In building brand recognition and customer loyalty, paid advertising is a great way to reach your audience, especially when you have a niche and specific sectors, industries, or market location that you are planning to reach.

Not all “advertising” needs to pay. It is particularly true when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) – how you organize and include web content that is most relevant to your site and improves the site’s visibility on search engines.

From offline to online, from a static image to video, from SEM to SEO, Comms8 identifies the right channels to expand your potential market and outreach to more audiences. We offer:

- Offline advertising
- Linear TV, Digital TV, Shopping TV
- Online advertising in APAC
- SEO
- SEM
- Programmatic advertising
- EDM marketing
- Video Marketing
- Media partnership

In a world where a brand’s online presence cannot be ignored, sharing your brand’s story through social media and communication platforms is fundamental in expanding the audience pool.

Yet, in the sea of social media and communication channels – with each of them having a different audience group, it is hard to be active in all of them. That’s where Comms8 steps in to find you the most suitable channels for reaching your target audience.

Comms8 is experienced in working with brands on:
- Influencer marketing
- Content strategy: LINE, Weibo., Rednote, WeChat, TikTok, Kakao, Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, X,
- Community engagement
- Social media set-up

Be it online or offline, Comms8 helps you with various formats of advertising to reach your desired target audience. Focusing on data and insights, we help you to engage with your audiences with different media mixes and approaches that best suit your brand and industry.

Comms8 provides you one-stop service of integrated marketing. We help you to build a solid marketing strategy and planning that will serve your brand’s long-term goal. Working with Comms8 means you can cost-effectively manage different communication channels under one roof, while making sure the deliverables are of the same high quality.

Social media is one of the most effective way to communicate with your target audience. Comms8 is experienced in building content strategy and activating marketing campaign on social media – not just on Facebook or LinkedIn, but also on popular Chinese social media platforms like WeChat and Xiaohungshu. We also take care of the complicated account setup procedure for you.

Facebook is one of the biggest social media platforms, with over 2.36 billion active users. Not only allowing users to connect with their friends, it is also a great platform for brands to connect with their target audience with brand Page. It is one of the best channels to reach global customers and deliver highly targeted paid ads with Facebook’s algorithm.

Ranked as millennials' favourite app, Instagram is famous of its extremely photogenic content. 70% of its 1 billion monthly active users are teenagers, which makes it an important platform to target younger generations. Thousands of cosmetic and clothing brands have achieved their own marketing success in this photo-sharing app since its launch in 2010.

LinkedIn has over 720 million users across the globe. It is a social media platform for professionals which makes it an ideal platform for B2B marketing, where you can quickly target your audience, establish the business reputation, connect and cultivate a business relationship.

It is China’s leading communication app with over 1.1 billion monthly active users. Its all-in-one platform allows users to chat, read, shop, pay and play. In terms of its mega database and multiple functions, it can accurately target your audience via WeChat Official Account, WeChat Mini programme, Moment, WeChat private group and WeChat Advertising. 

A trendy microblog-sharing social media platform in China with 190 million daily active users. Many people refer it as Chinese Twitter due to its word limit and repost function. Beyond this basic function, Weibo has various marketing tools to raise brand awareness and engage with followers. It is one of the must-have platforms to reach out Chinese younger generation as 80% of Weibo active users are under 30 years old. 

Douyin, the origin of Tiktok, is only available in China. It is rapidly expanding its global presence in the past 2 years, and become the top of short video-sharing platform in the world. Comparing with other video sharing platforms, its fast-paced video feeds nature boosts higher engagement rate and higher user stickiness. This is the best video platform to target younger generations in China as 85% of its users are below 24 years old.

China’s cross-border social & shopping platform rednote (Xiaohongshu /XHS/Red) is designed to enable e-commerce on social media. Not only do they attract beauty and fashion enthusiasts to share their opinions and recommendations, but a lot of celebrities and influencers also join this platform to share their beauty tips and daily lives. Rednote gradually built up as a community of real WOM since 2013. ‘Young’, ‘Mid-class’ and ‘Female’ are 3 keywords to describe Rednote’s 300+ million users. 

If you want to expand your business and increase brand recognition online to enter different markets, SEO is a crucial element you can't ignore. Search Engine Optimization in APAC is challenging. It requires professional SEO knowledge, native-language content creation, and a deep understanding of local culture. Fortunately, as a cross-border marketing company, Comms8 has a professional team of native Chinese speakers and other Asian language experts to help you with your SEO project. With our 10 years of experience in cross-border SEO, we'll ensure your keywords rank well in Baidu and other search engines.

Influencers or key opinion leaders (KOL) have a huge market . Customers rely on influencers’ recommendations when making purchase decisions. Taking this opportunity, brands wishing to tap into the Asian market can leverage this to drive quality traffic and customers to their channel.

