In this time of amazing sales and billions yuan flying around, we’ll introduce you to the Double 11 shopping day and will tell you how exactly you can take advantage of it as a company.
Double 11 Day Alibaba Sales Hit Record 230 Billion Rmb $33 Billion
Once upon a time in China…
While everybody is celebrating love during valentine’s day, a man, a Chinese hero was wondering why single peoples could not celebrate their celibate? It’s pretty unfair right? If you’re in couple, be happy! Another day just for you to party, get some gifts and spread your love. If you’re single, nothing… no chocolate, no flowers, no gift, literally nothing.
Well, they put an end on it.
In China, the number 1 resemble to any individual who is alone. So, they decided to create a new day to be celebrated: the 11/11 meaning four “ones” celebrating together their celibate.
Following that, Jack Ma, made this day as the new and most famous shopping holiday in the china for young people to celebrate their pride in being single and therefore buy gifts to themselves.
The double 11 is now the largest shopping in the world within both online and offline channels. On this day, consumers expect the largest discount of the year while in the meantime, businesses expect the biggest revenue of the year from this one-day sales.
And this year as the previous ones, the double 11 broke a new record…
- Tmall reached 10 billion yuan in less than 2min
- Tmall reached 30 billion yuan in 5min
- 50 billion in 13min
- 100 billion in 1h!
This year, it was more than 500 million buyers ready to spend their money on the most famous shopping day in the world.
Want another impressive record?
- In 2009, when they launched the D11, only 27 brands participated to the event
- Last year, it was more than 180,000 brands across 200 countries that participated
In 2018, the Alibaba group received over a billion delivery orders meaning that after the D11, 77% of China’s population would receive a package at home. Another impressive record putting pressure on the delivery company.
While it took around 10 days to get your package in 2009, they managed to improve their services and shrunk the time around two and half days in average in 2018.
Furthermore, following the development of smartphone in the Chinese ecosystem, the Chinese giant Alibaba adopted a “mobile-first’ philosophy while investing a lot on customer’s shopping experience on its mobile platform. From now on, over 90% of purchases are done through mobile phone.
Why mobile phone?
- No more queuing
- Fast payment
But as talking about business, what are the most popular products sold during 11/11?
- For domestic products: mostly clothes
- For imported products: a wild range of items such as Healthcare, milk powder, cosmetics, and baby-related products
However, even though they created it, Alibaba is not the only actor to perform amazing sales during 11/11. In fact, this shopping holiday led to a trade war with its competitors…
JD.com started offering discount in 2012 and manage to achieve an important result of $23 billion in 2018.
Pinduoduo, currently the 3rd largest E-commerce platform, accounted for 3% of the Single’s day sales.
Are there some other shopping days in China to enjoy these amazing sales?
Yes! There are actually plenty of shopping holidays in China. Here is a list of the most famous ones:
- Lunar New Year Shopping day on the 13th January
- “618” on the 18th June
- Prime Day from 16 to 18 July
- “818” on the 18th August
- Double 11 on 11th November
- Double 12 on 12th December
Business unchained: Prepare yourself for 2020
Every company operating in the retail industry dream of this day. The “Double 11” or also called “Chinese Single Day”. We saw previously how important is that day for businesses and online E-commerce platform.
But as a company, how can you take advantage of it?
First, understand that you’ll need:
- Important stocks
- Great logistic capabilities
- A famous brand in China
- Strong marketing and promotional campaign upfront
Indeed, keep in mind that preparing for such even is a long process. Companies work on their fame several months upfront of the events. They build up a wild customer community, then they work on engaging their community and interact with them as much as possible. Developing a successful business in China could be close to stretch your activity toward the entertainment business…
If you proceed correctly with the good methodology, you could expect new customers and strong loyalty from these ones.
But why?
Understand that Chinese people need to build a trust relationship before doing any kind of activity with you. There have been too many counterfeits, fake low-quality products, fake brands, and fake companies… they can’t afford to waste their time or money with another scam.
