Pivot Point Global
Digital Marketing
Social Media Marketing
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WeChat is China's ubiquitous instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app. It's the world's largest standalone mobile app with over 1.2 billion users. WeChat is a “super app” because it integrates other apps within itself. So, instead of having one app for banking and another for hotel bookings, these apps are built directly into WeChat, so that it's a one-stop shop.
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WeChat is the most popular social app in China and its users spend over 70 minutes per day on it. It also hosts individual and business accounts, allowing companies to reach and maintain close contact with their customers.
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Weibo is microblogging app similar to Twitter and is one of the largest social media platforms in China, with over 523 million active users. It is most popular with young, urban, white-collar workers.
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Weibo users can upload videos, images, and gifs. They can follow others to like and share their posts. As with Twitter, Weibo is used to discuss news and cultural issues. Weibo allows businesses to create and manage accounts to communicate directly with their customers and reach large groups through hashtags and advertisements.
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iQIYI is China's most-watched video-streaming platform, with over 500 million monthly active users and nearly 6 billion viewing hours each month. On average, users spend 1.6 hours per day on the platform.
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iQIYI is comparable to Netflix and YouTube, since it offers professionally-produced (65%) and user-generated content (35%). It offers movies, TV dramas, variety shows, and other content, reaching a diverse audience from young adults to seniors. Major competitors of iQiyi include Youku and Tencent Video.
- Douyin (China's TikTok) is the most popular video sharing app in China with 730 million monthly active users. One-third of its users are under 26 years old and two-thirds are under 36 years old.
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Douyin is also an e-commerce platform enabling viewers to buy a product featured in a video, book a hotel, purchase coupons, and more. It is only available in China and operates separately from TikTok.
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Xiaohongshu (translated as "Little Red Book") is a social media and e-commerce platform. As of 2019, it had over 300 million registered users and 85 million monthly active users. 70% of its users were born after 1990 and nearly 90% of them are female.
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The platform offers premium quality and exclusivity through a highly-engaged community who review their products on the app, most frequently related to beauty, fashion, and health. It also operates RED Mall, which sells overseas products to Chinese users directly through the app.
Search Engine Marketing
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Baidu is the largest search engine in China and attracts over 220 million users per day. It holds a market share of approximately 60%, while its main competitors, Sogou and Bing, each control about 13%. Baidu represents the most popular choice for SEO and PPC digital marketing.
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Sogou is the default search engine for QQ Browser, QQ Messenger, and all major apps in China. The reason for this is its merger with Tencent was completed in 2021. Importantly, Sogou can now search content on WeChat, thus its popularity has been growing steadily. Indeed, as of March 2023, it ranked as the third most preferred mobile search engine with about 32 percent market share.
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Bing is the only major foreign search engine available in China and can be accessed without a VPN. Google, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo and other Western search engines are barred from operating in the country.