At Comms8, our InfluenConnect platform recruits and works directly with influencers with great creativity and passion. In addition, Comms8 could help:

- Match and manage KOLs with brands and products that fit, to raise brand awareness
- Live streaming sessions on leading e-commerce platforms to draw sales
- Content development for KOL to enhance the brand’s identity

With over 1 billion users, WeChat is China’s leading communication app. Its all-in-one platform allows users to chat, read, shop, pay, and play. Advertising on WeChat is a fast-growing opportunity that allows brands and businesses to define specific target audience groups on the ecosystem and help to attract new audiences and attract sales. At Comms8, we can help you to expand into WeChat advertising with:

- WeChat official account set-up to kick start the journey
- Banner ads to drive traffic and conversion
- Content creation together with our in-house design capabilities
- Social feed consisting of images, video and text to engage users

Weibo, while some people might refer to it as Chinese Twitter due to its word limit, is another popular social media platform in China. If you are after a platform particularly for consumer products, Weibo is a good place to start. Here at Comms8, we could help with:

- Weibo official account set-up to kick start the journey
- Content creation leveraging our in-house graphic and design capabilities
- Search engine optimization on Weibo to raise brand awareness and visibility
- Match and manage KOLs with brands and products that fit, to raise brand awareness.

Based in UK, China, and Hong Kong, our expertise is trilingual native Mandarin and Cantonese speakers with an in-depth understanding of your targeted markets, media landscape, and consumer insights across the world.

We focus on data and insights. We put your business objective and bottom line at the heart of our marketing strategy.

We help you build purpose in your brand that has real long-term impact on your business and the society. We are a game changer that think beyond short term profit. We take pride in our integrity and purpose-led business model, and we work with partners share the same belief.

Share your story and voice on online

Extensive media presence in the UK and European market reaching industry-specific audience group

Outreach to Chinese media and audience base on your brand's nature

Event planning, organisation, promotion and execution that best fits with your brand image

Collaboration with online influencers

Decide the key content (pillars) that you want to share with your audience most, and the ways to present the content

Besides promoting the product/service alone, it is important to share the brand’s value and adding human touch to the brand

Publish posts with good hashtag for your brand or a specific campaign will help driving user-generated content (UGC) for higher engagement and wider exposure of your brand

Not only choosing the keywords that best describe your brand, but also relevant keywords that interest audience most

Apart from static images and copywriting, we also produce different formats to cater different needs, e.g. short video, infographic, digest/for dummies (懶人包) etc.

Deciding the suitable social media platform(s) for your brand – some platforms are good for B2B marketing (e.g. LinkedIn), some are best for B2C marketing (e.g. Tiktok)

Identifying your target audience on social media platform(s) – by demographic, geographic, job, interest etc.

Recommending content strategy specified for China social media platforms – the landscape of Western social media platforms is very different from those in China, which localisation is essential

Planning social media content as part of your integrated marketing strategy (link to integrated marketing strategy) – leverage various marketing formats to reinforce brand recognition, build trust and drive conversion

An overarching plan for raising brand awareness

Targeting niche business audience groups

In-depth research and analysis to your business and competitors

Establish your online presence

Creatives that best match your brand image

Share the same language and voice with your audience

Legal set-up in China for localisation

Offline advertising is still a powerful advertising format even after digital advertising has hit the scene. It comes in many forms like newspapers, magazines, billboards, flyers, etc. This sort of resource is good for building recognition with the audience, especially for industries targeting the mass population and businesses targeting specific geographic locations.

TV maintains its position as a necessary media and home appliance for a large group of people, especially for families. In the past 5 years, although people are spending more time on online video platforms like Netflix or on social media, the average daily time every British spent on watching TV was reduced by 30 mins only. Promoting on Shopping TV or Direct Response TV is still an effective way to enhance your brand’s awareness and educate the audience on your product features and benefits.

The online landscape in China is very diverse. A professional and data-driven advertising plan is needed in order to draw attention from 914 million active Internet users in China. Not only focusing on Baidu, the most used search engine in China, or WeChat, the most popular communication app in China, Comms8 also guides you through other online channels that can effectively target your audience.

If you want to expand your business and increase your brand recognization online in China, SEO is an important part that you can't ignore. Search Engine Optimization in China is not an easy thing. It requires professional SEO knowledge for different search engines, native Chinese language content creation, and an understanding of Chinese culture. With our 10 years of experience in Chinese SEO, with the native speaking team, your keywords ranking in Baidu and other search engine visibility is done right.

With Baidu advertising, you can reach up to 95% of Internet users in China. The best part is you only paid when the people showing interest in your product click your ad, which means you are free to show your brand, your product, or your service to Chinese customers. Besides just keyword bidding, there are more formats on Baidu, including Brand Zone, Baidu Knowledge, and so on.

With an 84.97% market share on mobile search, Baidu is the No.1 market channel in terms of search engine optimization and search engine paid ads, especially for B2B brands. Comms8 provides complete Baidu SEO service, including keywords research, meta title & description optimization, on-page optimization, loading speed optimization, technical SEO, and more.

Understanding your target audience is important in curating a campaign message and creatives that best capture their interests. Based on their geographic and demographic attributes, such as age, industry and interests, we help you to learn more about your future customers and identify the best way to reach them.

A good marketing objective should be practical and achievable. We recommend the goal to be:

- Specific: focus on clearly defined metrics
- Measurable: with quantitative measurements
- Achievable: a goal that is challenging yet achievable
- Relevant: an objective that matches the overall brand positioning
- Time-bound: a clear timeframe and deadline on achieving the goal

For your marketing campaign to be effective and successful, it is essential to conduct a comprehensive market research and analysis to help understand where your brand stands, in different markets and amongst competitors. It is crucial to identify the opportunities and possible threats to your business.

