On November 21st, the 9th Morketing Summit was held in Shanghai, China.
With the theme of "Ten Years", the 9th Osmo Awards will focus on five major directions: "Brand - System Beauty", "Globalization - Go Glocal", "Digital Intelligence - Digital Intelligence + AI", "Game Application Field - New Traffic" and "Podcast Marketing Session". Morketing invited leaders from different industries such as consumption, branding, e-commerce, entertainment, games, new technology, and overseas to gather together to "go back to the origin and explore the singularity" with marketers.
Finishing | Lumens
"For many enterprises, going overseas is not only the need for development, but also the need for survival", Wang Lijun, partner & CMO of Zuodian, made it clear, and Zhang Yi, VP of e-commerce business of Titan Technology, pointed out that "brand going overseas is a CEO project, and the boss personally going overseas is very important to the entire strategic planning and positioning of the brand." In terms of localization, Xie Dan, sales director of Microsoft Advertising China's overseas business channels, believes that "the idea of doing a good job in localization is to combine the brand with the needs of the local market, so as to achieve both brand and sales".
But what will be the prospects for brands to go overseas and what will be the difficulties and challenges they will encounter?
On the one hand, the prospect of overseas markets and the importance of brands going overseas make business owners must grasp it as a "CEO project";
On the other hand, if a brand wants to succeed overseas, the various difficulties and challenges encountered must be better dealt with by the boss himself to mobilize the strength of the entire company, such as building an independent overseas team, or even the boss going overseas to truly feel the pulse of the overseas market and localization.
At the 9th Morketing Summit "Globalization-Go Glocal", the host Charlene, the chief think tank of Morketing, Xie Dan, the channel sales director of Microsoft Advertising China, Zhang Yi, the VP of e-commerce business of Titan Technology, Wang Lijun, partner &CMO of Zuodian, and Wang Peng, brand director of Besiqi, discussed "How to make a second growth curve?" ".
The following is a transcript of the discussion in the roundtable, edited by Morketing:
If you don't go to sea, you're out,
Brands are looking for opportunities in "cold on the outside and hot on the inside".
Charlene, Morketing's Chief Think Tank: Brands will face many challenges in the process of going overseas, and I would like to ask you what is the overall status quo in the process of global expansion this year? What are the new challenges? And what kind of ideas are there to solve the problem.
Wang Peng, Brand Director of Baseqi: The challenges encountered by brands going overseas are a serious topic. Since the beginning of this year, although the popularity of going to sea has not decreased, and you will even hear the phrase "if you don't go to sea, you will be out", but in fact, it is not easy to do business at sea. Since I entered the industry in 2021, I have been working in the home furnishing category, and if you look at the changes in turnover, the growth is not bad, but the actual profit margin is declining, which is a phenomenon worth being wary of.
In addition, uncontrollable factors such as supply chain cost fluctuations and surge in shipping costs have brought huge challenges to cross-border e-commerce and overseas brands, such as the shipping cost of brands going overseas can even skyrocket by 10 times in extreme cases.
In the case of losing traffic dividends, where is the growth point of the enterprise? It has become an anxious problem for many businesses. I summarize this problem as "cold on the outside and hot on the inside", that is, our domestic enthusiasm for going overseas is very high, but in fact, brands that go to overseas markets do not seem to be optimistic.
Wang Lijun, Partner &CMO of Zuodian: For many enterprises, going overseas is not only the need for development, but also the need for survival.
From the early stage of our brand's overseas processing, to the later independent overseas, and then to today's mental overseas, overseas enterprises will face many challenges in the process, such as political games, trade barriers and brand stereotypes. But despite this, Chinese brands have gradually equaled international brands in terms of product quality, and even took the lead in some areas.
As far as the North American market is concerned, the quality of Chinese products is already very good. We believe that after experiencing the "volume" of the domestic market, the brand that can break through from it has some advantages to do overseas markets. The so-called pessimists are correct, optimists are successful, and now that China's comprehensive national strength is rising, I believe that Chinese brands can also succeed in the international market.
