How a British tea brand maximize social Media to reach the Chinese audience
Tea is one of the three major beverages in the world. And China is the country which drinks it more. In 2018, the total tea consumption in China reached 2.119 million tons.
“China is also the world’s biggest consumer of tea. According to statistics from the International Tea Council, in 2018, the total tea consumption in China reached 2.119 million tons.” source
The beverage got a lot of health assets such as drainage or toning and the Chinese population is up to take care of themselves.
If the traditional tea is for the major part directly from China, the young generation such as Millennials, are still used to drink it, but more open to try overseas tea with different production styles, different tastes, and different brands.
That is why China is the first productor of tea in the world, but also one of the best destinations to import a different kind of the beverage, for example in tea bags.
This last-generation, open to modernity and discovery is also a connected generation. They are ready to spend a lot of money just to buy a quality product of quality, demanded that they never heard about before.
Here the reason why tea producers coming from abroad must adapt to their target by communicating online and maximizing social media in China.
Let us see the case of Richard Royal Tea.
Richard Royal Teaisproduced by the Russian company Mai. The brand sells products of Royal quality. It has been created in honor of the British tea house which produced drinks for royal persons in the XIX century.
They boost their reputation and expertise by saying is it THE tea you must test to “try the Royal Classics from Richard”.
Products of the original tea house were distinguished by a wide range of types, quality, and luxurious taste. The brand proposes this luxury, to nowadays modern consumers.
Branding is important to sell product, especially in China where people are very concerned about the Mianzi. Mianzi is linked to the idea of reputation: “you have to keep the face”. Chinese persons will only buy products they will be proud of. They want to be able to talk and to advise other personson their purchase.
Chinese people are also very concerned about their health. That is the reason why they are constantly looking for healthy productsthat keep them safe.
Here, the Russian brand transmitsRoyalty values and qualities which reassure consumers of security, and expertise of what they buy.
PARTNERING WITH MARKETING EXPERTS
The Russian brand met the professional anddeal with local experts in China to put in place a whole implementation strategy on Chinese social media to makes the brand famous and tendance.
You must be known and visible to attract consumers. Create a reputation they will be proud to follow. Social media enables you to insure and transmit it.
And our team knows exactly how to do it.
THINGS TO DO:
1/ BE ON WEIBO
Weibo is a microblogging platform that counts 216 million active users daily.
We create an official blog for Richard Tea on it. Quality page with up-to-date information and design.
FREQUENT PUBLICATIONS
The brand posts official clips and content to reassure of frequent updates. But not only, but is alsocomforts of acurrent presence online.
The performance on Weibo has studied thanks to online tools. People are attracted and interested in the Richard tea brand: the brand did 13 posts during 2020 December 16th and 2021 January 15th, and they attracted more than 370 000 views on the blog.
DO SOME PROMOTIONS
Events and promotions help internet users to be interested in the brand. They got the notion of “I am winning something by doing this purchase”.
Our collaborators did promotions by adding links to online purchase platforms directly on the Richard Tea page. The shopping links lead followers to Tmall stores by introducing products.
This simplicity and speed ofuse encourages followers to buy some tea. There is no need to switch on other websites, or to search for secure platforms: we directly send to the Tmallones (Taobao mall: owned by the famous Alibaba group).
We introduce you a product, and on the same page, you can click to buy it.
USE HASHTAGS
Another way to boost the visibility of your brand: add hashtag campaigns online. As Instagram does, you can add #hastag on publication to support the main message or idea you want to share.
Hashtag creates a community. Every person drinking a beverage of the brand can add the hashtag #AfternoonteatimewithRichardTea to their post.
Result: this hashtag got more than 760 000 views and created863 discussions on the microblogging platform.
2/ BE ON WECHAT
Wechat – Weixin in Chinese- is the social media number one in China. Itlets you send messages and call, reserve a taxi, book a table in a restaurant,or buy some clothes.
If you want to be close to your consumers in China, you must be on Wechatbecause 1,2 billion users open the app on average 6 times a day.
Creation an account for the tea brand, and it creates a QR code to be sent directly to apurchase platform.
The Wechat account is popular with an average of 4000 views per post.
To keep staying interesting, brands on Wechat may post official clips frequently.
Users are more interested in a brand when she shares its values. This builds loyalty between brands and internet users.
Also, to look cool, fun, and attractive, the brand may not hesitate to use good visual designs. Their local teams worked on it. Here the result:
3/ BE ON XIAOHONGSHU: LITTLE RED BOOK
Another platform where brands must be: on the Little Red Book which is a forum platform such as Pinterest.
80% of users are women, and they liked to share their opinion about purchases, products, and services based on personal experiences.
You can create an account and publish posts.
People will talk about your brand, and it is a way to do some communication free. If a Chinese woman liked the tea she purchased, she will advises other users of XiaoHongShu to try it.
This social media helps your brand to transmit its values, and to do online word-of-mouth selling strategy at the same time. Plus, the Chinese are really influenced by their own social circle opinions.
If your friend uses a brand, you might use the same, because your friend does not use it without important or certified reason.
The British brand created a total of 39 posts on the Richard Tea page, and the page reached a total of 376 likes and 294 followers on average of 4 posts by month.
4 BAIDU
Baidu, it is the Chinese Google equivalent. People go on it to do some research about everything.
When you got a brand to sell, you need to do some SEO -SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION-. It consists of using tools for your brand to appears in front of others on Internet search engines.
Here, local experts helps a Russian brand of tea. So, we want Chinese people to beconscious of the brand’s existence when they are looking for some tea online.
USE KEYWORDS
First step: inspect and boost keyword ranking. Here the teams did a great job.
Four keywords related to the business make Richard Tea appears. If you write “Richard Tea”, “Earl Grey Black Tea”, “Earl Grey” and even“Black tea bag”, Baidu will propose you Richard Tea website directly on the first page.
And the number of successful keywords is important because 90% of the Richard Tea website traffic comes from Baidu. It means people search for something about tea, and the Richard tea website is indicated on the front of the recommendations, so internet users click and visit it.
5/ PUBLIC RELATION
To increase the ranking of the Richard Tea brand on Baidu, the local team did some Press Releases.
How? Content has been created and shared, using keywords and describing products of the brand.
Online press release helps to build the reputation of your brand. To increase the chance of internet users going on your website, you may create content on different platforms. For example, for Richard Tea company, their local PR partner probably creates press release and diffuse on Tencent, Sohu, and Wangyi, three different platforms.
If you have more choices leading you to the website goal,you have more chances to finally click on it.
Now, if users search “Richard tea” on Baidu, Press Release appears directly on the first page of Baidu. Here why it achieved good results.