Through our extensive industry research, and trilingual language speaking team based in the UK, China and Hong Kong, we have an in-depth understanding of your target markets and help you to identify where the opportunities are to bring your brand forward to the right group of audience.

As much as you'd like to advertise on every social and marketing platforms, budget and resources are limited. With our data-driven approach, we pick and focus on channels that maximise the return on investment - be it display advertising, personal in-mail, media outreach, social media, or influencer marketing.

The more the channels you are advertising on, does not always necessarily mean the better you are in building your brand. We help you to choose the right channels, targeting the right audiences, at the right time to best utilise the budget for a maximised result.

B2C business works in a large-scale market while B2B business usually works in a niche market. Lead generation is therefore the primary goal for B2B marketers. Besides, B2C marketing develops more short-term relationships with customers while B2B marketing focuses on building a long-term relationship. Thus, B2B marketing always pays more attention to the user and customer experience, including website design, user on-boarding, and personal support calls.

Email being the most commonly used communication channel in business, email marketing is the most cost-effective way to reach target audience, promote products, communicate with customers and reach business goals. A good marketing email should include enticing subject, one call-to-action (CTA) per email, email segment and responsive email design.

It is essential for B2B marketers to create a good UX design on the website, including excellent information architecture and outstanding content readability. Besides, compared to on-page SEO, off-page SEO can help to build up your brand's reputation and credibility, as well as driving traffic to your website. Other ad formats such as display banner ad, video ad, PPC campaign can also facilitate your marketing goal.

Unlike B2C marketing which focuses more on emotion, B2B marketing emphasizes fact and expertise. Creating quality content using industry terminology allows B2B businesses to establish brand's professionalism and connect with their target audience. It is also important to add thought leadership into marketing mix, with the goal of becoming recognized as an expert and a go-to resource in a specific field.

It is the Google of China and it owns around 70% of the search engine market share in China. Baidu has text search ads and displays network ads just like Google, therefore it is definitely a great choice for you to reach the large population in China. Compare to Google, Baidu has different ad format and bidding model, as well as usability and user interface. Our Chinese native speaking team is definitely your best partner in providing you advice for Baidu SEO, SEM and other ad formats.

WeChat is the most popular communication app in China with well over 1.2 billion monthly active users, that spends on average 90 minutes every single day chatting with their friends. WeChat offers a few types of ads on its platform, such as banner ads on official account, moment ads that are similar to in-feed ads placed on Facebook and Instagram and Mini Programme to engage with your target audience. Comms8 has in-depth knowledge of novel features on Wechat and help you to gain exposure and drive conversion.

Weibo is the Twitter of China. Compared to the 330 million monthly active users of Twitter, Weibo's monthly active users is around 550 million in 2020. With a large and stable user base, KOL marketing on Weibo helps raising brand awareness. If you are targeting younger audience, Weibo might be the platform for you as 53.9% of all the KOLs’ followers are aged under 25.

Douyin surpassed 600 million daily active users in 2020. If you are targeting the Chinese market, Douyin will be one of the key platforms for short video advertising. With the fast-paced and eye-catching Douyin video style, we believe that Douyin is becoming the next battleground for online advertising in China. There are various ad formats to choose from on Douyin, including open screen ads, feed ads, sticker ads, and of course, KOL marketing.

With over 100 million users, rednote is China’s most popular social shopping platform. 80% of the active users on rednote are female, making it the best platform to promote cosmetic, fashion and lifestyle products. Users like to share their daily lives and product reviews, which turns rednote into a trustworthy review platform in China. Apart from working with KOL to drive brand awareness, rednote is also effective in converting sales with its e-commerce function.

Based on in-depth research, we conduct social listening on what people talk about your industry and brand. Not only does this allow us to better understand and position your brand, but also the first step to identify the most influential voice on various social platforms.

Unlike other digital advertising, influencer marketing usually takes a longer time for planning, execution, and review. It takes time for influencers to be familiarised with your brand, products and services in order to deliver the message in a natural yet convincing way. Working closely with you, we help to set the goal and develop the campaign message and context for dedicated influencers to follow.

A campaign message is just as important as the campaign’s goal, so as to leverage KOL’s creativity and personal uniqueness to raise brand awareness and drive conversion. The message shall be structured, making it easy for the influencer to read, understand and follow - a brand's story that is easy for them to digest and share with their followers.

Here at Comms8, we have an extensive influencer network across various industry, business nature and social channels, targeting different audience groups. Saving all your hustles, there are over 1,000 KOLs on our #INCLUENCE8 platform where we recruit and work directly with influencers with great creativity and passion. We handpick influencers who best suit your brand's image, actively posting content that is relevant to your brand or industry and engaging around a solid base of followers.

