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~ Pattern ~

Attracting Chinese customers requires localised demand generation techniques. Tmall trade
partner, Pattern, explains how it goes about launching and building a brand on Tmall Global.
Words: Joanna Perry, Global Head of Marketing, Pattern.

espite China being the retail market that suffered in Tmall’s individual campaigns, such as Flash Sales and Super
first with COVID-19, it has also been one of the Brand Days. However, Tmall also has two extra marketing types
Dfirst to bounce back; with the Western brands we that we have found particularly powerful in engaging Chinese
represent in China all achieving year-on-year growth. consumers; Weitao and Livestreaming.

Tmall’s cross-border marketplace – Tmall Global – aims to Weitao is Tmall’s own micro-blogging social network within
harness this continued desire for premium Western products the marketplace. It’s a great place to demonstrate your brand’s
by expanding the scale of the platform. It wants to grow the messaging through value-adding content that complements
number of product categories from 3,900 to an estimated your products. Customers can be incentivised to engage with
8,000, while increasing the countries those products originate the brand through this platform, and even see a personalised
from to 120. engagement score, which determines special offers, discounts or
other promotions they are given access to.
This means brands selling on Tmall Global will face more
intense competition. We’ve recently published a Tmall Content created by brand fans can also be harnessed on Weitao
Trading Guide to help brands understand what’s required in the same way as external platforms. We saw strong sales
to be successful when selling in this particular marketplace. of one apparel brand’s product after a celebrity was pictured
Below, I highlight some of the top marketing tips from the wearing it, and fans highlighted the brand worn in their Weitao
guide. posts.

Mastering marketing In the past year, we have started running livestreaming for
To launch and grow a brand on Tmall Global takes significant our brands too, a marketing medium which has exploded in
investment and a willingness to embrace localisation of products, popularity this year in China. Again, this can be done through
promotions and marketing. Tmall’s platform or on external livestreaming channels. We use
a mixture of influencers and our own livestreaming presenters,
We recommend investment in Tmall and non-Tmall marketing creating livestreams that are dedicated to one brand’s products,
platforms to raise awareness and drive traffic to the Tmall store. and having our brands’ products featured in multi-brand
The less existing brand awareness there is, the more the brand livestreams. One brand has seen a 27% daily sales uplift from
will need to spend on external marketing channels to raise participating in livestreaming.
awareness and educate the customer.
Finally, we always tell the brands we work with not to overlook
We utilise the Chinese social selling platform, Little Red Book, offline marketing channels. We’ve found that partnering with
for awareness, working with influencers (known as Key Opinion product specialists – clinics, gyms or beauty salons – who are
Leaders or KOLs in China). Nationally, famous KOLs are very incentivised to recommend the brand’s products is another useful
expensive, but we find we can get an excellent result by choosing way to generate demand. The product experts have unique links
a micro KOL that focuses on one large city or is a well-known to the brand’s Tmall store and so the sales they influence can be
influencer in their product category. Micro KOLs are much tracked in the same way as other affiliate channels.
cheaper but still have vast audiences by Western standards.
Other external channels, such as the app WeChat and In a brand’s first year trading on Tmall Global, it should expect
microblogging platform Weibo, should also be utilised for brand to spend up to 30% of its total sales on marketing to generate
awareness. Encouraging your customers to post about your awareness and drive demand. With such a large investment
products on these platforms is also key. required, it’s crucial that campaigns are localised and optimised,
to maximise the attention they attract from their Chinese target
Once awareness is raised, marketing activity on Tmall can help audience. ••
to convert browsers to buyers. More traditional digital marketing
types are available within Tmall – PPC on search terms, banners
for brand term searches, affiliate marketing and paid positions About Pattern:
Pattern is a three-star Tmall Trade Partner, as well as being one of the largest
Amazon sellers in the world.
To download the full Tmall Trading Guide, visit: www.practicology.com/
PatternTmall.

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