The Chinese strategy for mobile marketing to a targeted audience

Chinese mobile marketing game plan

Mobile marketers in China have been using a unique technique to target their strategies, and advertisers and promoters in the rest of the world are starting to take notice.

Luxury brand leaders in China, such as Land Rover, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Swatch Group, Chanel, Estee Lauder, Hermes, and Bvlgari have been seeking the best methods of using mobile to draw interest to their products and encourage purchasing. Their primary focus is directed toward solid mobile business models that range from commerce to advertising and everything between them.

The majority of the brand leaders have stated that they have a mobile strategy in place, and several of them have indicated that they have been that way for more than a year. Independently, almost 50 percent of them have stated that they typically have more than one smartphone on their person at all times, which is a common occurrence among execs in China as well as in the United States and other countries.

That said, there is an important difference between the American mobile market and that in China. According to Strategy Analytics, in China, the top handsets sold are from Samsung and Nokia. They are paid for, in full, by the purchaser. Alternately, in the United States, most mobile phones – which are frequently subsidized by service carriers – are from Apple and HTC.

In China, the consumers who insist on having an iPhone as the only acceptable brand are a self-defined market. The devices are expensive and are always used with a pass-code lock because they are common targets for theft due to their price. Still, these shoppers line up to make their purchases of the iPhones.

An example of how powerful the obsession with Apple products is in China includes the iWeekly publication. It has been available for two years and can be accessed exclusively through iPads and iPhones. According to the vice president and general manager of the publication, Jane Yu, though Android remains the top operating system for Samsung and Nokia devices, iWeekly successfully made its choice for Apple. The app has already seen more than 5 million downloads and is the leading lifestyle category app in the country. Yu also pointed out that the app is currently used on 20 percent of all Chinese iPhones.