Digital sales and marketing in China12.09.2019 Tallinn, Estonia

Vladimir Jelov, Sales manager Baltics, Denmarkvladimir.jelov@citictel-cpc.com

+37258093683

CITIC Telecom CPC – 5 facts

• Part of 60Bn eur CITIC Group Corporation

• 1000+ employees in Europe and Asia

• Pan-Eurasian network with 140+ hubs

• Estonian office – main EU hub for 10+ years with 40 support, engineers etc

• We speak with our customers in Estonian, English, Russian, Mandarin and many other languages

Vladimir – 5 facts

• Expertise in infrastructure, IT security, sales & marketing, ERP, CRM, HRMS and a few other abbreviations

• Wrote a book about HR technology

• Worked for Linxtelecom 8 years ago and is back

• A great believer in Estonian export potential

• Speaks with customers in Estonian, English, Russian, Danish and dreams about learning Mandarin

Hypersonic agenda

• Introduction

• Creating a digital export strategy

• Understanding China digital

• Your digital identity

• Your digital face

• Your digital mouth

• Facing certain digital obstacles

• Misc digital tips

• Links & resources

It’s just not what CNN told you 30 years ago

China’s Economic growth increasingly led by eCommerce

China eCommerce transactions

Mobile scan of QR codes dominates all payment transactions in China

WeChat (owned by Tencent) - over 1Bn monthly active users

A fully integrated multi-purpose system:

• Messaging (similar to WhatsApp)

• Social media (similar to Facebook)

• Mobile payments

AliPay (owned by Alibaba) has 700M monthly active users

• Launched for payments to Alibaba (similar to Amazon)

• Also used for payments on other platforms (similar to

PayPal)

And the online advertising is growing - Baidou

Internet Companies Comparison

Company Logo Activity Rev (B) MAU (M)

JD.com eCommerce $56 305

Alibaba eCommerce $40 666

Tencent eComm + Content $36 1,024

Baidu Search $15 665

NetEase Content $8 400

Company Logo Activity Rev (B) MAU (M)

Amazon eCommerce $233 300

Google Search $137 c. 2,000

Facebook Social Media $55 2,320

Netflix Content $16 138

Booking eTravel $13 15

China is a part of the global ecosystem

Supplier

Outsourcing

Logistics

Innovation

Sales

Customer

Customer

Logistics

Branch

CustomerBranch

Factory

There are several components to digital you

• Your domain & website

• Your WeChat

• Your LinkedIn

• Your physical presence

Domain is just a record

• http://xinnet.com/ is the advised domain registrar IF you have someone Chinese speaking. https://hk.godaddy.com/en is oneof alternatiives.

Your first website can be humble

• Register N+1 domains and link them

• Start with minimalistic website with description & contacts

• Be VERY mindful of graphics (test on 3g at home or w local)

• Be 2x mindful of copyrighting (upwork/freelancer + trusted local)

What should my cloud/hosting provider have?

• Cooperate with a Chinese cloud operator with equity of 50% or more

• Cloud infrastructure in China must be separated from that of outside

Foreign cloud operators MUST also

All cloud operators MUST

• have DC and Internet provider license

• ensure that all personal and critical data is hosted in ML China

• have a license for hosting critical infrastructure

Do you WeChat?!

• Communication platform

• Support platform

• Sales tool

• Lead management tool

When everything else got banned…

• 50M+ users

• Popular in HK and Bay Area

• Helps identify English-speakers

• Likely to grow in popularity and ROI for another 2-3 years

Your physical entity should

• Appear in publications and webcasts

• Visit trade shows and share WeChat

• Be active on relevant WeChat groups

• Be ready to shake hands (flight+hotel+dinner) on critical deals

• Consider learning Mandarin

So, what could slow me down?

China’s Great Firewall is protecting the country while also slowing down legitimate traffic. E.g. ERP, CRM, Logistics

and other systems work slower

Local legislation is being liberalized but still is fairly strict compared to EU. Not breaking and respecting it is essential

for long-term business.

Infrastructure and advertising costs can scale extremely quickly.

Internet and the ‘Great Firewall’

www.google.com

www.facebook.com

www.twitter.com

www.reuters.com

www.nytimes.com

www.wikipedia.org

www.youtube.com

www.instagram.com

www.bloomberg.com

www.bing.com

www.yahoo.com

www.flickr.com

www.ebay.com

www.amazon.com

• All sites filtered for unacceptable words or phrases

• Many international sites simply blocked

Firewall travel visa

• Customers with regular Internet (borderline unusable)

• Having customers use illegal VPN (BAD!)

• Hosting in HK (not perfect but better)

• Licensed MPLS VPN tunnel (optimal)

• Front end in Mainland China + MPLS VPN (best)

ICP Registration for Internet Service in China

• Application for ICP registration must be made to MIIT before any

IP address is used in China

• If using a website for commercial purposes an application for an

ICP license must be made to the Public Security Bureau after ICP

registration.

• All applications must be made in Chinese, by a company

registered in China

Licensing procedure for hosting in China

Business

Registration

Certificate

Internet

Undertaking

Statement

Authorisation

Letter

Copy

passport

or ID

Registration photo (for license

application, not for registration)

ICP solution is…

• Get local presence and/or register a WOFE

• Get legal representation and do the above

And once you are registered and running…

• Website usage may be charged “per visitor”

• Internet traffic may be charged by bandwidth usage

• Internet channel may be “shared”

• Rates on cloud resources may scale

• Ad spending on Baidou is as crazy as Adwords

> And there is close to 1Bn Internet users…

But let’s look on the bright side

• Largest mono-lingual market

• One of the fastest growing economies

• Continued liberalization and deregulation

• Strong desire to cooperate

• BRI coming to Estonia

• Respect for Nordics

Misc thoughts

• Google is BANNED in China, e.g. default browser is IE

> However Chrome’s translate feature is gold

• Rafa & EAS are your friends

> Vladimir is nice too

• Starting ad budget on Baidou is 2000 eur

> .com tools like ahrefs will likely soon help with strategizing

• EAS and ECC are doing 2-5 China trips/year

> High customer LifeTimeValue = trips are worth it

• Establish a brand and basic WWW to start building your future

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SOC

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CONNECTIVITY

NETWORK

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One-stop Shop ICT services model

www.citictel-cpc.com

Thank You!Let’s play “Tell me something I don’t know”