Expanding the brand's exposure to a wider audience

Building trust amongst audience when the brand's content is shared by a credible source of information

Generating lead when more people read about your products/services and click through your website

Boosting website traffic when more people read and understand about your business, and share these content online

Improving brand's ranking on search engine by publishing high-quality content and generate more external links to your website to boost SEO performance

Driving sales with the raise in audience traffic and leads

Networking with journalists and editors through our extensive network to build an in-depth understanding of your brand

Developing brand and industry-related content to gain high-quality backlinks

Publishing press release and newsworth content to earn media feature

Organising reviews on the brand to boost the site's ranking on search engines

Outreaching to influencers and bloggers to gain shout outs on social media and communication platforms

Organising press and blogger-specific events to earn online coverage

Starting off with defining goals specifically related to your brand, we help to map out and build a quantitative strategy in achieving the desired outcome. Common examples for goal setting includes increase brand awareness, raise quality inbound traffic and diversity backlink profile.

Based on your brand's value and our market research, we would help identifying specific target audience groups according to their demographic characteristics.

Once these foundations are in place, we would deep dive into these audiences and identify the best sites and platforms in reaching them in order to maximise the potential to generate high-quality backlinks to your brand's site.

Building a content calendar is crucial to pin down the best time and period to reach out to media. Working closely with you for your project's timeframe, we advise on the best time to roll out the content, with the aim to maximise audience outreach.

With our in-house design and content development team, we help to produce creatives and content to drive coverages and links. Offerings include, but not limited to, infographic, data visualisation, thought leadership and tactical content.

It is a popular Chinese social E-Commerce mobile application with more than 300 million users and is now valued at more than USD 3 billion. The app targets 18-35-year-old women who are interested in fashion and beauty products. Users of rednote can contribute to the community by posting detailed product reviews or product-based lifestyle and fashion tips using photos, videos, and text. Posts about a particular item often contain tags with information about price, brand, and the location of purchase (even down to the exact store). Product posts are integrated with rednote’s shopping platform, allowing users to navigate from a community post to a product purchase page in-app.

As one of the principally community-based social media in China, the number of active users in Weibo has exceeded 300 million presently. Weibo provides users an engaging product review platform in Chinese. Information spread effectively and quickly among individual users and groups with hashtags. Weibo hashtags help brands to keep up with the trending topics on Weibo and develop up-trend marketing campaigns. Moreover, many influencers have created fans group on Weibo. Brands can leverage their influence on followers to increase brand awareness and credibility, as well as to drive sales.

Bilibili is a website for vloggers to publish original videos in China. Viewers can learn more about brands and products, especially in the fashion and beauty field, through unboxing, review, and fashion and beauty tips videos created by vloggers from different parts of China. It is famous for its bullet screen where viewers' comments overlay the video, making the interaction among viewers more interactive and interesting.

WeChat marketers have to carefully choose what content they are going to use in WeChat Official Account as well as to decide the optimal posting time and day. For most B2C brands, the best day to post is the weekend while the best time to post is early morning (6 am to 9 am) or late evening (8 pm to 1 am). You also need to consider three elements of your post: tone of voice, layout, and visual. Instead of the static image, video post is the latest trend.

You can advertise through the banners at the bottom of popular articles. WeChat banner ads are an effective way to drive users to your website. Moment advertising tends to be a better choice for well-known brands with visually attractive products.

One of the best ways to introduce your brand to the Chinese audience is through an influencer, or KOL (key opinion leader). WeChat influencers have their own public account which can push messages to their subscribers. Be it a full article talking about your brand, or a banner ad at the end of a content piece will be useful in building brand presence.

Brands can use Mini Programme, a plug-in to WeChat, to offer special promotions and serve as a loyalty program for their customers. Mini Programme can be in the form of a loyalty program to complete customers' offline shopping journey, a gift card, a mini-game to increase brand awareness and social mention or an E-commerce store to be integrated into WeChat.

Consumer insights are real responses from customers. They are gathered from data on human behaviors and perceptions. Businesses then can use these insights to identify the needs of their target audience, how and why they carry out certain commercial actions. It helps brands to create the right message for the right audience for mutual benefit, placing it where it will cut through.

Gaining insights into today’s Chinese consumers is relatively difficult. The market’s size, complexity, and constant evolution present major barriers to understanding the Chinese consumer’s insights. If you want to expand your business into the Chinese market, you should definitely have an in-depth insight into Chinese consumer behavior. With Comms8's native-speaking team in China, we help you understand the Chinese audience in a localized tone and manner.

Competitive analysis is a way of identifying competitors, understanding their strategies to determine strengths and weaknesses relative to your brand. Knowing competitors will help you figure out what your value proposition or competitive edge is.

At Comms8, the first step of an effective competitive analysis is to identify different competitors such as direct competitors, indirect competitors, and tertiary competitors. Also, we use data-driven methods to help you to get an overview of competitors including size, reach, activities, and personnel. Other key elements of our competitor’s analysis also involve pricing, website content analysis, and social media platform performance.

Quantitative research is numbers-based and the results are measurable. Examples of tools include questionnaires, surveys, and polls. Questionnaires and surveys collect data in an unbiased way and the result can be used to apply inferences to a broader population when a large enough pool of responses is gathered.

Qualitative research is used to collect information about a target audience to inform overall marketing strategy, pulling from visual, textual, and auditory data. Open-ended survey questions and focus groups are common forms of our qualitative research. At Comms8, our qualitative research can help brands drill down to uncover deeper insights by discussing specific experiences, and understand data points and observations in context.

Ads directing to the company page come up in user's feeds when they input keywords in search.

