Alex Wan Shares His Experience Working in the Chinese Market with Periphery Digital

Periphery Digital specializes in reaching the Chinese market and they work with companies to reach that target demographic. Alex explains the nuances of working with the different groups within the Chinese community and how they require different approaches, different copy, different platforms, and approach from different cultural angles to effectively target consumers. He goes on to state that this group is a ‘gold mine’ for local marketers because they have been growing exponentially in the Lower Mainland over the last few years, and have been greatly increasing in their purchasing power, yet they have still been under-represented in the marketing space here.

The three industries that Alex believes can profit the most from the Chinese market here are: Real Estate, Tourism, and brands in retail. He says that all industries, however, can profit through reaching the Chinese market both here and abroad through social media. He sites WeChat and Weibo as the 2 main platforms. WeChat (with over 1.1 billion active users) is used for virtually everything in China, from chatting with friends, to hailing a taxi, paying bills, ordering food, etc. Therefore when a Chinese person emigrates to Canada they are usually still very connected to WeChat as it keeps them connected with friends and family back home. He says that ‘O to O’ marketing (Offline to Online or vice versa) is very popular in China and it is largely facilitated through QR codes. Therefore traditional print marketing that connects to online through QR codes is an important part of local marketing to the Chinese community. Weibo is like a Chinese amalgamation of Facebook and Instagram.

Alex has found marketing success by getting good content in front of the right people. Targeting on WeChat is very different than Facebook, for example. Right now in Canada you can only target campaigns Canada-wide, but Peripheral gets around that by buying advertising space through a localized WeChat media account for banner ads, advertorials, etc. The influencer space in Chinese social media (called KOLs) are even more influential than through traditional North American social media platforms. This works especially well on Weibo.

Overall, Alex suggests local smaller businesses start their Chinese marketing journey by opening a WeChat account so they can start to get familiar with the platform and the use of QR codes. This can be an effective start to reaching a very powerful new target market.

Written by Claudia Palomino