The Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce organized a webinar on Digital Marketing for Industrial Goods in China on May 21.
Ms Gwenn Sonck, Executive Director, Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce, introduced the topic of the webinar and the speaker. Doing business with China has become more complex, companies are navigating a more demanding regulatory environment, increased competition and a rapidly evolving market landscape. However, it is important to underline that China offers a stable and predictable policy environment compared to other countries in the world. In today's geopolitical context, predictability is exactly what companies need in order to plan, invest and grow sustainably. Especially in today's geopolitical environment, we need to constantly adapt the China strategy. Being online is a must-have, not just a nice-to-have. For European international companies, China remains a critical growth market. However, succeeding in China requires more than a strong product or a global presence. China's digital ecosystem operates fundamentally different from Western markets. Buyers rely on local platforms to discover, evaluate and shortlist suppliers. Search behavior, content expectations and brand credibility are all highly localized and more demanding.
Mr Jonathan Kullman, Founder & CEO of NBH, gave a presentation on Digital Marketing for Industrial Goods in China. He has over 12 years of experience working with digital marketing and international growth with a strong focus on China as a market. With teams in Europe and Shanghai, NBH supports industrial B2B companies with strategy, lead generation and digital execution across China's key platforms. He worked in Shanghai for six years. NBH has a team of 25 people, 20 in Shanghai, 4 in Stockholm and one in Tokyo. It is mainly working with companies from Northern Europe in different kinds of industries, such as automotive, trucks, wind power, maritime, and components. What all of these companies have in common is that China tends to be a quite important market for them, either for the entire group or for specific divisions or business units. The companies tend to have been operating in China for quite some time, so they're not new to the market.
You can type your company’s name on Baidu, WeChat or Chinese TikTok to get an indication of what is being displayed and you will see things that maybe you don't expect. China has equivalent versions of platforms you are familiar with in the West. You have Baidu as the main search engine with over 70% of market share, Bilibili for longer videos similar to YouTube, and TikTok, with the same icon but very big differences between the international and Chinese video platforms. The best practice in China for B2B companies is to work with the impact video format on Chinese TikTok, while WeChat is the core of everything.
In terms of AI platforms, you don't see Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini. Instead, there are currently six major Chinese AI platforms: Doubao, Yuanbao, DeepSeek, Kimi, Qwen, and Baidu. Those are the six major AI platforms that buyers tend to use in different degrees in their customer journey. It doesn't mean that you need to have a presence on all of them from a brand point of view with a brand account, but you should definitely have a presence on some of these. If you would look on the six major AI platforms in China for your brand, there is a big difference of visibility from platform to platform. So it could be that your brand has an 80% visibility on China AI platform number one, but only 20% on the second one, and then on average, maybe you have around 60% on the six platforms. Having good visibility on one AI platform in China doesn't mean that you have all major six that people are using today.
Mr. Kullman also emphasized the website’s role in China for B2B marketing, which is still very important and crucial to have. In addition to WeChat, a website is a must have for B2B companies. An up-to-date website optimized for speed and SEO is strongly recommended. Most Chinese buyers still use traditional search and AI search, and they will go to your website if it's available. In China, the social side can be a very strong sales tool as well, such as WeChat as the brand hub on social media. You also have a quite strongly developed CRM tool within WeChat called WeCom. It is possible to run different kinds of paid ads on WeChat linked to your CRM system.
A website and WeChat corporate account is a must-have for B2B companies in their online presence in China. You need to optimize your website for Baidu. There is also a quite interesting platform called Zhihu, similar to Quora in the West. It is a very big community question and answer based platform, very highly used among engineers and business development people, and it is a very trustworthy source for information. Chinese AI works like in the West, but is much more reliant on Chinese sources for information, so if you don't have much content available in Chinese on Chinese platforms, your visibility on the Chinese AI searches might be very limited. So it is very important that you do have content about your company on Chinese social media. You cannot rely on things you publish on Western platforms to be shown in China. It is very important to make sure that you do have a good website that is operating very well in China.
