China’s consumer market is now the second largest in the world, with retail sales amounting to 47.1 trillion yuan in 2023. With the recent global economic slowdown, the Chinese government has been persistent in their efforts to increase domestic consumption across the country, with the July 2024 Politburo meeting specifically emphasising the goal of promoting domestic demand.

To take advantage of China’s dynamic consumer markets in 2024, companies must understand the latest trends in China’s fast paced marketing environment and how to tailor them to their marketing strategies.

Chinese Marketing Trends of 2024

As a global technological powerhouse, China leads the world in adoption of cutting-edge technology. Earlier in the decade, we saw China revolutionize marketing with livestream sales techniques. With the boom in new technologies and a new economic reality setting in across the world, China is once again at the forefront of global marketing trends.

 

Smarter Marketing with Artificial Intelligence

The Chinese government has led the way in encouraging AI technological development and adoption across all sectors of the Chinese market. This top-down support, along with rapid improvements in AI technology in China, has translated into Chinese businesses leading the world in adoption of AI technologies in their operations, according to a 2024 survey by Coleman Parks.

The top use case for AI in marketing has been in big data analysis. Brands and platforms are now using AI to create content tags for products and personalized recommendations for consumers based on consumer profiles. Major brands such as L’Oréal, Perfect Diary, and Luckin Coffee have all integrated AI consumer profile analysis in their China operations to create personalized recommendations, entertainment, and promotions based on customers’ previous orders.

Many brands and platforms in China have also leveraged AI to free up costs in areas like sales and customer service. With AI chatbots and AI voice recognition, brands and platforms can reduce their reliance on human labor when providing customer service. AI has also proven effective in livestream sales, allowing platforms like JD.com to create around-the-clock livestreams.

DingTalk’s AI-driven search feature

A great example of AI enhancing marketing efficiency is DingTalk’s AI-driven search feature, unveiled at the Make 2024 DingTalk Ecosystem Conference. DingTalk opened its platform to large AI model vendors to build China’s most open AI ecosystem. With the launch of version 7.6, they introduced a new AI search tool that intelligently consolidates fragmented work information into a structured knowledge network. This tool transforms how data is processed, organizing it around key relationships and tasks, and helping users quickly find relevant information. This approach improves productivity by simplifying complex data into more actionable insights, showcasing how AI can streamline and optimize marketing processes.

But more than just efficiency, AI is also used in marketing campaign as an innovative way to connect with an audience.

iFLYTEK’s AI Campaign

In 2024, iFLYTEK’s Qixi Festival campaign showcased how AI is transforming marketing by adding a personal touch to storytelling. Using their Spark AI model, they took old photos of people’s parents and used AI to create a heartfelt poem called “Parents’ Love,” narrating their love stories in a way that felt nostalgic and intimate. While AI helped shape the narrative, the campaign emphasized that true love is something AI can never replace. This highlights how AI is now being used to craft more personal and emotionally engaging marketing experiences.

Immersive Marketing with VR and AR

The market for virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in China is expected to reach 8.2 billion USD by the end of 2024. The country is also leading the world in investment into research and development for the technology. While AR and VR marketing has found its most successful use case in real estate marketing, the technology has also seen rapid adoption by consumer brands across China.

China’s major ecommerce platforms Alibaba and JD.com have both launched VR and AR shopping experiences, with Alibaba’s Buy+ and JD.com’s JD VR. These VR and AR enabled shopping experiences allow for full 360-degree views of products, furniture placement via AR, and virtual try-ons. There are also plans for these platforms to enable the purchase of goods using VR equipment on the horizon.

AR and VR is gaining popularity in cosmetic and makeup marketing, with platforms like JD VR and brands such as L’Oréal leveraging the technology to enable customers to virtually test makeup before purchase. In the realm of luxury fashion, brands like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Cartier have tapped AR and VR technology to enable virtual try-ons, immersive VR showrooms, and digital flagship stores to engage China’s new generation of tech savvy consumers.

Even schools are innovating with Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality : Shenzhen University

Shenzhen University took a creative approach to their admission letters by introducing the “Shenzhen University VR Box.” Along with the traditional admission letter, students received a DIY VR headset. Using a specially designed app, students could access immersive VR content that included a virtual tour of the university, detailed campus maps, and useful information about the school’s facilities and resources. This blend of AR/VR technology turned the simple act of receiving an admission letter into an interactive experience, showcasing how immersive tech can enhance engagement in marketing.

Granular Consumer Targeting with Personalization

As the Chinese market matures and new technologies enable more granular targeting of consumers, personalized marketing has emerged as a key trend in 2024, especially for reaching China’s newest cohort of consumers, Gen Z.

