I haven’t updated this blog for 2 weeks as I attended adtech Beijing conference from 15 Oct to 18 Oct and then went on holiday in Thailand. Bit tired, but still try to share some findings from adtech beijing tour.
Language & Communication
Many Chinese visitors can speak English with different levels of efficiency.
However, for those who can speak English very well, many of them have limited level of understanding while talking to native English speakers. This could be due to culture and industry differences as well as lack of communication with native English speakers.
Beijing’s internalization is not as good as that of Shanghai, being pointed out by one of the visitors. She was not happy with both English-only conference and some of the exhibitors who provide brochures in only English.
There are no less than half of the visitors who could not communicate in English. An American named Keith, who has been in China for four years and speaks good mandarin, suggests exhibitors should use bilingual while promoting themselves; otherwise, some Chinese may not think the exhibitors are taking the Chinese markets seriously.
Media Companies
There were many people from media agencies visiting adtech Beijing. Most of them mentioned that some of their clients asked about search engine marketing; they are interested in potential partnership with a search marketing company. However, they don’t seem to have a plan for that yet.
Ad Networks
There are many ad networks in China. Many of them visited adtech Beijing exhibition and tried to promote themselves. The concept is simple: encourage as many publishers as possible to join their ad network and promote the ad network to advertisers to make money. However, very few of them can really stand out as there are no differentiators.
Pay Per Click and Pay Per View are popular, but Pay Per Acquisition is difficult to promote as many publishers prefer quicker and more direct way to make money. Some ad network marketers also indicate click fraud is a common issue in this business; no wonder they prefer CPC and CPM models to CPA model.
Advertisers
Very few advertisers visited the exhibition booth at adtech Beijing. One visitor from TimeV shared his thought: big advertisers would speak at the conference and small advertisers would be more interested in search engine marketing related events.
This indicates that attending adtech may not have a direct impact on generating more sales and revenues.
Search Engine Marketing
For many people in China, search engine marketing companies are like Baidu agencies or resellers. And, some people even interpreted “search engine marketing companies” as competitors of search engines like Baidu.
For those who understand PPC model, the ROI concept (rewarding itself by achieving customers’ goals instead of benefiting from clicks.) seems very interesting to them.
About search engine optimization, a Chinese Google guy indicates doing SEO in China could be difficult. The reason is probably because optimization for Baidu is tricky sometimes.
Some online marketers especially those young executives and directors have comprehensive knowledge about both SEO and PPC. To sell the search marketing services to them, some solid data and previous client case study should be presented.
What Matters
Visitors ask many questions about dgm from what dgm does to how its tracking software works. From the questions asked, we can see that the visitors care about:
- Company’s local presence
- Years of experience in China
- What makes dgm different from the other search marketing companies
More Lessons
- More people could be reached by producing brochures in both English and Chinese
- Design the booth also for local appetite to be better and easier understood
- Partnership could be a good way of reducing the risks of running a foreign company in China
- Ability to identify click fraud would definitely make a company stand out.
- ROI focused PPC management service would be strongly favored.
- Selling SEO consultancy service to big companies would be easier than small ones. Proposal should show not only the common SEO knowledge which can be easily found online.
- Affiliate marketing is advertisers’ favorite; however, promoting affiliate network to publishers would be difficult.
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