Zhang Yi, VP of E-commerce Business of Titan Technology: This topic is very interesting. We focus on going overseas and are committed to providing comprehensive solutions for Chinese enterprises to go overseas, and thanks to the enthusiasm of enterprises to go overseas, we have achieved more than 2 to 3 times growth every year. From this point of view, it can also be seen that the overall overseas track will be better than that in China, and the domestic red sea market is still relatively blue in foreign countries.
From the marketing side, the growth space of the entire overseas market is very large, for example, Titan has set up branches in various key regions around the world, and overseas marketing personnel and service systems are still expanding rapidly under the current economic slowdown. Although there are many challenges and difficulties encountered by brands going global, I prefer to look at the growth of the entire market and the exploration of emerging markets from an optimistic perspective.
Xie Dan, Sales Director of Microsoft Advertising China's Overseas Business Channel: Let me share my own observations. Personally, 10 years ago, I was doing global selling on Amazon and leading the entire sales team, but then joining Microsoft was equivalent to leaving the track, and now I am back to the track of going overseas to do Microsoft advertising. My personal feeling is that the past 10 years have changed a lot, for example, the brand sellers I contacted 10 years ago were in the white label business, and now they have started to build brands.
If you want to say that the biggest change in the past 10 years, the first is digitally-driven technology, and Chinese companies should take the lead in digital technology. For example, the application of artificial intelligence, blockchain, Internet of Things, etc., these can help our overseas enterprises very well. In the overseas track, even compared with local companies in the United States or other countries, we are leading and leading.
Another change is the diversification of the layout. 10 years ago, I opened a global store on Amazon to help Chinese sellers expand, and at that time, people may be more inclined to North America and Europe. But now Microsoft Advertising has contacted a lot of Chinese brands and found that they will expand their investment to emerging markets and countries such as Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and are making a global layout, not just limited to North America and Europe.
Brand building ≠ only spend money,
Get out of the misunderstanding of the opposition between brand and sales
Charlene, Chief Think Tank, Morketing: The theme of our roundtable today is "How to Make a Second Growth Curve when Going Overseas". In this regard, there is a very important point to balance, that is, in the current process of going overseas, how to deal with the relationship between brand building and sales growth? How do you strike a balance between these two aspects, and what do you have to share in this regard?
Wang Peng, brand director of Besiqi: Regarding the relationship between brand building and sales growth, there is a common misunderstanding, that is, the two are opposed.
I have met a lot of cross-border e-commerce bosses in Shenzhen, and they will ask how to calculate the account when talking about the brand, and in their thinking, brand building is equal to spending money, and putting sales growth and brand building on the opposite side, which is a very strange logic.
In fact, brand building is the foundation of sales growth, and sales growth is the result of brand building. The goal of a business is to make a profit, and brand building is one of the means to achieve this. Brand building is not only about spending money and spending money, it also plays a long-term role in assisting and promoting the brand, involving product planning, marketing strategies and other aspects. Therefore, brand building and sales growth are not contradictory, but complementary. It doesn't mean that for the sake of profit growth, I have to abandon or weaken brand building.
There are also people who will say that brand building will not see ROI in the short term, what should be done exactly? In terms of specific practical aspects, I can share an experience. When going overseas enterprises invest in Amazon advertising, they often ignore the construction of product detail pages, but in fact, compared with spending huge manpower and material costs to build content and build brands, product detail pages on Amazon are the most important brand exposure and marketing positions.
For a cross-border sale dominated by Amazon, the number of daily views of all product detail pages may reach dozens or even millions, and consumers have taken the initiative to your page, and sellers must seize the opportunity to promote your brand on the detail page.
In terms of brand building, when the brand has money, it can do a lot of advertising, but when it has no money, it can also manage the resources that can be held, which is a very important experience of me in the past few years.
Lijun Wang, Partner & CMO of Left Point: This question has been debated countless times, and my opinion is that for any company, its successful future must be the winning of the brand. But for many consumer brands, the most frustrated reason for brand development is the indiscriminate use of ammunition.
