for this product.  You need to test this product on the real market. To speed up the delivery, you can ship the product to Wudi’s Shanghai warehouse, we will take care of everything for you.
• Monitor the conversion rate: You must make sure this product has a good conversion rate. If this is your best product and you are selling it at a very good price, if the conversion rate is low, there must be something wrong. Either your product does not fit the Chinese market, or you picked the wrong selling point.
• Once your product has a good conversion rate on the platforms, for example over 1%, it’s the time to pull the trigger:
• Invite Influencers, blog owners, Douyin big V, Weibo big V, Wechat official accounts who have a large number of subscribers to promote your product. In general, the social network traffic is cheaper than ads traffic, and your conversation rate has been proven in the last stage, so your orders will definitely skyrocket. Most importantly, your brand will appear in front of thousands of customers and they will see your Hotcake product.
• Call the customers who purchased this product, ask them for feedback and ask them to leave a 5-star review. I know you can’t do that, we will take care of that.
• Don’t forget to add some brochures with your brand intro to your package. Chinese consumers love surprises.

If this stage is successful, your Hotcake product will have a great ranking on all platforms. That means that your store will have a lot of traffic. All your products will sell well, and this is how you make profits.

This is also excellent for your brand reputation in the Chinese market. So that if you create your own website or APP in China, you will get orders right way without the need for marketing.

*this is the general process .  for you could be different. but the principle is the sample.

Hotcake strategy is all about setting a low price to let mass consumers use your product and build trust and confidence in your brand and products. Let your products talk for themselves.

2. Call your CEO to speak on behalf of your product.

That CEO speak for a company’s product is not news, it happens everywhere. But for E-commerce in China could mean more than that.

You know that in China, there are many fake foreign brands. In some markets, there are some Chinese brands acting like they are foreign brands. They go to Europe, register or buy a small brand, then position their brand as a historical European brand. Why are they doing this?  Because it works well.  They make a lot of profit by relying on Europe’s reputation. So, as a foreign brand, you need to prove to everyone you are a foreign brand. Sounds ironic, right?

Also, this is part of trust building.

Take videos, get your CEO to speak some Chinese. Let your designers and engineers speak for your product, show your factories, show your quality control system, interview some real customers from other countries.

Show us how you designed this product and how you care about your brand. Show us your special selling point, how your country and its culture affect your product. Try and find what distinguishes you from Chinese brands, and that is how you win the Chinese market.