By targeting your existing followers, the brand's content is boosted and positioned at the top of followers' newsfeed and extends to their connections who may also be your potential targets.

It is the best way to rapidly grow followings. A brand can promote a post or brand account and this will appear on users’ news feed, by targeting their specific interests.

Similar to SEM on search engines, keywords visibility can be boosted and direct to brand page when users search for correlated keywords

Chinese consumers are usually quiet and sensitive

Chinese consumers do not articulate strong preferences.

Chinese consumers are different in the North and the South.

Surveys are always the best option to collect information among Chinese respondents.

Brands can build connections with customers through posting high-quality and multimedia content, replying to customers’ inquiries, and launching promotional campaigns. To monitor marketing performance, brands can access the data analytics section provided by rednote. Information such as fans’ demographic distribution, exposure, and click-through rate can be monitored.

Brands can choose to work with micro-influencers to top-tier influencers depending on the campaign objective and target audience. Through 'rednote Dandelion', a brand collaboration platform on the app, KOL can produce brand collaboration posts, new product reviews, and live-streaming, to drive conversion.

There are two types of paid advertisement on rednote – ads that pop up upon app-opening which are more eye-catching, or ads integrated with a more natural post feed. Users will be directed to a dedicated landing page or designated post upon clicking for both formats.

Brands can try to catch users' eye by boosting a trending topic search that is related to their promoted item, so the 'hot topic' will appear at the top of the search box. Posts related to this hot topic will be gathered on a dedicated topic page, similar to hashtag function on other social media channels.

Brands can design customized stickers with branded elements for users to use within the app environment - whenever they are composing a post or writing comments. This is a creative way to gain customers’ attention and build positive connections.

rednote official account set-up and management to kick-start the marketing journey.

Content creation leveraging our in-house design capabilities.

Localization of your existing brand creatives to better engage with you audience.

Match and collaborate with influencers and celebrities to raise brand and product awareness and drive sales.

QVC UK - the market leader. It has grown to be available in all UK homes through mass TV distribution on Freeview, Sky, and cable as well as a significant online presence. Customers can order products on-air, online, or on mobile devices at their convenience with 24/7 UK call center support. The commission-based profit model and unique retail business model allow QVC UK to stand out from the market.

The downside is that they are extremely slow to move forward on anything and you are at their mercy as to whether they allocate airtime (or not) to any given company or product range.

Ideal World - another major shopping TV in the UK. They run a similar wholesale buying business model to QVC but it is also possible to buy airtime from them on a fixed basis for a fixed cost on the proviso you provide an on-screen Guest too whereby the sales and response would revert back to your client’s URL and call center. They used to employ a niche product category strategy but expanded into another specialist sector – pets. The company now changes the on-screen product information overlays and rebrands set designs, VTs, and social media.

Long-form DRTV advertising allows companies to have enough time to tell their stories. Not only can you fully educate potential customers but also build a truly compelling offer an irresistible value proposition.

3 mins DRTV advertising runs across 150 channels in the UK. The three-minute DRTV is the shortest length of advertising for generating profitable hard cash return on investment for the client base. Brands aim to educate their consumers on the features and benefits of their product or service and then have that consumer follow a call to action.

30 mins DRTV advertising is available on major TV channels in the UK. Products ads are always split into different segments of five-minute length and are optimized according to performance. It is an ideal strategy for clients and brands that have huge ranges of products.

High quality three minute DRTV adverts production

Clearcast approved infomercial material production

Audience research and TV channels recommendation.

Other marketing activites that works along with your shopping TV marketing.

A CMS website reduces the time required to publish, allowing brands to get their content online faster. A brand can start with a CMS template and gradually develop it to align with the brand's style. Amongst the commonly seen CMS, Wordpress is one of the most flexible ones which allows users to personalize the website. Squarespace is good for branding due to its beautifully designed templates while Magento is focusing on e-commerce. You can learn more about the features of mainstream CMS below.

Starting from 2013, wordpress is now the most popular and commonly used CMS for building a website. Wordpress is known for its open-source and very mature plugin environment. No matter you are a newbie or a veteran website developer, you can make use of Wordpress to build a professional website. There are tons of themes (free and paid), plugins to meet all your needs.

Wix helps people to build websites by an automatic drag and drop online builder. With very aggressive marketing activity, Wix is now sharing the second global market share with 7.17%. Wix is always recommended for people with less or no website building experience or coding skills.

The biggest advantage of Squarespace is the availability of good-looking templates. People can simply select one elegant template and replace the content with their own. In terms of pricing, unlike Wordpress and Wix, there is no free plan. If you don’t have design skills and want to build a visually attractive website, Squarespace is your choice.

Joomla is a popular CMS in the website developer’s eyes. Just like Wordpress, it’s completely free. Many professional websites are running by Joomla. However, it’s not the best choice for everyone because of its steep learning curve. But if you are confident with website development and coding, you can build any website from a personal blog to a larger enterprise website with Joomla.

A domain which is representing your brand and is easy to remember is a must - but if you are looking into entering the Chinese market, always use a Chinese domain. A domain that is hosted outside of China takes longer to load, and may be blocked due to various reasons, which affects the user experience and reduce the efficiency of the website, ultimately affects the conversion. It is as important to create localized website content in Chinese if you are targeting Chinese customers - not just being an effective way of communication, but also improves the ranking on Chinese search engines which makes your website visible to more audience.