When to make a brand, when to focus on sales. For many entrepreneurs, they should look at the long-term value of the brand and the short-term benefits brought by sales according to their own development stage. Through the rational allocation of resources, ensure the balance between brand building and short-term benefits.
Zhang Yi, VP of e-commerce business of Titan Technology: Branding and globalization are two keywords that the industry attaches great importance to this year, and they are also very important keywords for going overseas now.
In the past 10 years, few people have talked about brands alone, because everyone is still doing it in the way of foreign trade or cross-border e-commerce. But from now on, we already have a strong enough product, a strong enough brand, and the current brands basically think about how we can be born global. As brands develop at different stages, they focus on different perspectives.
For example, during this year's Double 11, a fast-moving consumer goods brand invested 130 million in advertisements on the same day, and Douyin's advertising budget was about 1 billion a day. This means that the brand covers 10% of the entire platform in one day, and this kind of placement is largely not for the sake of grabbing volume, but has become a brand-level action, which is what the brand will do when it is at the head.
In addition, for brands that want to go global, it is also important to adjust their strategy according to the market. Whether it is the United States, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and more subdivided European countries, each region has different aspects of its culture and needs to be done separately. This involves not only the adaptation of products and markets, but also cultural, religious and other considerations.
Xie Dan, Sales Director of Microsoft Advertising China's Overseas Business Channel: According to my observation, there are contradictions in brand building and sales of many overseas companies.
The manifestation of this contradiction is that the brand has been pursuing sales in the early stage, and in the end, sales have come up but have reached a bottleneck. Then in order to break through the bottleneck, he began to follow the trend to build a brand, and encountered a lot of problems when making a brand, and throwing a lot of money may not have an effect. The most intuitive example is that the brand is not unsuitable for overseas locals, but there is always no way to make your brand very well-known.
In overseas markets, many people are pursuing very superficial data, such as traffic conversion rate and click-through rate. On the other hand, these brands have not studied the preferences of users in overseas markets very thoroughly, nor have they done a very good job of localization.
I've seen too many brands directly copy this Chinese style of play overseas, thinking that it can sell well in the United States, but in fact this is not the case. I think that if you want to do a good job as a global brand, you have to spend some time carefully studying the preferences of users in overseas markets, and localize your own brand in combination with the needs of the local market, so as to achieve both brand and sales.
"Flow is fluid",
The value of the brand lies in turning traffic into "retention".
Charlene, Morketing's Chief Think Tank: The monetization of traffic from various channels has reached a relatively mature stage, where do you think there is still new traffic or dividends?
Zhang Yi, VP of e-commerce business of Titan Technology: My view is that traffic is constantly changing, it is flowing, not fixed.
User growth in various regions, such as Southeast Asia and the United States, is related to traffic dividends, and brands can only achieve real growth if they capture these dividends. There is also the same reason for the popularity of content e-commerce and social e-commerce, when brands generate content in this area and can attract users, we will think that this is the embodiment of the traffic dividend of the new track.
If we want to talk about the current dividends, on the whole, including Latin America, Africa and some small countries in Europe are emerging markets. Users in these regions have a strong willingness to buy, and the local e-commerce and offline penetration rates are not high. In these emerging markets, Chinese brands can walk in and meet their shopping needs, and even reshape the local market landscape. Overseas enterprises should pay attention to these changes and seize the new traffic dividend.
Wang Lijun, Partner & CMO of Left Point: China is leading in digital marketing and e-commerce to a certain extent. At the level of e-commerce, whether it is Tmall Jingdong in China or Amazon overseas, it can be summed up in one word as "sitting business", that is, the state of waiting to be searched.
And now the popular social e-commerce and interest e-commerce have become another kind of business, which is equivalent to "business", which requires me to take the initiative to go out to find users. A very important shift here is that the product is replaced by the scene and content. The consumer is not exposed to your product, but to a scene at first sight, which is the so-called content.
