Building a Chinese marketing strategy can feel overwhelming. Understanding Chinese consumers is a crucial first step. Brands will be more likely to have a successful Chinese market entry when they build a base understanding of their values and culture. This information is the backdrop for most Chinese buying habits and consumer behavior. Read on to learn about five key areas and tactics that influence Chinese consumer preferences and trends, including how to use GenAI language services and AI services.

Tip 1: Ensure Chinese Marketing Strategy References Popular Topics

Marketing strategy for anywhere in the world benefits from tapping into key cultural touchstones. Some of the most powerful ones in China include national holidays, common aspirations, and beloved celebrities. These are topics that resonate with the majority of consumers, whether in a serious or fun way.

Status:
Many Chinese consumers share a common goal to boost their social, professional, and economic status. Their culture espouses a well-regarded and accepted concept called “face,” or “mianzi.” It means to maintain dignity or social standing. Chinese marketing strategy may benefit from content that reflects this urge toward personal and professional advancement — as well as the status markers that signal it.

Celebrity Endorsement:
As with many other countries, celebrities significantly influence Chinese culture and Chinese marketing trends. Working with Chinese celebrities and influencers will often win attention.

National holidays: Consider connecting content with these popular, meaningful holidays.

Tip 2: Build Marketing Strategy that Aligns with Chinese Values

To develop a stronger appeal to customers, content should align with their values. These are key Chinese values that motivate many people and thus also influence Chinese market trends.

• Family: Family and respect for family are cornerstones of Chinese culture. There’s a particularly notable emphasis on reverence and deference for parents and elders, who are often regarded as wise.

• Harmony: Chinese culture places a strong emphasis on seeking and maintaining peace and balance. This is especially true for social areas, like communities and relationships, or within oneself.

• Education: In China, education is a highly valued endeavor that leads to both professional and personal success.

• Endurance, perseverance, and diligence: Chinese culture is enamored with hard work and its rewards.

• Collectivism: In contrast to a Western perspective, Chinese culture prioritizes the value of the community over the individual. Teamwork and collective achievements are powerful topics.

• Trustworthiness and loyalty: Chinese consumers are likely to prefer brands that demonstrate or speak to integrity, commitment, and reliability.

• Health and wellness: China has a growing awareness of health, wellness, and the journey to achieve them.

Tip 3: Choose the Right Language for Your Chinese Marketing Strategy

There are between seven and ten major dialect groups of Chinese and even more specific dialects within these groups. Choosing the right version of Chinese will ensure your Chinese marketing strategy has the maximum impact. These are Lionbridge’s most common recommendations:

Simplified/Mandarin Chinese: The official language of mainland China. This language will reach most Chinese consumers.

Traditional Chinese: This version of Chinese has more complex characters and is primarily used outside of mainland China. If you’re trying to reach any of these, consider using traditional Chinese:

• Taiwan
• Hong Kong
• Macau
• Overseas Chinese communities

Tip 4: Consider Color Symbolism in Your Chinese Marketing Strategy

Colors don’t always carry the same meaning to people around the world. When building a Chinese marketing strategy, consider these common Chinese associations with color:

Tip 5: Work with Chinese Language and Localization Experts

Reaching Chinese consumers often requires linguistic and cultural experts. It also helps to have the right content services. Lionbridge has been helping customers achieve their target audiences in China for decades, so our experts have a deep understanding of the nuances of Chinese language and culture. Through our Chinese translation services and localization services, we help industry giants develop content that feels relevant and resonant to people across China. We also offer assistance with website translation, multimedia digital content localization, and cultural adaptation. We’ve been offering transcreation services for years, but Lionbridge now uses our Content Remix application to create Chinese content for customers. We have a Chinese SEO team that can help review this content and ensure it meets the customer’s goals and boosts SEO.

Get in touch

Ready to start developing your Chinese marketing strategy? Let’s discuss how we can help your brand expand into new markets, whether with our AI solutions or our traditional global content strategy offerings. We have the right AI translation, Humans in the Loop (HITLs), and socio-linguistic experts to help you fine-tune your content strategy and reach your optimal Chinese customer base. Let’s get in touch.