Getting the content with keywords done doesn't mean getting SEO all set. There is still a lot that we can do to improve the search engine ranking, from URL setting, tagging set up and site map setup, etc. Getting backlinks is also a way to improve your website's search ranking but this involves a bit of PR effort - outreaching to media and other online platforms, or through influencer marketing.

When we say connect to social media, it's not just about having a social media icon on your website that directs users to your social media account, or vice versa. Constantly sharing website content on your social media account will create a backlink to your website which improves search engine ranking. Where suitable, you can also embed a 'share' button on designated web pages which audiences will be able to share your website content to their social media account, creating even more backlinks. This will also give wider exposure to your website.

If you are running a Google Ads campaign, having a well-designed landing page will definitely maximize your returns on investment. A visually attractive landing page with a clear call-to-action message, alongside a streamlined interface is going to drive better conversion - no matter it is a purchase, a download, or a registration.

SEO audit and website optimization.

Backlink generation through PR activities

China launchpad and Chinese domain registration.

Chinese website content localization by native speaking experts.

One way of doing PR in China is to go online. There are over 600 million netizens in China where a lot of people prefers reading news online to reading hard copy. Brands could leverage online news networks and portals like forums, blogs and knowledge-sharing platforms to generate quality content of high creditability and to increase brand awareness. With the power of sharing and word of mouth, news online could reach out to an even larger audience group at a relatively low advertising budget. Many Chinese media outlets, such as People's Daily and Xinhua News, have official accounts on social media to further distribute their news.

Social media is a main source of information for the public in China, particularly amongst the younger generation. They are active on platforms such as WeChat and Weibo, some of the most popular communication tools in China. Weibo is a China-based microblogging service. Similar to Twitter, it provides an instant information platform where people can share and exchange news and ideas. It is also a commonly used platform for PR practitioners to break the news. Other than running an official Weibo account, collaboration with Weibo influencers is also an effective way to do PR in China.

Douyin is the most popular video media in China now. Many brands use it to engage with Chinese audiences. Strong KOL marketing strategy has been the key to success for overseas brands doing PR on Douyin. When working with KOLs on Douyin, running a 'challenge' campaign is a good way to attract Gen Z consumers in China, as they are the key users on Douyin. ‘Challenge’ is a unique feature of Douyin which brands can encourage users to replicate or create 'challenge' content with a branded hashtag to win a prize. Otherwise, overseas companies can simply work with KOLs to produce short video content or run live streaming sessions on Douyin to promote their brands.

Baidu, being one of the most commonly used search engines in China, is also a good channel for brands to do PR in China. Besides Baidu SEO, such as using China domain for the website and localise content in Chinese for better Baidu ranking, brands can also do PR on Baidu by keywords bidding (Baidu SEM), display ad and Brand Zone etc.

Being a content contributor through guest posting is another great way to build a long-term positive brand image in China. By contributing articles on other media outlets, brands could promote their name, products and services to the media's audience and gain high-quality back-links - which not just build the credibility of the brand, but also helping on SEO in China.

Press release blast out with write up by Chinese native specialists.

Social media account setup and content management.

KOL marketing for China PR.

Baidu SEO and SEM for China PR.

Being the most commonly used search engine in China, an informative and relevant website displaying at prominent position on users' search result page is going to strengthen brand awareness.

Baidu SEM can accurately target customer's interests, geographic location, age, and other attributes, which makes precise targeting available at a lower cost. The large advertising budget is enjoying great advantages on Baidu SEM, but it is still a good marketing choice for small businesses seeking growth in the Chinese market.

Baidu SEM is optimised towards CTR as this is how the ranking is bid. Optimise the keywords and creatives from time to time to refresh the audience for better clicking performance.

Analyse the statistics of the source of keywords, visitor interest and characteristics, visitor-level etc. in rea-time to adjust the keywords for prospecting and retargeting.

User interface and user experience is the most direct and effective way to increase conversion of the landing page. Website loading speed, matching keywords and results are going to affect the bounce rate and conversion performance.

We create content and choose well-known Q&A platforms with higher authority to publish well-organized content for brands regularly. For instance, Baidu Zhidao, 360 Wenda are the most popular Q&A platforms which have huge search volume and high user stickiness.

We help brands to create Q&A content to answer brand-relevant questions on Zhihu. Zhihu is a very popular Chinese Internet high-quality Q&A community and original content platform where creators gather. It is estimated that Zhihu generates 60 million searches every day, of which 6% are brand-related searches. Zhihu has its algorithm of ranking and keeps updating regularly. Professional, rigorous, and serious high-quality content rank higher therefore newly created high-quality answers can get a better ranking faster.

Baidu Baike (百度百科) profile (similar to Wikipedia) is a good way to gain exposure to the brand and to educate the target audience about your brand. We help to create and maintain the brand encyclopedia profile with brand history and milestones, event archives and products and services, to communicate with customers with tangible and intangible assets. This is going to help brand SEO in China by increasing its brand awareness and influence, as well as brand popularity.