I think this kind of transformation from "sitting business" to "business" is a relatively big trend, it will be stable and sustainable in the future, and the market volume is large enough. This is a market trend that brands should pay attention to, both domestically and overseas.
Wang Peng, brand director of Baseqi: Traffic is fluid. We may see Amazon's traffic hit a ceiling, but when it comes to search engines like Microsoft, that traffic is up again. The users behind the traffic are constantly looking back and forth for products, which may flow from Amazon to Microsoft Search, etc.
In the case of the continuous flow of traffic brought by users, what brands need to do is to use brand building and content building to build a bridge between us and users. Through what I produce, the core values I want to convey to him, etc., so that users can leave an impression when they see the brand content at different stages and on different interfaces.
Through the 7-touch theory, users continue to remember the brand until they begin to make an impression, which is the real traffic of the brand, turning the flowing flow into a stay.
I have observed a phenomenon in the past, when many merchants are doing Amazon business, they have become accustomed to Amazon traffic not from us, but from Amazon. It means that Amazon has a very good algorithm, and merchants only need to operate according to the algorithm and start doing business by undertaking traffic. But in this process, merchants often treat traffic as virtual data, and ignore that behind the data is every living user.
To use an analogy, the merchants live in a village next to the big Amazon River, and the flow of the river and rainwater is abundant, so we can fish and dry the nets and harvest the land smoothly, which is very happy, but we never think about building a pond or reservoir next to the river to store the water. If one day the river becomes less or even dries up, we can continue to use the water. It's the same with brands, they need to think about how to do a good job of moats or build barriers, so that they can continue to attract consumers to come, keep circulating, and eventually make your traffic more and more.
In the end, this traffic translates into the most important repurchase rate of the brand, and the brand pursues so that consumers can keep repeating purchases, rather than consumers coming or buying without remembering the name of the brand. I believe that the brand gives consumers a high degree of consistency in each link, brand standards, and core value of content, and can leave a brand impression in the hearts of users through continuous efforts to make traffic valuable.
Xie Dan, Sales Director of Microsoft Advertising China's Overseas Business Channel: Among the various channel traffic, I think the most used is search and display, but I think there is one point that brands ignore is video. There will be many brands in the U.S. market that want to penetrate users through large screens, but Chinese brands have not taken up in this regard.
If a brand doesn't have a sense of video channel, it won't be able to reach many home users in the U.S. market. If you want to increase the volume, I think brands can take a look at whether there are more opportunities in large-screen video, which can not only help you do a good job in brand building, but also help you get newer traffic and more accurate traffic in the increasingly saturated traffic market.
Charlene, Chief Think Tank of Morketing: According to your observation, what are the unmet needs of brands under the traditional overseas marketing channels? What do you have to share about overseas CTV users and TV viewing habits?
Xie Dan, Sales Director of Microsoft Advertising China's Overseas Business Channels: The traditional overseas marketing channels are very saturated as a whole, but as I just said, many people still care about the comparative data such as click-through rate. In terms of the real preferences of users, some brands have not explored this to the extreme.
I think that what brands have not done can be done through the artificial intelligence of advertising platforms, big data models, etc., to empower advertisers. For example, the powerful AI algorithm behind Microsoft's advertising can automate the brand's delivery, operation and operation after a period of learning. And with the blessing of AI, the accuracy of traffic will also be improved.
CTV is called Connected TV, which is the TV advertising of the Internet, and our partners are mainly in the North American market. Because this part of the delivery is not very much now, compared with other channels, it is a blue ocean, and brands can try more. Brands can use Microsoft's advertising platform to place CTV channels, so that brands can acquire very accurate and high-quality users.
With 60% of household users in the U.S. market relying on streaming platforms to watch content, Microsoft Ads has partnered with partners such as Netflix to provide high-quality traffic sources and have many advantages in branding and precise reach.
