Spain has become this year the 3rd biggest exporter of Wine to China. In fact, the volume of Spanish wine exported to China grew by 40,3% this year, reaching 1,59 million liters, which has been sold for 48,7 million dollars. Spain is now the 3rd biggest wine exporter to China after France and Australia, and these figures are expected to grow.
In fact, Spain signed recently an agreement about cooperation in the wine trade with the Chinese General Administration of Quality Supervision. The aims of this agreement are to facilitate a better promotion of Spanish wine in China, also the use of the digital solution in order to protect the market from counterfeits.
For now, cheap Spanish wines are quite well-known in China, but those high-end brands are also becoming more and more famous in this country. Cava consumption, a Spanish sparkling wine, is also growing in nightclubs and bars. Spanish wines are mostly consumed in Beijing and Hong Kong today, but it’s expected to spread more in the country.
There exist several ways to sell your wine in China, which you can see here. But the current trend is to use digital marketing: it can be an e-business website or the use of Online Press relations or social networks for example. In fact, Chinese people are more connected than us, with 591 million internet users, and more open to new technologies, with 90% of internet users having at least an account on a social network for example.
Wine brands are more and more present on social networks because they realize the importance of these networks.
Weibo is the most used Chinese social network, with 500 million accounts and 50 million users active every day. The influence of this network is huge, thus over 130 000 brands already opened their official accounts.
In order to do marketing on Weibo you need to:
– Open an account with official documents in order to get the “v” of verified.
– Keep updated very often and offer regularly fresh contents which interest the users and followers
– Manage the comments and communicate with the community.
– Create viral content and do buzz marketing
Here is an example of a good Weibo account. It is the one of Julien Boulard, a wine specialist:
Press and Public Relations
Web magazines and general news websites are the most popular channels, and they are a good way to promote your brand. You can also invite specialized Journalists to some events for example. Then you can create good relationships with these journalists who will say good things about your brand in their articles.
Key Opinion Leaders are also a good way to promote your brand and make it well-known. In fact, you have to know that 10% of the population influences the rest 90% of people. So when you use this 10% for saying good things about your brand, the results are usually very satisfying.
These tools enable you to control your reputation and improve your image with positive messages. You have to know that online PR is very useful in the country because traditional newspapers are not read a lot by Chinese people. In fact, they are censored and controlled by the government so the people, especially the young generation, don’t really trust them, and prefer to go online than buy a newspaper.
The most visited online media in China are Sina, Sohu, 163.com, QQ news, Renminwang, etc…
E-business
242 million people purchase online in China, and the e-business market is booming. In fact, China has become the second biggest e-commerce market in the world. The biggest Chinese e-business platforms are Taobao for C2C and Tmall for B2C. They both were developed by Alibaba, one of the biggest web companies in China, and even the world. The advantage of Tmall is that you can have your own store on the platform, with your own design and your products.
Here are some examples of Tmall shops:
The Spanish wine market in China is growing, and there exist solutions to have a good place in this market. In fact, these online tools can be very efficient while doesn’t cost too much.
For more information about those online promotion tools, please see marketingtochina.