Personalization is especially important for marketing in the luxury sector in China. For example, Longchamp has begun offering bespoke custom-made bags via WeChat Mini Programs. IPSA, a brand under Shiseido, launched the IPSA Ultimate Me Cream in Shanghai’s Lujiazhui district, creating personalized skincare products based on data from on-site skin analysis.

Even subways in China have tapped into personalization marketing. The Guangzhou Metro launched a successful initiative offering billboard space in their metro stations for personalized ads from metro goers. It has seen young people to rent out metro billboard space for everything from dating ads to birthday posters for their friends.

 

Rise of Price Consciousness in Young Chinese Consumers

As China’s economic growth stagnates and young Chinese become increasingly uncertain about their future economic prospects, there has been a rise in price consciousness amongst Chinese consumers. Even so, China still retains the highest levels of consumer confidence in the world.

According to Bain and Company, the effects of this rising price consciousness diverges across product categories. Products in health and wellness that have experienced innovation have been able to take advantage of “trading-up”, with home care, packaged foods, and beverages seeing an increase in growth, driven by increased demand for healthier food and beverage options. With increasing competition from domestic brands offering better value for the price, the personal care product category has seen a decrease in growth.

Geographically, tier two cities have also seen significant growth in population, with 8 million new residents over the past four years. This has resulted in an increase in sales volume across product categories in tier two cities despite stagnating growth in the more developed tier one cities.

 

Chinese Digital Marketing Strategies for 2024

China has the world’s largest population of internet users, with over 1.1 billion people online out of a population of 1.4 billion. Uniquely, China’s internet users by and large access the internet via mobile as opposed via computers. In addition, China’s digital ecosystem is highly localized, as foreign platforms are kept out by China’s great firewall. These unique factors make digital marketing in China for foreign businesses challenging but at the same time extremely rewarding.

Marketing Research

As is the case in any market, crafting the perfect marketing strategy in China begins with thoroughly understanding your product category and target consumer groups.

The Chinese market is diverse, with major differences between regions and consumer groups. It will be important to conduct consumer research via interviews, surveys, focus groups, and consumer observation to get a feel for what different consumer groups in China desire from your product category. Look towards top brands in your product category and conduct competitor analysis when setting benchmarks for both marketing campaigns and product pricing.

With its rapid adoption of new technologies and penchant for setting marketing trends, the Chinese market is notorious for being extremely fast paced. For foreign brands breaking into China, having an experienced on-the-ground localization consultancy team like HI-COM to navigate the country’s marketing dynamics will greatly improve the success rate of marketing campaigns in China.

 

Localization

Because of China’s unique digital ecosystem and distinct cultural norms, brand localization is essential for any foreign business breaking into the Chinese market. For most businesses, localization will require comprehensive website localization and content localization, which requires not only translation of copy material but also transcreation of things like brand names and slogans to suit the local context.

Brand Awareness

With digital marketing, your brand e-reputation is of utmost importance. Building brand awareness online will require a comprehensive marketing campaign to localize your brand within the Chinese market. This could include working with influencers or KOLs to spread brand awareness, conducting product seeding to KOCs to build brand trust, launching PR campaigns with relevant media outlets to build brand recognition, implementing SEO for Chinese platforms to localize your website, and building a social media presence to engage audiences.

 

Social Media Marketing

Chinese social media platforms were the earliest to successfully integrate ecommerce functionality, giving rise to the trend of social ecommerce. In China, social media marketing is now word-of-mouth marketing updated to the digital age. As Chinese consumers average 30 hours a week on the web, building positive buzz around your brand online is essential in any Chinese digital marketing campaign. With so many social media platforms in China, it is important to invest time in finding the right social media platform for your brand to build a presence on to maximize ROI for your marketing campaigns.

WeChat Marketing

It is hard to overstate the ubiquity of WeChat in Chinese daily life. There are over one billion WeChat users in China, almost at parity with the country’s number of internet users.

Over the last few years, WeChat has emerged as the world’s first super-app, spearheading the super-app trend within China’s digital ecosystem. For brands, WeChat Official Accounts remains one of the best ways to conduct your brand’s official communication with consumers. WeChat Official Accounts integrates with WeChat’s wider Mini Program ecosystem and WeChat Pay functionality, offering a plethora of marketing strategies and advertising tools for brands to market on WeChat.

Short Video Marketing (Douyin)

Douyin, the Chinese counterpart to Tik Tok, is the second largest social media platform after WeChat. While primarily a short video platform, it also supports livestreaming. Like other social media platforms in China, Douyin has its own native ecommerce platform built in, allowing for social ecommerce marketing. Compared to Tik Tok, Douyin’s ecommerce functionality is much more robust, supporting livestream sales and click-to-buy.

Because of its dominance, especially amongst the younger cohort of Chinese consumers, Douyin has become an important outlet for brands conducting digital marketing campaigns. This can take the form of short video content or marketing campaigns focused on UGC (user generated content).