This advantage is first embodied in the full-screen reach, multi-device coverage, Microsoft CTV advertising through a powerful technology platform, covering PCs, tablets, mobile devices and connected TVs, to help brands achieve multi-screen interaction in streaming media and web browsing, and deeply connect users;
Microsoft Ads has joined forces with platforms such as Netflix to enable brands to reach highly engaged audiences on platforms such as Netflix and accurately penetrate high-quality user groups through its ad support program.
Finally, Microsoft's CTV and video reach more than 860 CTV publishers around the world, allowing brands to not only widely cover diverse audiences, but also achieve in-depth optimization of advertising effects through the open technology platform.
Methodology for Successful Going Global:
CEO engineering and content localization are indispensable
Charlene, Morketing's Chief Think Tank: Service providers are important partners for Chinese brands to go global, because they often have a deep understanding of the market and rich case experience. Next, we have a question for Mr. Zhang of Titan Technology: In your opinion, what is the biggest problem encountered by enterprises in the process of going overseas?
Zhang Yi, VP of e-commerce business of Titan Technology: The biggest problem encountered by enterprises in the process of going overseas is that most enterprises lack an in-depth understanding of the target market when they go overseas. When companies want to globalize their brands, it is very difficult to simply sell Chinese products directly to overseas markets. This involves the localization of each market, and in the case of cultural and religious differences in each region.
For example, our survey data shows that most overseas enterprises are hindered by the lack of cultural integration in the early stage. In addition, more than 70% of enterprises also have obstacles on basic issues such as account registration and payment methods, which indicates strong geographical segregation.
Conversely, when we communicate with companies that have successfully gone overseas, we will find that successful companies have formed a set of methodologies for going global.
First of all, in general, they will think that if a brand wants to go overseas, it will be difficult to use the original team to balance the domestic and foreign markets. Therefore, the establishment of an independent overseas team, or even the boss/CEO going overseas himself, is crucial for the entire strategic planning and positioning of the brand.
The second point is that the flow of overseas traffic is indeed increasing. We can see that the CPM of various media outlets has increased by about 5 to 10 times. In this case, our solution for overseas brands is to provide an overall solution that combines AI and BI, which can test which content in the market can better reach the target audience at a faster speed, so as to help the brand grow overseas.
The third point is the localization of content. In addition to the aforementioned infrastructure issues such as registration and payment, it is also crucial that the content produced by the brand is truly adapted to the local market. Because brands need to advertise locally, whether the advertising can attract local users, whether the insight into the performance of the advertising content or whether the content shooting and creativity are more localized, these are all very important for the local market.
In the past, we may think that if we do online marketing, the team can stay in China and go smoothly, but judging from the current trend, the overseas market increasingly needs everyone to go overseas and truly enter the overseas market, so that we can contact the local market more efficiently and conveniently, and do a good job of localization.
Charlene, Chief Think Tank of Morketing: We would also like to ask how Titan helps companies to achieve a leap from 0 to 1 in sales and brand in different overseas markets, especially in North America and Southeast Asia? And how to help existing overseas enterprises expand the second growth curve?
Zhang Yi, VP of e-commerce business of Titan Technology: After doing a good job in the infrastructure construction of going overseas, whether it is in Southeast Asia or the American market, the next step of the brand should come down to the product. For example, the fastest-growing market in Southeast Asia is beauty and skincare brands, and based on China's strong supply chain, overseas brands can provide a wide range of skincare or beauty products according to the local market.
FOR EXAMPLE, THE COMPANIES WE SERVE HAVE MORE THAN 1 BILLION GMV ON THE TIKTOK SHOP CHANNEL. These fast-growing companies have entered the second stage, in addition to the mentioned sales effect marketing actions, brands have begun to hire international stars as brand spokespersons, into the strategic idea of branding.
There are two main aspects of the content sector that we can serve the brand: the first is the advertising and marketing sector, which focuses on the effect; The second is the content creation section, where we will have influencers and creative content to help brands enhance their brand power more in this regard.