Whether you want to develop a new partnership in China, find customers or raise investment you’ll always have to go through the same process:
- Show me you’re trustworthy
- Show me you’re reliable
- Show me people love you
- Show me what I can get with you
- Show me what value you can bring into my life/business
- Show me how much you want to be my new friend
Then we can cooperate…
Yes, it’s a long and difficult process. If you do so, you’ll get access to an amazing market full of opportunities. And your financial department will thank you.
Ok ok, but concretely how to proceed?
Step 1: Gain their trust.
We talked about the importance of the trust relationship due to the unfortunate presence of fake brands and fake products.
So, here’s how to do:
- Develop a Website in Chinese
- Open a Weibo account (like twitter in China)
It’s the most popular Chinese social media. A tool that will help you to reach your target audience and engage with potential customers. Due to the high visibility you can get on this platform, we recommend the use of KOL! Meaning influencers that could match with your brand and which are following the exact same positioning as yours. A perfect way builds a good reputation.
As for example, a company decided to hire the equivalent of the Chinese Justin Bieber. At that time, he was just started to be famous and was still affordable. So, the company decided to use his image to endorse their brand. They paid him 2 million yuan to develop a promotional campaign for the D11. In a result of what they got over 18 million RMB sales in a day…
Step 2: Be famous.
As we told you, once they know you’re a real company offering real quality products, it will be time to make yourself famous. The more people will love your brand, the sales you’ll do!
Develop yourself on Social media
A very famous platform in China. Almost everyone uses it here. It’s a messenger app offering you the possibility to share content with your “friend” such as text/videos/pictures/music/etc. On WeChat you’ll also find group chat. Chinese people (and expats) love it. It gives them the possibility to organize group discussions, talk about their problems and how to solve it, but also talk about new trends, brands, and products they may love and recommend… Open a WeChat, it’s worth it. It will help you to interact with your community and create engagement.
Here’s what you can do on the app:
- Create a company brochure
- Spread marketing content
- Spread coupons/discounts to your followers
- Work on your community management
- Use WeChat mini-programs (awesome app to engage with your followers)
Douyin
It’s a video sharing application. Very popular in China. Through this one you can create video content and spread it to a wild audience. Moreover, you can also sell your product on the app… so, imagine if thanks to your marketing skills you make the buzz. You’ll give millions of peoples the opportunity to buy your amazing product! Fun & Intuitive, potential customers will love to interact with you there. It’s also a very good way to develop a KOL strategy.
Baidu
Baidu corresponds to the Chinese Google. Chinese netizens are always looking for information it. If they have a problem: Baidu. If they’re looking for something: Baidu. If they want to buy your product but don’t know you: Baidu… following this, different actions will be required for you to develop your e-reputation on the Chinese browser.
- Baidu Zhidao & Zhihu: a good way to deliver information
- Baidu Baike: the Chinese Wikipedia. You’ll need to make your own page there. It’s a very important website in China. People trust it a lot.
- PR: you’ll need articles talking about you
- Forums: you need to be present in different discussions online. People have to talk about you.
- Reviews/comments: when Chinese are happy (or not) of a product, they post an online review/comment. And you’ll need plenty of them. As result, when people will be looking for you brand, they’ll be happy to see that you’re trustworthy and that many people are already satisfied with your product.
If you manage to build your visibility and a strong reputation on Chinese social media, half of the job is done. You’ll have a fan base ready to buy your products on shopping holidays, potential customers knowing that you’re a good brand from which one they could buy products following a good discount… And you’ll just have to proceed to the next steps:
- Make enough products to satisfy the demand
- Promote your future discount upfront of coming shopping days
You have 1 year to prepare yourself for the next “Biggest shopping day in the word”.
Develop your online reputation and get a piece of the pie.
If you have any questions on how to perform on the Chinese market and how to develop an amazing reputation in China, feel free to contact us.
We are GMA. The Chinese Gentlemen.
We give you our expertise, show us your success.
- Digital Marketing expert for the Chinese Market
- Professional on the e-commerce industry in China
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