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CBBC EVENT

April 07

China is the biggest online market in the world. How do you protect your name online in China? What are the key considerations, and how to strategise? Join this webinar, with guest speaker Scott Muir – MD of Regroup China. Regroup provide dedicated digital marketing services for UK businesses reaching China. One of Regroups’ core services is in protecting Brands and Individuals reputation online in China, providing services for Online Reputation Management, Brand Monitoring and Brand Protection.

Key topics:

  • The Digital landscape in China – the key channels
  • ‘Owning’ your assets/ protecting your name
  • Monitoring brand noise/ How to keep informed
  • Addressing negative coverage – pre-emptive/ proactive tactics
  • Questions

 

Speaker:

Scott Muir, Director and Founder of Regroup Media & Regroup China

About Regroup China:
Formed by experienced digital marketeers and technicians, Regroup China is a specialist digital agency committed to helping Western brands define and action strategy for growth in China – the World’s largest online marketplace.We have amassed many years’ experience working with some of the biggest brand names and retailers globally, across multiple online disciplines in China.

Start date: 07/04/2020 09:30

End date: 07/04/2020 10:30

Venue: Webinar

Address: Online

CLICK TO REGISTER

#Rethinkchina

CBBC was pleased to host Scott Muir, CEO at Regroup China, today in our London headquarters, he addressed attendees on the topic of digital China for our inaugural member-exclusive Lunch & Learn event.

After an introduction to Scott Muir and his organisation by CBBC’s Sector Lead for Retail, Jack Porteous, around 30 delegates from our members – representing core sectors such as Education, Professional Services and Engineering – were able to gain insight into key channels for B2B engagement in China.

Scott Muir gave a comprehensive understanding of key channels that are utilised, in particular, WeChat, which holds great potential for businesses. He stressed the importance of WeChat, which offers e-commerce functionality to a userbase of over 1 billion while maintaining a highly user-friendly and sophisticated user interface. He also explained how much the app is due to evolve, with Tencent’s vision for the app to become an ‘ecosystem’.

He also referred to the significance of Linkedin, a more familiar tool for many in the UK, identifying that it can be used uniquely in regards to China, as one of the few western channels given a platform, search optimisation is also key where businesses can target users via filtering demographics and also finding a means to network with outward-looking Chinese businesses seeking collaboration and an international market.

The session highlighted best practice in capitalising upon online tools to target the biggest online market worldwide – with over 800 million internet users in China – it is clear that having an online presence is vital for success in the thriving Chinese market.

After an engaging Q&A, members stayed to have lunch and network with one another and CBBC staff, the day proved a great success with more events to follow, so stay tuned!

 


Scott Muir and Jack Porteous taking members’ questions during the Q&A

We are pleased to announce that Scott Muir, our MD will be speaking at the CBBC in London this month about digital marketing for a B2B market in China.

February 27

CBBC is delighted to announce a new Lunch and Learn series, available exclusively to our members. Join us for the first session as we welcome Scott Muir, CEO of ReGroup China, to share his expertise on digital marketing in China for B2B companies.

In this session we will cover:

  • What are the key online B2B channels to reach your audience in China
  • In focus – We will look at:
    • The role of LinkedIn
    • The role of WeChat for B2B
    • What other channels can be considered to reach a B2B audience in China?
  • What are the key considerations in managing a strategy to reach a B2B audience?
  • Questions/ Answers

For more information please visit:

http://www.cbbc.org/events/2020/february/cbbc-lunch-learn-reaching-a-b2b-market-in-china-on/

Regroup wishes everyone a Happy Chinese New Year! 2020 has endless gains for rats!

In support of our recently launched German office in Bremen, we are happy to announce that our dedicated German language web site is now live at – https://www.regroup-china.com/de/.

