The Ultimate Guide for Choosing Chinese Outsourced Marketing Agencies in 2021(Part 1)

Intro

China expects its digitalisation market scale to exceed 100 billion yuan by the end of 2021, with an annual growth rate of over 20%. According to the 2019 China Digital Marketing Solution Market White Paper released by CCID Consulting, the market size from 2020 to 2021 will be 81.82 billion yuan and 100.8 billion yuan, with annual growth rates of 23.2% and 22.1%.

The Chinese market is tempting for many western companies. However, it is a market with its own digital marketing ecosystem. You can choose to market your product or service in-house or outsource to a marketing agency. Either approach has its challenges. The digital marketing plan in China includes many aspects, such as Baidu SEO, SEM, website development, WeChat marketing, video marketing and KOL marketing etc. It might be easier to start with an agency when entering a new market. There are different types of outsource digital marketing agencies to undertake related businesses, with their own strengths and limitations. For example, there are agencies in China with big names(most are in more developed cities like Shanghai, Hangzhou, Hongkong, etc.) providing international services and local ones. There would be no language barrier when cooperating with the former, but the prices could be competitive, and you may worry about the quality of their services and communication for the latter. 

You may choose your agency partner depending on various other factors such as your goals and budget, MarTech and branding strategy etc. Regardless of which type of agency to choose, there are some common mistakes you could avoid making when starting out. Let us share some of them with you. 

Baidu SEO&SEM

What might an unreliable Baidu SEO outsource agency do?

Before we start, let’s understand the concept of SEO and SEM. 

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) uses the rules of search engines to improve the ranking of websites in relevant search engines. 

SEM, or search engine marketing, is a means of using search engines for online marketing. All marketing methods on search engine platforms can be called SEM. In the industry, they call SEM a bidding promotion or advertising. 

In China, it is mainly advertisers who invest money on search engine platforms (Baidu, Google, Sogou, 360, etc.) to display advertisements, attract customers’ attention, clicks, and generate traffic.

1. Use fast ranking software

“Any keyword, it only takes 2-7 days to make your website rank on the Baidu homepage”, said many Baidu SEO outsource marketing agencies. However, they only use software to check clicks and rankings. This is malicious cheating, and once they discover the behaviour, the company will directly enter the search engine’s blacklist.  

2. Use mass sending software

Some outsource marketing agencies claim that the mass sending software they buy can publish the company’s information to tens of thousands of large platforms, allowing the information to spread all over the network. But the fact is that they can only publish on a few website platforms created by themselves.

3. Use machine (hardware)

The agency may buy a ranking machine and tell the company they can place it at home or in the office. If it has Internet access, they can rank the website on Baidu’s homepage. The truth is that this method is to simulate a manual click by a machine, which is also malicious cheating. Once found, they will blacklist it. 

You should pay attention to the below details when choosing a Baidu SEM outsourced agency

1. Whether to give a reminder to avoid full-service launch

Compared with other advertising, the key advantage of SEM is accuracy. If selecting all business keywords when the company first sets up an SEM account, this marketing method will essentially lose its advantage.

SEM strategy needs to formulate corresponding business priorities, budget allocation strategies, keyword bidding strategies, etc., highlighting the main business and sub-business as an auxiliary so that the account can be logical. A marketing agency that encourages companies to create differentiated strategies is more likely to help companies win in a market with severe homogeneity.

2. Do not blindly follow rankings

Be careful when an agency promises to keep your ranking in the first place in a short period of time.

According to the information provided by Baidu, they determine the ranking by the joint influence of the credit status, quality, bid price, other promotion merchants, and netizens related factors. In addition, everyone has different intentions when searching for information on Baidu, and it will present the results to the most suitable people by considering these factors. Simply put, people search for the same keyword, but they see different results. Paying too much attention to the ranking of the first place often leads to inflated bids by marketing agencies and high costs to the enterprise, but the results are not necessarily good.

3. Emphasize long-tail words

Some large companies have low-level mistakes when they do bid promotions. They think that the traffic generated by product or business words is the most accurate, so they only advertise these words, ignoring long-tail keywords. However, most traffic on search engines comes from long-tail words because people often search for some long-tail words to search more accurately, and Baidu tends to guide customers to search for long-tail words. You may gain traffic or volume but only to find out they are not relevant. That is why this is a good tactic for new businesses entering the China market without a huge budget.

4. Is there always one price?

The bids and budgets are the same throughout the year, and mistakes that most companies make. Although it will not cause any huge losses, it is low for the effectiveness of the company’s advertising. All bidding promotion backends on the market can adjust the different placement bids during the allotted time by adjusting the bid coefficient, and benefits can be maximised and reduce costs. 

A qualified outsource marketing agency will carefully analyse each account and formulate corresponding strategies following market laws.

How to Choose a Website Development Outsourced Agency for Marketing?

1. Check its website development plan

An appropriate website development plan is the primary prerequisite to guarantee the satisfaction of website development.

Each website development agency has characteristics and services they excel at, such as independent website management systems, user research positioning, high-end creative design, marketing strategy, SEO, etc. There are generally only two results if an agency claims that they can do everything: the price is high, or the performance is mediocre in all aspects.

Companies need to be clear about their core needs, look for suitable website development companies based on these needs, and let them give preliminary plans and quotations to find a website development company with a reasonable budget. 

