Are you China-ready?

China used to be the 2nd largest international market for New Zealand travel industry in the pre-pandemic times. Now as China opened its border to the world, Chinese tourists can once again travel globally. In fact, the first post-pandemic Chinese travel group from Guangzhou just arrived New Zealand on March 3, 2023. It seems Chinese travelers are eager to explore the middle-earth again, but are we ready to welcome Chinese guests?  

Time to rebuild your Chinese sales tools?  

Have you had the WeChat app hidden away for the last 3 years?  

WeChat has 1.3 billion monthly active users, according to the Q3, 2022 financial statement of Tencent, whereas Chinese population is just over 1.4 billion.  

Much more than just a social chatting tool, WeChat has established an ecosystem on top of its fundamental social functions:  

WeChat Pay 

Chinese people rely on it for shopping everywhere, paying tuitions, insurance and utility bills, purchasing flight tickets, booking hotels, and even paying mortgage… 

WeChat mini app 

Imagine you have a travel plan and just discussed it with your friends in WeChat. Now it is time to book the flight. You can just open a WeChat mini app searching for the flight tickets and complete the order by paying with WeChat Pay. Did you get it? With WeChat Pay and Mini app, you can do everything within WeChat.  

WeChat Channels 

Now the last but also a very important piece of this WeChat commercial ecosystem is WeChat Channels. WeChat Channels is a video platform that allows video from 3s to 1h. As a new addition to the WeChat commercial ecosystem, videos in WeChat Channels can reach everyone using WeChat, that is a much wider range of audience than just your WeChat Official Account followers. WeChat Channels created another sales lead source, apart from WeChat OA for businesses, esp. businesses that rely on visual and acoustic presentation to introduce their products and services to potential customers.

Undoubtedly, WeChat is one of the most important sales tools if you want to do business with Chinese customers; however, if you think that WeChat is the only thing matters here, think twice. 、

Alipay, Xiaohongshu, Douyin (Chinese version of Tik Tok), Bilibili, Tmall, Zhihu…There are so many new social platforms, and all can be your secret weapon to successfully sell to Chinese customers. Read here to learn more about the social selling landscape in China.

Maybe a time to rethink the overall Chinese sales strategy?  

OK… so you have heard that Chinese travelers are back, and you are ready to roll your sleeves to get the product brochures translated into Chinese. But are you sure you still understand what Chinese customers want?  

New Zealand made baby formula, natural skincare products, Manuka honey and propolis, wool scarfs and sweaters… used to be the staples in many Chinese traveler’s souvenir shopping list in New Zealand 3 years ago.  

Are they still craving the same products?  

Have gone through numerous lockdowns for most of the time of the last 3 years, Chinese customers are said to be eager to have a “shopping revenge” – shopping frenetically to make up for the lost times in the last 3 years.  

Is that true? And how can you prepare for that?  

A customer survey that is tailor made to Chinese customers can be a good starting point to help you understand the changes of their shopping habits and product preferences and forms the basis of making a good sales strategy, which will then be able to guide how to build sales channels, adopt payment methods, create sales funnels using leads campaigns, uplift branding awareness to win Chinese customers. 

And what else can you do to understand Chinese customers better?  

Contact us today or email us to get your Chinese sales strategy sorted.