Regroup now provides digital marketing firms for German brands wishing to enter the China marketplace. Please contact Roman Wills for further information –
roman@regroup-media.co.uk

We are pleased to announce that Regroup have been selected to work with Wolf (https://www.wolf1834.com/), the international market leader in watch winding and watch storage pieces, in support of their expansion plans in China. Wolf has been in operation since 1834, and has offices in the UK, Los Angeles and Hong Kong.

Regroup will be establishing a dedicated e-commerce Chinese web site, an official WeChat presence and a Baike profile as well as a WeChat e-commerce mini program, as part of an overarching plan to build awareness and sales in China.

For more information contact Scott Muir at scott.muir@regroup-china.com

We are proud to announce that our newly-opened German office will be working with the Munich-based luxury lighting designer Occhio – https://www.occhio.de/, in support of their expansion plans in China. Occhio is one of the most innovative companies in the lighting industry and in Germany a market leader in the field of high-quality design luminaires.

Regroup will be establishing a dedicated Chinese web site, an official WeChat presence and a Baike profile for Occhio as part of an overarching plan to build awareness and sales in China.

Roman Will, the Regroup China German Manager stated ‘it’s a pleasure to work with such a well-respected brand as Occhio, and we look forward to building the foundation of a successful digital marketing strategy going forward, to reach the wider market in China.’

For more information contact Roman Will at roman@regroup-media.co.uk

For retailers in the West promoting their products to China, the emergence of Double 12 (12th of December) is becoming more and more a key event that needs to be factored into the marketing mix.

What is Double 12?

Double 12 is a sales day cut from the same cloth as Singles Day in China (11th November) or Black Friday in the West.

Double 12 grew out of Singles Day, which is very much the dominant sales date in China, but important for advertisers perhaps with lower budgets than the mainstream brands who dominate Singles Day. Double 12 gives smaller brands a chance to get cut through in terms of advertising visibility.

Double 12 was initially launched by Alibaba to promote Taobao, which features mid-sized retailers typically. It was originally launched as a means of addressing negative perceptions around the prominence of fake product sales.

It’s getting bigger

Double 12 is on the ascendancy – over a million brands, catering for over 110 million buyers last year – it’s not Singles Day, but it is becoming more and more important.

Think offline and online

Double 12 is also known for offering integration of on and offline, with promotions placed on flyers and outdoor advertising, as well as via digital channels. Alibaba powers the event, meaning that consumers can rapidly pay on their mobiles and enjoy heavy price discounts.

What does this mean for Western Brands?

Double 12 favours mid-sized brands, so you don’t need to be a Pepsi or a Nike to gain traction during 12/12.

Some brands also tie 12/12 with 11/11, as a second wave of promotions, all part of a centralised strategy, that leads up to Chinese New Year which falls on 25th January 2020.

Double Twelve now covers merchants across all the continents, not just Asia, with c 100,000 overseas merchants using Alipay to offer exclusive online discounts for big date.

Planning Ahead

As with any digital marketing push, it needs to be planned. Think integration, using multiple channels for maximum traction, tying in activity with a Chinese web site, WeChat and Weibo, as well as Taobao.

Activity should be mobile-first, given that the vast majority of web use in China is via mobile. So all tactics need to be clearly executed on the hand set.

The run up to Double 12 is upon us.

Contact Regroup China for your Chinese digital marketing requirements – What we do transforms businesses.

We are happy to announce that Regroup China will be the official sponsors and speakers at the upcoming London & Partners event next week on how London can improve its welcome and offering for Chinese travellers to start the journey to becoming China-ready today.

Event Sponsor – Regroup China

Formed by experienced digital marketeers and technicians, Regroup China is a specialist digital marketing agency committed to helping Western brands define and action strategy for growth in China – the World’s largest online marketplace. We provide a full digital service offering for China spanning market sizing, branding, social media (WeChat, Weibo), content, China web development and market-place strategy.

The event running order:

  • 8:30am Welcome Breakfast
  • 9:00am Opening remarks and company presentations
  • 10:00am Structured networking session
  • 11:00am Close

As anyone who has visited China recently will know, WeChat is enormous, with over 1- billion users, it is the largest App in the Country.