Participation in trade shows is still very important and take the opportunity to leverage digital platforms in connection to the trade shows. There is the pre-event phase to drive awareness and inform the market that your company will participate and you will be available to meet, booking one-on-one consultations with some of your sales reps. There are different channels that you should utilize: your website, WeChat, Douyin, the Chinese TikTok, to publish articles. The pre-event phase usually runs one to two months before the trade show. During the onsite phase you should have printed materials linked into your digital platform. You have QR codes linked to your Chinese social media pages; printed banners not only in English, but preferably in simplified Chinese; people able to speak Chinese with your international colleagues on site; and so on. If you have displays, like TV screens showing different kinds of introduction materials, have them with Chinese subtitles, and audio voice-over in Chinese is strongly recommended as well.
In the post-event phase, you could communicate to the market that you did participate in the trade show and maybe did a certain product introduction or a certain keynote speech or maybe have some people representing your company meeting Chinese government people, or the ambassador of your country attended your booth and the pavilion you participated in. These kind of things are good assets to communicate after the trade show, so you can connect with companies and decision makers that did not have the opportunity to meet you on site during this specific few days at the trade show, and it will be a long-term asset. So when people are searching for your kind of solution or company in three or six months or one or two years, they will still find this kind of articles about you online in China.
Focussing a bit more on search engines, Baidu, the major one, has an almost 70% market share. Bing is a secondary search engine in China that you can get quite good results with after you have started doing things with Baidu. There has been a big shift from using traditional search engines like Baidu to the six different Chinese AI platforms. There are around 500 million monthly active users of these AI platforms, increasing month by month. Roughly 50% of Chinese internet users currently are using AI platforms to some degree.
Start looking into how your company is being presented on Chinese AI platforms, because it could be that the information being presented is not accurate. There is a first mover advantage, how you can position your brand compared to your competitors, if they haven't started to invest in this AI visibility.
On your website, focus on the products, the application, the industries, case studies, and different kinds of certifications and awards. Also have different Chinese plugins for lead forms and don't rely on your traditional lead form that you might be using on the global website. You could have a plugin that will follow the user on their entire journey on the website,. Depending on what pages they might be clicking on, this lead form will follow them. Your corporate WeChat account will be your brand hub on social media in China. You need to have a content plan to be distributed and published on the WeChat account. Otherwise people might think they don't get any value from following your company account on WeChat. This is a very strong relationship building platform. WeCom is the CRM system of WeChat that your sales rep can use to have one-on-one discussions with prospects. You can also invest in ads on WeChat. You will be able to feed the information generated in China to your global tracking tools and CRM system. Having a WeChat account is a must-have for all companies doing business with China. Videos for B2B marketing is something that Chinese buyers are expecting you to have. Do not just take the Western video and upload it with English subtitles or voice. You should definitely add Chinese subtitles and if there is a storytelling voice, have a Chinese voice-over. Videos are very important for B2B marketing in China, even more important in China than in the West.
Leads from digital marketing could go up from 0% to over 50% or almost up to 70% in two years time. As to the costs, a typical lead on Baidu is between €35 to €65. On WeChat it is slightly higher, €40 to €80, and Chinese TikTok lead costs tend to be €30 to €70. A bare minimal budget is €3,000 to €5,000. If you want to make a more proper 360 campaign, maybe think about €8,000 to €15,000 initially per month. Looking at the practical framework here, visibility is the first part, then followed by the trust phase, and then the growth phase. Time-wise, 18 months is usually the initial time horizon.
Looking at some common mistakes, companies are lacking a marketing strategy for China. Do you have a website for China, not just a translation of a global website? Another mistake is the lack or zero P&L allocation for paid marketing in China. A lot of brands assume that as long as they have a WeChat account, people will find them. However, the level of competition is very high. You do need to have a paid allocation for social media, search and PR. Do not expect quick ROI, it takes time.
It is important to have a marketing strategy for China with a clear key message, clear content pillars, and a clear idea of frequency of posting on the different platforms. You can find quick wins, but in fact it is a marathon.
A Q&A session concluded the webinar. Q.: What is the difference between a website hosted in mainland China and in Hong Kong? Mr. Kullman: If you have a website in China, you need to have it on a Chinese server from companies like Alibaba Cloud or Tencent Cloud and you need to apply for an ICP license from the Chinese authorities, connected to a legal entity in China. If you host it in Hong Kong, you don't need to have an ICP license. However, the Baidu search engine, the mostly used search engine in China, does not favor websites hosted outside of China, and in this regard, Hong Kong is regarded as being outside China. If you don't have a subsidiary in China and you don't want it to be linked to your distributor or agent in China, then the option is to host it in Hong Kong.