Optimizing searching front page (rank and display feature) for specific keywords in specific search channels. In China, the search engine services of Baidu, Sogou, 360, and Shenma present a four-pointed situation. Baidu is the world's largest Chinese search engine, which is well known to everyone. It occupies 70% of the market share and occupies a leading position in the search engine service industry. After that, Sogou search gained more traffic entrance and technical support. Sogou search occupies 10.90% of the market share and currently ranks second with more than 360 searches. Shenma search started late, but the direction is accurate, and it has been focusing on mobile search services.

Keywords research is the most important part of SEO. Without correct keyword research, one can't expect fruitful SEO results. Fortunately, there are several keyword research tools for marketers to take advantage of. In terms of single page SEO, you always want to have one main keyword and several secondary keywords that are relevant to the main subject of this page.

We help your brand to optimise the performance of Brand Index via content marketing strategies. Content marketing is to create valuable content for users regardless of form and type, meet user needs, and guide consumption. To optimise the performance of Brand Index, make sure you create and share high-quality content that your consumers need on your website and social media and try to engage with them as much as possible. Website development support to improve SEO is an ace to gain higher exposure and enhance marketing effects.

Ensuring your brand is reaching and speaking to the right person, at the right time and the right channel is key in strengthening the brand's creditability. Here at Comms8, we have a strong connection with media and a vast journalists database covering a wide range of industries and sectors, allowing you to share your brand's stories, announcements and press releases with the right audience.

For Asian brands who are looking into expanding to the European markets, Chinese-based publications in the UK & Europe, such as China Minutes, Chinese Business Gazette & UK China Times, would be some of the entry publications for outreach for your brand.

PR outreach, especially connecting with online publications and digital media in the UK and Europe, helps to expand your brand name on authoritative websites. This helps not only with your brand's recognition but an increase in online visibility and Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) rankings as a trusted website leading to an improved and higher site visibility on Google and other search engines.

If you are targeting a niche audience group in the UK, partnering with local organisations and authorities will be a wise choice. Targeting is generally more precise with more engagement when leveraging the organisation's influence on a particular group of people. Comms8 works with a lot of different local groups - if you are looking to target a Chinese audience in the UK, we know who to go for.

Key opinion leaders (KOLs) might not be regarded as part of traditional media, but it is of crucial importance when planning your marketing strategy in the UK - endorsement and mentions of products through influential individuals who have a dedicated number of followers online and are regarded as an expert in their field across different industries.

Collaborating with influencers has become increasingly popular for brands, with our extensive connection in the UK, Europe and Asian market, we could connect you with over 1,000 KOLs on our #INFLUENCE8 platform to help expand your brand beyond traditional media.

Straight translation is not enough to produce quality copywriting. Depending on the target audience, specific industry terminology shall be used for the B2B audience and colloquial or slang can be used for B2C audience subject to brands' position.

Creatives, be they images or videos, shall be localised according to target audiences' preferences. People living in China, for example, might have different preferences depending on their geographic location. In order for your target audiences to better resonate with your advertisement, creative style shall be adapted accordingly.

Content marketers need to be mindful of cultural differences while localising content, such as religious beliefs and lifestyles etc. Localisation is particularly important in marketing to Chinese audiences. China is the second-largest economy and the largest consumer market in the world. When entering the Chinese market, it is important to fully grasp the unique dynamics of the localisation process.

We help you to define your target market and identify the best formats and on-trend keywords that are tailored to the local demographics.

We recommend the best online and offline channels among hundreds of selection to communicate with your target audience and localise your brand assets according to platforms' ecosystem, assisting you to do branding and marketing in China in a cost-effective way.

Besides localising the content in a cultural-sensitive way, we also provide a hassle-free Chinese domain (.cn) setup service. It is not always easy for the overseas brand to set up a domain to be hosted in China, but we are here to help to secure the good UX and UI of your website.

It is essential to use local social media app, such as WeChat, Weibo and Xiaohungshu, to launch your localised social media content, but it is also important to set up an official account of your brand on these platforms for brand protection. Once again, Comms8 provides you one-stop hassle-free Chinese social media official account setup service to make sure you have a good start in entering the Chinese market.

A simple and easy-to-remember domain is good for user experience. The returning visits tell Baidu users like your website and it will also be recognized by the search engine.

Domain name with suffix. com, cn, net, and edu are common. The website suffixes such as edu will have good results regardless of whether they are included or snapshots. The weight of the website is relatively high, but such a domain name needs to be an education network. If your website is a corporate website, it is recommended to use the regular com and cn suffixes.

The opening speed of the server space not only seriously affects the user's reading experience, but also affects the normal crawling of search engines. Therefore, choosing a stable and fast enough server space is very important for Baidu's SEO optimization.

The stability of the server space requires certain techniques to ensure. Some space service providers without technical strength can hardly guarantee the stability of the server space. Some server space providers even deliberately shield it to save bandwidth. If Baidu spider’s crawling was removed, the website could not be indexed in Baidu web search, causing losses to users.

The users search and visit a website only for valuable content. The purpose of building a website is to show high-quality content to users, sell our products and services and then achieve profitability. Website content is the most important aspect of attracting users. The website should have a clear theme, and all content should be developed around this theme. Do not add content that is not related to the theme which will damage the overall quality judgment of Baidu on the website and affect the overall authority of the website.

