The New Trends of China’s Marketing in The Post-epidemic

In China, the repetition and uncertainty of the epidemic will inevitably have an impact on the business world, such as supply shortages, blocked logistics, declining willingness to consume, and tightening corporate marketing budgets.

As a barometer of the global economy, marketing budgets are often the first cost to be cut. According to a set of data released by Gartner, marketing budgets will fall from 11% of a company’s revenue in 2020 to 6.4% in 2021, the lowest percentage allocated to marketing in the history of Gartner’s CMO spending survey.

In the atmosphere of China, traffic growth is getting weaker day by day, and the newly introduced personal information protection law has also made the cost of customer acquisition higher and higher. The old marketing method seems to be failing gradually. Where will brand marketing go? What kind of development trend will it show?

1, Online marketing and offline marketing are no longer separated

In the past few years, brands have invested more in digital marketing to target results. With the introduction of a series of data policies, such as China’s Personal Information Protection Law, high requirements have been put forward for data use, programming, and precision in the process of digital marketing. This makes the precise marketing model that blindly pursues individual data needs to be greatly adjusted.

With the rising cost of online traffic, more brands have begun to refocus on offline business. As the core offline traffic and content gathering place, the value of traffic is huge. In the future, the integration of online and offline consumption scenarios will accelerate, and consumer behavior patterns will no longer be presented online or offline in a closed loop.

The entire user cycle flows online and offline, and what we need to do is to operate the entire life cycle of this user.

75% of executives plan to invest more in delivering hybrid experiences in the coming year, and many expect to increase personalization (43%), product innovation (43%), and customer relationships (40%) by delivering hybrid experiences ) and increasing levels of inclusivity (38%).

The value of offline scenes is returning, and the development of technology will continue to provide the marketing industry with more experiential and scene-sensitive marketing methods, allowing consumers to have a better experience.

2, Entering the user era of 3.0, private traffic is a very important means of operation

In 2022, the concept of private domain traffic continues to heat up, and every brand starts to build private traffic consciously.

The transition from traffic thinking to super user thinking. 5% of super users bring 80% of business influence. Super users not only have super consumption power, but also super influence and communication power. 100,000 traffic is not as good as 1,000 loyal fans. Define the brand by the user, use 80% of the marketing budget to serve the super user, and make it actively spread.

Private traffic marketing has become the focus of marketing projects in major industries, and 47% of the surveyed companies have carried out private traffic marketing. Today, private traffic is not only cultivating user loyalty, but also taking into account multiple returns such as private domain purchases, diversion stores, and UGC dissemination.

Operating through private traffic can better meet these brand demands. But I think that private domain is not a marketing method, but a user operation method. It essentially shortens the reach between brands and users. If you want to impress users, you ultimately rely on product quality and service quality. .

3, Metaverse, virtual reality for a new generation of consumers

Metaverse frequently appears in the public eye. With technological innovation and application iteration, Metaverse marketing is not just at a conceptual stage.

In the first quarter of 2022, luxury brands hosted 19 live shows for Chinese audiences. This breaks the constraints of time and space, helps to spread the brand story, shape the brand tone, and reach a wide audience deeply.

The metaverse will definitely be a trend in the future. How to implement virtual activities, how to build virtual space, and how brands can embrace the metaverse is worth exploring.

With the gradual maturity of AI, 3D and motion capture technologies, “virtual celebrities”, which have evolved from real-life synthesis and developed entirely by technology, are gradually emerging on major social media platforms.

Gartner predicts that by 2026, CMOs will spend 30% of their budgets on KOLs today investing in virtual influencers.

4, The core of marketing will eventually return to products and services

Since the 5G era, content marketing has ushered in great changes. Video, VR, AR and other content forms are blooming. In the digital age, the vast amounts of data generated allow brands to conduct more personalised marketing, offering tailored products and services. Tracking the development trend of the entire digital marketing is inseparable from every technological iteration in the general environment.

In the next two years, there are six major technologies that will profoundly affect the future of enterprises, namely automation, AI, big data, cloud computing, security and machine learning.

The core of marketing will eventually return to products and services. The meaning of data and technology is to serve people. When each outlet passes, it is still necessary to return to the user operation itself. Provide users with personalized products and services through integrated and intelligent upgrades.