White Label Strategy VS Channel Strategy,
There is no best route to the sea, only the most suitable
Charlene, Morketing's Chief Think Tank: The next question is for brands that are practicing going overseas and have achieved good results. I would like to ask Mr. Wang from the left and Mr. Wang from Besiqi, the purchase motivation, channels and price sensitivity of consumers in different markets are different, how can enterprises combine these three aspects with localization? In the long-term process of enhancing brand power, how should enterprises divide the corresponding assessment objectives at different stages?
Wang Lijun, Partner &CMO on the left: Each company will choose its own track, that is, the category. As an entrepreneur, I have some feelings about the choice of categories.
One of the more important impressions is the "trap" brought by small categories. In the current Chinese market, many small categories are actually born based on unreal needs, and the life cycle of these small categories is very short, and it is a big problem if the company chooses the wrong category track. When choosing a brand, it is important to consider the area where the social demand is most distributed, that is, to consider a larger category.
While each market has its own characteristics, such as Southeast Asia, which tends to favor the lowest cost supply chain, some markets prefer higher product quality and brand value. But these differences between markets are testing the brand's understanding of the channel. When the brand grasps the core, it is enough to know which channel and which region of its category, and then do the corresponding thing.
In terms of enhancing brand power, many domestic enterprises now adopt the perspective of cost leadership or product thinking, which is commonly known as the white label strategy. The white label strategy is how fast and easy to save, and it requires brands to be more advantageous in the supply chain. Because the brand of the white label strategy needs to think about how to seize a larger market in the Southeast Asian market, then the corresponding assessment angle should be guided by the profit standard of the white label in the market.
If it is a channel brand, the focus is on how many stores have been opened and how many terminals have been expanded, then all the assessment of the brand should be based on BD capabilities and overseas expansion capabilities. Just like Procter & Gamble, Unilever and Nongfu Spring in China, the core is the channel brand.
Finally, there is another type of brand, which is a product brand and product platform that wants to take the route of winning with products or using brand concepts to win. The core of the brand itself will be more important, they will pay attention to the value chain, value concept, and the assessment angle will depend on how innovative and unique the product is, or how much social problems it can solve, and how much value it creates.
The above is that three different brands will have their own different assessment angles. Many people will want to do the latter two types of business, but in fact, most people are still doing the first type of business, but the first type of business also has the possibility of iteration or transformation to the latter two types of business.
Wang Peng, Brand Director of Baseqi: Based on the experience of the past few years, I also put forward some suggestions for you. Brand building is a long-term process, and the assessment indicators at each stage can be divided into two dimensions: the vertical axis and the horizontal axis. First, we need to determine a long-term goal, and then based on the goal, break it down into different stages such as 2-3 years, 3-5 years, 5-8 years, etc., and set core indicators for each stage.
For example, in the first stage, it is to lay a good foundation for brand building. Specifically, it is to ensure the consistency of brand standards, such as the brand consistency in the detail page, whether a certain percentage of visual standards have been achieved, and so on. This may seem simple, but in practice it requires a lot of meticulous work.
In the second phase, we focus on how the brand is perceived in the minds of our customers. Rather than pursuing as much data as possible such as impressions, we focus on one core metric, active search rate. This means that brands need to use various ways to reach consumers to actively search for brands on Google and Microsoft. We would be very happy if this rate continued to increase. In the longer term, brands should also pay attention to the rate of active mentions of brands in market research.
I once asked the marketing director of a very well-known global brand in China how they assessed their budget. Their answer is to see if the budget for the whole year has been invested, which seems to be very rough, but it actually means that they are responsible for every money that is invested, and their first task is to ensure that the budget is used wisely and that it really helps the business.
If the horizontal axis is the different stages of brand development, then the vertical axis is the specific indicator that can assist the business department. For example, you can set two indicators: one-time completion rate and on-time delivery rate. The reason is simple, if the product has arrived in the warehouse, we can't put it on the shelves in time, which will lead to wasted costs. By setting these very specific vertical axis indicators, you can drive your business through brand building efforts and iterate over time to adapt to the development of your business.