The main keywords of a homepage are essential for a website. It is the theme of the whole website, all internal pages are built around the theme. The correct choice of keywords directly determines the ranking of the website and the amount of traffic. The search volume of the keywords should be relatively high and stable over a long period. The specific techniques will be discussed in the following parts.

Make sure the website title is set reasonably, the Meta tag setting is in place, keywords are added to the image attributes, and so on. Since the search engine can't recognize the picture well, add a description to the picture through alt and tell Baidu the content of the picture.

It shows the map results related to the search content, come with location, reviews, price, etc.

Similar to Wikipedia, it can be used to put the encyclopedia profile of the company.

The Biggest Q&A platform in the world. The Q&A web page will display on the top of the Baidu search engine.

A community forum was created by Baidu, where people can discuss different topics. It is content seamlessly links with Baidu research results.

It the most common type of foreign business entity in China and it doesn’t require the direct involvement of a Chinese investor or partner. Setting up a WFOE requires a registered foreign capital which is agreed upon and registered with the authorities.

A Joint Venture is a unique type of company registration in China since it requires the involvement of a foreign entity as well as a local Chinese party.

It is only opened for the purpose of representing a foreign company in China. The procedure for opening up a representative office in China is simple and no registered foreign capital is required.

In-Feed Ads allows brands to embed their video ads to auto-play on target audiences’ ‘For You Page’. Each features a clickable CTA button which can be used to drive traffic to an external landing page, app downloads, or to the brand’s TikTok account.

Brands can create branded effects and customized sounds that support the challenges’ overall growth and the brand’s awareness. Brands can also encourage hashtag challenges on TikTok and do their best to work with influencers to kickstart their #hashtag challenge.

Brands can either base from their own TikTok channel, or alternatively, work with influencers to encourage their follows to create user-generated content (UGC) supporting the brand in some way.

Brands should note that the younger generations are the most avid TikTok users. TikTok's young clientele are far less interested in flash camerawork and high video production values. TikTokers are interested in originality and fun, rather than the quality of videos.

TikTok official account set-up and management to kick-start the marketing journey.

Industry-leading TikTok Ads strategy.

Content creation leveraging our in-house design capabilities.

Localization of your existing brand creatives to better enegage with your global audience.

Match and collaborate with influencers and celebrities to raise brand and product awareness and drive sales.

EDM marketing can be done in-house without needing to turn to a printer or delivery service to get messages to your audience.

With EDM marketing, customers are more likely to engage with the content that your business sends, which allows you to build trust with the audience by sending them timely and engaging emails. So, you are more likely to be able to convert them into paying customers.

Almost everyone in the world has an email address and EDM marketing continues to derive the highest ROI. You can make EDM marketing even more effective by using strategic targeting, segmentation, and the addition of other marketing channels.

Use lead capture forms, embed forms in your content, implement floating action buttons, and more to effectively collect email addresses on your website.

Create a strong lead capture page and link to it from your social media profiles, ads, marketing collateral, etc.

You can use your physical stores and other physical presence to get people’s emails into your database.

When you segment, you can send more personalized and relevant content or offers to customers based on similar interests, geographic location and purchase history. It leads to a higher open rate, click rate, conversation rate and higher revenue.

Email personalization allows you to create more targeted emails that stand out in the inbox.

This could be a CTA button or hyperlink which directs subscribers to your website to read a blog, sign up for an event, or make a purchase. Plus, don't always use 'click here,' 'read more,' or 'shop now.' and you can get creative with your CTAs.

Send yourself a test email and check for these important email marketing elements:

- Text and image are both rendering properly

- No spelling mistakes

- Hyperlinks and CTA buttons take you to a live page

- looks good on both laptop and mobile

One of the most important best practices is to understand how your emails are performing via these performance data:

- Open Rate

- Click Rate

- Delivery Rate

- Opt Out Rate

If you want to create a truly remarkable email experience for your customers, you need to split test. Here are a few email test ideas to get those creative juices flowing:

- Different subject line messages

- Image vs no image in the email

- Different colour CTA button

- Time of day

- Short subject line vs long subject line

- Short email message vs long email message

To help the audience getting excited about the event, social media is a great platform to promote the event, especially when it gets closer to the event day. A lot of people would also share their feedback on social media about how they feel about the event as well. Make sure you are keeping a close eye on your social accounts to gather valuable insights, such as:

- Are the event’s hashtags being used often?

- Are the followers on your social media accounts more active than usual – such as like, comment and share?

- What does your audience talk about the event? Are they posting any photos?

- Any negative feedback or even complaints about the event?

Conducting a post-event survey could help to quantify the success of your event, and to get a general idea of the attendee’s perception. It also provides a chance to ask in-depth questions and the professional backgrounds of your audience.

Particularly for offline events such as tradeshows and exhibitions, your company usually has to invest more in the event compared to smaller-scale virtual events or press conferences. By calculating and comparing the anticipated and actual cost and revenue, it gives you an idea of how successful and useful hosting the event is.

Do keep in mind that not all ‘revenue’ could be measured in monetary form, say an increase in the sign-up to your newsletter suggest you are scoring more potential new users which could bring business to your brand in the long run.