In just 6-month time, Hong Kong digital advertising market drops dramatically to a stage which I will describe it pathetic. The market has been greatly marginalized due to the shift of the market landscape no matter it is B2B or B2C sector.

My observation is that the B2B advertisers in Hong Kong have no imminent need to do international advertising. Why I will say so? It is because the B2B marketing here in Asia mainly purports to target buyers in the overseas, the advertisers are mostly the companies with the need for export.  But the base of the export economy is not in HK. It is in Mainland China where most of the manufacturing bases are located. Hence the PRC exporters have comparably more incentives to look for overseas buyers.

In the B2C sector where products selling in Hong Kong are very localized. They are either the commodities imported from the overseas or the local made merchandises targeting the Hong Kong domestic consumers. So I don’t see it is practical for the local merchants who will gain better opportunity to do international business. Or, I put it in this way, Hong Kong local merchants have better opportunity to do PRC business instead of selling to the overseas market.

I believe Hong Kong digital advertising market will continue to suffer from the downturn for the next 9 to 12 more months. We will have a lot of challenges ahead.

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Taobao.com, China’s largest e-commerce company, was ranked in the Credit Suisse consumer survey the preferred platform for online shopping. 44% of respondents chose Taobao.com over all other search engines. The company is now speculated as the next PRC’s Mega IPO.

Last year Badiu launched Youa.com and posed a challenge to Taobao. Some other news mention Baidu is secretly developing a new B2B platform. The company was running a campaign last year to build websites and optimize web content for 500,000 PRC’s small to medium companies at free of charge. It won’t be a surprise if Baidu wants to pursue further for a B2B model.

But what really interests me is Google China recently launched a new service called “TradeYep.” It is a B2B version of Google Adwords, specifically designed for the PRC companies with the need to find overseas buyers.

All news are vibrant, onwards and upwards. That’s what we need to defeat the depressing economy.

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Recently I’ve advised two marketing plans for my clients, they both adopt email as a vehicle to drive touch point and targeting effectiveness. I find that after all these years with the new digital media come out in approx. every 6-month cycle, planning a marketing mix using email remains a fun process.

In my plan, one of the target demographics is the webmail users in China. Webmail is a very effective digital touch point to target PRC Internet users. For example, one of the largest webmail providers, 163.COM, has a huge users base which is equivalent to almost 70% of the total Internet users in the country. But the challenge of marketing in webmail is that how we can get people to respond the marketing message?

In China, like everywhere else, Google Adwords is incorporated in Gmail, Hotmail has a pretty standard display advertising solution. But the Chinese webmail providers have reinvented the wheel. They allow you to connect a display advertising with the Inbox. The marketer can own a piece of ad property, typically a MPU ad, and then to use it to trigger an echo right in the Inbox. You can use the ad to call for signup, then drop a coupon to the Inbox. The users who click on the ad has consensually granted a permission to let the marketers for further communication via the Inbox.

Some marketers find this intrusive. But this is not something “I spam because I can;” on the contrary, I find it a smart integration that allows the Inbox to respond to the ad creative. If you manage to get it right, it works very effective to drive conversion.

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B2B marketing in China is always supplier-driven and buyer-centric. Suppliers who advertise to engage buyers and aim for a sales conversion. This is a typical B2B goal.  At the forum, a lot of marketers are interested to explore how social marketing works for B2B.  We have been seeing some marketers are following the trend closely and they launch marketing campaigns on Facebook, tweeting on Twitter.  My opinion is that I don’t see the effectiveness, in terms of sales acquisition, is going to happen anytime soon on SNS. If your marketing objective is about starting a conversion funnel by cultivating aggregated prospects, then SNS is considerably effective or at least no harm doing that. Otherwise, social networking sites are just contextually unfitted for sales conversion.

I am not a trend follower when practicing marketing.  I like to look into the basic parameters such as demographic concentration, media consumption behavior, etc. In China, adult SNS users are only 20% out of the total Internet population. The top online media usage in China are still news portal, email, and instant messaging.

Here is a thought. If Facebook is a living room, Myspace is a bar, and Linkedin is an office, what about the BBS in China? There are millions and millions of users on BBS. The power of influence is huge. Ok, let’s call the China BBS “the water cooler,” where the word of mouth begins.

ps.: For those who I’ve met today, I love to connect with you. Feel free to add me in your Facebook or Linkedin. Let’s socialize.

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The result has no surprise. The short form is 200% more effective than the lengthy version. Because the web is designed to be spontaneous and instant, patience level can be very low when the users are browsing on the web. They don’t spend excessive time for each click. The best practice of acquiring data is to break the process into phases. You first collect a few crucial information such as email, name, and company. Don’t worry about the missing pieces because once the users grant you the permission to communicate with them via email, you have the best chance to follow up with them and to collect the rest. They are more happy to submit the information when the time is right with no rush.

You can also understand the user patience level through web analytics. A basic aspect is to look at the time spend and the average page view contributed by each visitor. In my experience, average page view per visitor for a trade show website is less than 1.5.  The top five B2B portals in China have the average per user page view up to 5.

I’ve seen many trade show organizers are putting huge effort to enhance the event websites. Now if your visitors will only read one page on your website, what would be the best page that you want them to read? This question deserves a strategic thought.

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