The best platforms for fashion marketing in China
Find here Daxue Talks 88. Click here to listen to Olivier Verot, founder of Gentleman Marketing Agency (GMA), share his knowledge on how to attract and convert online traffic and which are the best platforms for fashion marketing in China.
Full transcript below
Welcome to Daxue Talks, a show powered by Daxue Consulting, a China based strategic market research company founded in 2010.
I’m Olivier Verot, I’m the founder of Gentleman Marketing Agency – GMA, we’re a digital marketing agency focused on performance, we are based in Shanghai.
For fashion brands, what are the best platforms to attract and convert visitors?
So, when you speak about fashion, for me there is two different kind of fashions. There is basically the fast fashion, so basically which is quite cheap and there is basically a lot of product inside of that and there is basically the luxury. So, if you want to promote your product, I would like to say Little Red Book for me is a very, very good platform, because it’s like Instagram, it’s based on pictures so you can communicate on the feeling, about the brands, about the design – so it’s very, very good platform. This year what is really popular is Douyin. Douyin it is the video platform that really explode this year, we don’t have exact data but in china it has been very, very successful and people are using that more as entertainment. So, it’s based on short videos and I feel this platform is very cost effective. so the cost of exposure for the price its very good. So, we recommend for the brands to use advertising to appear in the middle of the feed or use KOL, so basically – when you send the product these people wear the product and they can communicate on these platforms, or basically to create their own channel for the long term. because if you create your own channels you create your own database of followers, of people that will regularly see your video in the middle of their feed. So, these are the two main platforms that we really recommend, you will tell me of course about WeChat- everybody talk about WeChat – it’s a good platform to sell to your people, to create community, but its not a platform to attract the people. So, WeChat is more like your newsletter, so it’s ahead of the flow, not the beginning of the flow.
We also like to use Weibo a lot, because Weibo have a very good native ad system, so a little bit like Facebook, you just put some tag, you put the ads and you can really target the right people. So, if you’re in fashion you can target the a girl, living in Shanghai who like fashion, and who like French and you can only target this girl and this girl will see your post in the middle of their feed. So even the number of users on Weibo are decreasing year after years, we can still target the right people on this audience and after this you have the target to sale – that’s different. The target to sale – the platform to sell, there is like Tmall and Taobao, they are like the two big leaders when you’re in the mid of the fashion. Actually, all the girls have one Taobao account in china. When they buy its automatically reflected. So, if you’re a big brand you use Tmall – it costs money. You need to invest on Tmall, you need to have a good store, a good design, it looks like a brand. And if you don’t have this money, we recommend to the brands to use Taobao, so to have their own Taobao store. So, to make the simple comparisons, Tmall its like a shopping mall, so you pay your rent, you pay fees, its expensive but you are in the shopping mall for a certain medium, high end target and Taobao its more like the market. You go to the market and you find a little bit of everything. So that’s basically how you need to situate yourself. So that’s basically for this target.
When it’s made out to luxury, the promotions it’s a little bit different, because promotions it’s a little bit “vulgar” when they speak about luxury, but we believe that all the brands need promotion, all the brands need visibility, that’s basically the heart of the ecommerce and the business in China. So, use influencers, more quality, all the social media you use almost the same, you need to post less but be more careful about the content and the way you speak and when its made into conversions you can also add WeChat, WeChat store – its very good when it’s made out to luxury, because when it’s made out to luxury the people need to – it takes more time and more actions to buy something. I’ll give you an example, it’s extremely simple. If you want to buy a bag – this bag costs 400 RMB so 50 euros, something like that. People will think about 1-2 hours before buying this bag. So, it’s kind of like fast conceptions – so they go there, they compare – okay they buy, or they don’t buy, they make the decision quite quickly. But if this bag costs 400 euros, it takes more time for the decisions. So, the people they will check more carefully everywhere to see this bag is very good, they will compare a lot and their process of decision takes more time. They can search between 30 to 100 hours before buying a luxury product. Between 30 to 100 hours and most of the people think – Wow, its impossible, but trust me I have example – for example my wife who can spend all weekend to search, to compare the different products and which one is the best choice when the price is higher.
So they will search, they will compare, they will make a lot of information before buying it and after, at the end – they can buy at the WeChat store because its ahead of the finals they see a lot of regular posts, they have checked a lot of conversions so it basically works like this.
You have the promotions and you have the platform where basically people sell and buy, where the brand sells and where the people buy the product.
You have also one thing called the vertical platform, there is for example one that is increasing called Secoo, it’s a platform only focused on fashion, so I think this kind of platform in the next future will increase, because they are really focused on fashion, only for fashion items – so their main advantage they have their own community. So, they are not only a platform to buy, but they have also – kind of like regular buyers, regular followers and all these people who are kind of like fashion addicts or trend setters or they like to search actively for new brands and new products and new things. So yeah Secoo, there is like Top Life or other kind of platforms that is basically quite similar. We believe in the next future they will have more and more market share than today.
The last platform to buy, it’s called VIP.com – it used to be very popular and very good last year. I think this year they are not doing so good because they have lack of offer, lack of demand – so they are little bit decreasing, because the other platforms are really increasing, and Tmall and Taobao always at the tip, always leading this market. So, I think – I hope you have a global overview of what you need to do for promotions and sales.
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