7 best ways to Market your Watch Brand in China

Chinese market: Tips to market your watch brand

Before starting a deep analysis of how you can market your watch brand in China, let me take you through the watch market and Chinese consumers’ habits.

• High-quality watches in China are seen as a “luxury product” for Chinese customers, especially watches made in Switzerland. In China, there is a real interest in Swiss watches because their communication is about authenticity and storytelling.
• These years, there was a slowdown in sales in the luxury watch industry because of the anti-corruption regulation led by the Chinese government. Due to this, companies now need to find ways to deal with this new business environment.
• Like most industries in China, this one is also arriving at maturity. Taking this into account, Chinese buyers are much more aware of watches technology; and we can see that they have different styles preferences.

Depending on those 3 criteria affecting the fashion brand market in China, how can you differentiate yourself from your competitors and how can you market your watch brand in China?

 Use Wechat for the relevant content

Chinese consumers have been too harassed by commercials offers and ads, so you need to think differently than your competitors. Wechat is not an easy social media where you can promote your brand. You can rely on Wechat to spread your content, there are 2 main steps:

• Give attractive content to your audience by not only sharing too much commercial content, which won’t convey a nice image to your audience. You have to communicate about the universe you evolve in. For example, give some content talking about watch history and how/where they are made, and if it is Switzerland, then talk about the country and culture, give some luxury tips (for example, “5 tips to choose your watch”) and content about elegance and harmony.

• Diffuse your content in strategic groups and influencers where you will have more visibility.

Here below, you can see an example of a WeChat campaign of Rado, it is a very interesting campaign since the brand succeeds to combine two points: a sports event and the promotion of a Rado watch.

Weibo for KOL

You can use Weibo as a way to promote your luxury watch brand with attractive content too. But the difference from Wechat is that you will create more interactive content with your audience: for example by inviting them to some organized events and contests to win gifts.

The idea is to make the user share this content with his contacts, make them like your post, and give positive comments.

Weibo is also an effective tool for KOLs, use the image of the most important web influencers or even some famous stars figures.

Interesting: In China, focus on fashion addicts

Engage your consumer with social media tools

We have seen the power of Wechat and Weibo to first create an environment around your brand and second use as an efficient KOL tool. Another interesting way to engage your customers is to encourage them to express their creativity. Piaget has let users express their creativeness through a customized poem in three-line for Valentine’s Day.

Getting your customer involved in your brand is a way to let them enter the brand world and more chances to encourage them to buy your products.

Online brand image

Online branding is really an important key part of the luxury brand. If you want your brand to succeed in the luxury watch industry, then you have to get an online brand reputation.

You can work on your online branding with two main means: publish on relevant websites and with press relations. How to build it?

First, you have to target some specialized luxury forums where you can publish some interesting and relevant articles about your brand, product, and company. To give you some examples, if you are a Swiss watch brand company, you can publish an article about the top 10 shops to visit in Switzerland, the top 10 Switzerland brands on fashion websites, or about your brand and its history.

You have to write content, a lot of content with backlinks and hyperlinks connected to relevant websites such as governmental ones or top rank certified ones on Baidu.

The second point, try to enhance your most influential post ranking on search engines. What does that mean?  If you have written some articles about Rado and if you see they are becoming popular then, you have to enhance and highlight them.

Airport display

Have you seen those big banners ads at the Airport?
The airport is the perfect place to promote your luxury brand with an effective marketing campaign. The reason for this success is because of the huge touristic flow in airports.

So it is the perfect place for you to promote your brand watch. Below, you can see the example of Rolex.

O2O

The revolution from online to offline knows a certain success. The space between the online gateway and a real and physical store offline seems to be tighter than ever. If you are a luxury watch brand then you have to keep in mind that in-store experience for the customer is really important.

We will illustrate the O2O system through a relevant example with the TAG Heuer brand: the Swiss watchmaker had the idea to create a QR code called “treasure hunt” for visitors; the idea was to play on an interactive approach. The QR code was actually a guideline at the exhibition, after users arrived at the exhibition, they would receive keys. Some of those keys were special because they were in flash drive format where you could learn more about the brand.  

Video tool

Here below is a video of the Rado watch presenting the so-called “Rado DiaMaster Automatic Chronograph”

As you can see in this video, there is an impressive work on the video’s special effects, it gives the watch the aspect of a precious and strong element.