With the 2021 launch of Douyin Global Shopping, Douyin has also become an increasingly attractive platform for international brands looking to sell cross-border to Chinese consumers.

Recommendation Marketing (Xiaohongshu/RED)

One of the newest entrants to China’s digital marketing space is Xiaohongshu, also known as RED. Xiaohongshu originally emerged as a product review platform for Chinese shoppers with a focus on fashion and beauty, resulting in its core audience consisting of affluent Gen Z women. In recent years, Xiaohongshu has drawn comparisons to Instagram.

While Xiaohongshu, like other Chinese social media platforms, has integrated fully-fledged ecommerce functionality into the platform, it is best known for being a platform where users go to share product recommendations and product reviews. As such, marketing strategies for Xiaohongshu revolve around engaging KOCs (Key Opinion Consumers) to build organic and grassroots buzz around your brand and products.

 

Video / IP Marketing

While short video marketing for brands is mainly concentrated on short video platforms like Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Kuaishou, there is still space for traditional video marketing in the Chinese market. Brands can engage in cross industry collaborations and IP marketing by working with popular TV shows, movies, and celebrities.

A great example of how to use IP marketing is Luckin Coffee’s recent tie-in with the game “Black Myth: Wukong.” In August 2024, they launched a special “Black Myth: Wukong Americano” and gave away cool perks like a 3D poster and custom cup sleeves. This move was all about tapping into the game’s hype to draw in new customers, especially guys who are fans of the game. Although they had some tech glitches on launch day that frustrated a few customers, the partnership really showed how joining forces with a popular IP can grab attention and drive sales. It’s a reminder that while IP collaborations can give your brand a big boost, you’ve also got to be ready to handle any hiccups to keep customers happy and make the most of the buzz.

Marketing via Forums

Zhihu is the Chinese counterpart to Quora while Baidu Tieba is considered the Chinese counterpart to Reddit. These forum-based platforms are predominantly frequented by China’s white-collar workers. By establishing brand presence on these platforms, brands and businesses, especially in the B2B space, can demonstrate their expertise and build brand trust in China.

 

Baidu SEO

With Google blocked in China, Baidu is the search engine of choice for most people in China. It’s important for businesses in China to understand that Baidu SEO is significantly different from Google SEO. To increase your website ranking on Baidu search, businesses must fully localize their website and keep up to date on Baidu SEO trends.

Influencer Marketing

In the Chinese marketing world, influencers are known as KOLs, or Key Opinion Leaders. Last year in 2023, the market size for KOL marketing in China reached 100 billion yuan. As the digital sphere has created silos of content consumption, KOL marketing in China allows for marketers to more effectively reach consumers via a trusted authority figure within target interest niches. For businesses to successfully leverage KOL marketing, they will need to understand the different types of KOLs and how they fit within a brand’s overall digital marketing campaign.

Livestream Sales

The concept of livestream sales was perfected in China before the turn of the decade on platforms such as Taobao and Douyin. The success of livestream selling comes from the model combining immediacy, entertainment, product showcasing, and interactivity. Reaching nearly 5 trillion RMB in 2023, livestream sales has become an indispensable marketing strategy for consumer brands.

Niche Marketing

As the Chinese market becomes increasingly competitive, finding the right market niche for your product has become an important strategy in building a strong consumer base. Marketing on niche platforms with communities that resonate with your product niche and brand values is emerging as a new trend for businesses looking to break into the Chinese market.

 

Chinese Offline Marketing Strategies for 2024

While digital marketing reigns supreme in sheer scale of reach for the Chinese market, offline marketing remains the best way to build trust in your business and brand on a personal level.

Exhibitions

For B2B businesses, trade shows and exhibitions remain an important avenue to attract clients. The ability to meet clients face to face allows you to build stronger interpersonal connections, or 关系 guanxi, an important aspect of Chinese business culture.

 

Popups

For brands in the consumer product space, popup events represent an effective way to attract younger consumers via the allure of exclusivity. Oftentimes in China, popup events are held within malls or in collaboration with trendy stores in high-foot traffic areas of major cities. Pop up events allow for brands to build hype around their product while creating an environment for their consumers to form in person connections.

 

Community Outreach

While building communities online is a major aspect of a brand’s digital marketing strategy, offline community outreach can solidify brand trust. For brands operating in more niche and specialized industries, community outreach can take the form of organizing in-person events with industry experts to build brand trust with an offline community.

 

If you have any questions or would like further information, please do not hesitate to contact us.

HI-COM is a digital marketing agency that provides businesses around the world with China-specific strategies, social media communications services and e-commerce marketing services.Working with more than 100 brands, HI-COM is the preferred partner for companies wishing to enter the Chinese market!

Contact us for a free consultation today!