 Depending on your budget, we can match you with a reputable web development agency or our own vetted Freelance web developer. Speak to the Enlybee team: https://bit.ly/3hIl6CG 

2. Check cases

The case studies displayed by the website development agency are generally relatively good cases that have been screened out. From these cases, you can see the level of its website construction and service attitude and see if it meets your expectations. Ideally, if you can find an industry that will be ideal, they can potentially help with subject expertise. 

In addition, except for the homepage of the case, you should also check the other inside pages because cutting corners in website construction generally occurs there.

3. Check the website in detail before publishing

After the general website development, the agency assists in the registration and resolution of the domain name then publishes the website to the official domain name. 

But this is not enough; we might also need to pay further attention to:

(1) Source code

Including all the source code of the front-end and back-end; otherwise, any changes and upgrades in the later period are under the control of the website construction company, and there is a mandatory annual maintenance fee.

(2) Development Manual

The development manual will describe the website system structure, system coupling relationship, secondary development process, configuration files, data dictionary, etc., allowing any developer to fix bugs and function extensions to the website system. If there is no development manual, it is difficult to find a third party to take over the follow-up maintenance. Thus, the website construction agency may threaten your company and charge higher fees.

(3) Account management authority

Do not choose a website construction company that refuses to deliver these; otherwise, there might be a higher probability of poor service, after-sales, or higher prices. 

(4) Localisation of your content

A good agency will help you localise your original content in English and make sure they fit the local Chinese audiences. 

(5)  After-sales service

What after-sales services provide should be indicated in the contract or contract attachments. It must indicate free items. Although some provide after-sales services, they may require fees. 

How to Choose an Outsourced Agency for WeChat Content Marketing?

1. Choose the one that sees both your strengths and weaknesses.

A good, outsourced marketing agency normally pursues long-term cooperation. A professional operation team can do detailed analysis for your business and have a wealth of resources to expand exposure and enhance brand awareness for the company. 

2. Provide enough information, instead of lowering the price to help you decide on the cooperation.

A good outsource Wechat marketing agency will research your business and tell you what you can do and can not do on Wechat. They could provide a plan for your business, rather than solely the lower price. 

How to Choose an Outsourced Agency for Short Video Marketing?

1. Find a company that specialises in making short videos

Since short videos are in the blast of the times, various traditional cultural media organisations have transformed themselves into short video operation agencies, but they are not professional, and short videos are only one aspect of their business. 

Therefore, looking for companies that focus on short videos and those with experience in content planning will be more reliable. 

2. Check the quotation

Many customers may wonder if it is only a 1-minute video, why are the fees so high? 

For a short video with communication power, the most important thing is content planning. The biggest investment cost is also on this, followed by actors’ expressiveness and camera sense, and finally shooting and editing.

Professional short video marketing also requires good script content. From content planning, actors, filming, and editing, the overall cost is not low considering these manpower and material resources. If the agency gives a quote much lower than than the market rate, it’s worth a double-check. 

3. Analyse their successful cases

Good cases can speak for themselves, of course. But also ask them about their less successful cases and see if they’re willing to share any of the mistakes or learnings that went into those successes. Behind every successful campaign there should be some less than ideal outcomes as well – so make sure an agency has room in its repertoire with which it can serve your needs by being honest about its limitations from start-to-finish!

4. How do they set KPIs?

Whether the video is good or not, the data does not lie. A strong company may promise what KPIs it can achieve, such as exposure and number of fans. However, it is not to say all agencies which do not give promises are unreliable. It is a good practice to do a test run for all the assumptions before committing any big budget. 

5. Check the plan

Before the cooperation, we can ask the outsourced agency to have a general plan and then check whether it is clear enough, whether there is a clear methodology for the industry and product positioning, and so on. The plan can also assess the strength of the company. 

6. Visit the company’s official website

For a powerful company, its official website certainly looks professional. The official website is also the company’s product. If the information on the official website is messy, we do not expect them to make good short videos.  

Lessons Learned for a UK Private School

A private school located in the heart of Cardiff, England is one of the most established independent English language centres operating the International Foundation Program (IFP) in Wales.

In order to recruit more Chinese students, they found an education information platform providing yellow pages in China-Earthedu (www.earthedu.com) to cooperate with. Earthedu provided the school with a promotional page to expand the exposure of the school. However, this has not helped the enrollment plan at all in recent years. They were disappointed for the result with their budget.

Regarding the disappointing result of this collaboration between the school and Global Education Network, Enlybee has helped the school with the analysis.

1. China’s localised yellow pages classified type of information platform is not a high-quality promotion channel because this type of platform has become obsolete. Few people visit them in China. People prefer social platforms, such as Douyin, Toutiao, Weibo, WeChat, Zhihu, Xiaohongshu, etc. to browse information.

2. Before cooperating with Earthedu, the school did not know about the traffic scale of this platform with the help of third-party tools and authoritative organizations. In fact,  Earthedu is almost not accessed by users, so it is ineffective to promote information on this platform.

The school did not have enough understanding of the Chinese market, especially the development of the Chinese education industry, and needs reliable digital marketing agencies to help them carry out marketing in China.

Conclusion

Digital marketing is trendy, effective, and crucial for international enterprises to communicate with Chinese customers and increase brand awareness. Also, it involves many different platforms, channels, and apps, and difficulties can vary. Choosing a reliable outsourced digital marketing agency is one of the challenges in entering the China market, and at Enlybee, we can help you with ease. Speak to our team now: https://bit.ly/3hIl6CG