WeChat is best described as an ‘eco-system’ rather than as traditional social media or a ‘WhatsApp of China’, as the BBC recently described it. Describing WeChat as an eco-system captures the fact that it is all things in daily life in China.

It is Tencent’s (WeChat’s owners) vision for Chinese nationals to use WeChat throughout their day; using it for calls, messaging, playing games, paying bills, buying products, hiring taxis and posting their social media.


Key WeChat Functionality

What are Mini Programs?

Mini Programs are best described as ‘apps within an app’. WeChat is an app and a mini program is an app within the WeChat eco-system. These apps sit on Tencent’s server, not on the users’ mobile phone, as such they are typically fast to access.

For brands looking to enter the China market, mini programs can provide additional functionality to their WeChat account, to add shopping functionality for instance, to sell directly via a shop front, or to add booking engine functionality, to take bookings directly. The whole process can be done within the WeChat eco-system, using WeChat Pay as the payment gateway. The end-user never has to leave WeChat.

As such, Mini Programs can help brands monetise their WeChat account.

For UK brands wishing to test the waters in China, WeChat is the ideal vehicle, serving as a base to build brand awareness, and as a route to establishing sales.

Building a shopfront on WeChat

Using a mini program, brands can build a shop within WeChat at relatively low cost. The process typically involves taking a product data feed of product SKUs and marrying this up with design templates for the shop front. The whole process can take as little as 4- weeks to build significantly less than setting up a Shopify or Magento e-commerce channel.

Building up an audience on WeChat

Using the WeChat advertising platform, brands can target users based on age, gender, education, location and importantly on search behaviour, meaning brands can build up a targeted audience over time.

The other main key channel to building up an audience is via Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) who are effectively influencers and hold huge sway in China.

It has never been easier to set up a WeChat verified account

It is now easier than ever to set up an official Service account on WeChat for overseas brands. The days of requiring a Chinese business licence to register a verified account are long gone. UK brands can use their UK business licence and the whole process takes 2-3 weeks to process, faster than ever. Ownership resides with the brand, not a third party.

All of this makes for exciting times post Brexit. China accounts for a fifth of the world’s internet users, and 40% of worldwide e-commerce. Regroup China has been working with Tencent to produce some of the best known mini programs in the UK, including the WeChat shop for the Best of British event in Shanghai this year, where we onboarded over 30 UK brands selling product at the event via WeChat, using WeChat pay as the payment gateway.


The Best of British WeChat mini program

Regroup have also been at the forefront in producing mini programs as booking engines, producing the UK’s first property booking engine for Downing Property, the student-property business, who are targeting Chinese students in the UK, via WeChat.


Student Property Booking Engine on WeChat

Why should UK brands be excited about this?

We believe that UK brands wishing to test the market in China should be excited about this for many reasons, namely:

  • WeChat is getting bigger all the time, with well over 1 billion users and counting
  • Establishing an official WeChat account has never been easier for foreign businesses, and the process is fast. You own the account not a third party
  • Brands can build up brand awareness via WeChat ads, building up a highly targeted follower-base
  • Brands can set up a shop front easily, quickly and relatively cheaply on WeChat providing a direct route into this ever-growing market
  • Brands can take payments using WeChat Pay, with each transaction costing only around 2% per transaction in commission and the acquirer’s fee

All of this adds up to providing a unique opportunity for UK brands wishing to test the market in China. As a proof of concept, no other channels provide the ability to build awareness and sales, at low cost.

As such, we are of the view that WeChat is the priority channel for brands getting established in China, as a phase 1. Once the concept is proved, then we advise moving into key e-commerce channels such as Tmall and JD, who collectively own c 70% market share of b2c e-commerce in mainland China. Getting active on these channels is not a small consideration and requires investment. But building awareness and sales initially is far safer on WeChat as an initial undertaking.

For more information on reaching the World’s largest market please contact us. We’d love to hear from you.

What we do transforms businesses.