By Alexey Gavrilov on November 26, 2007

Last week I stumbled upon an interesting article, which is a translation of a blog post by Gong Wenxiang (龚文祥) — a marketing specialist from Shenzhen, China. Gong analyzes top 10 mistakes US internet companies make in China. Based on his analysis I put together this list of what might be the winning strategies on that interesting market.

1. Beware of internet cafes and shared computers
Large percentage of China’s internet users access it from the public or shared PCs. It means some techniques, which worked great in US (like lazy profiles) shouldn’t be used in China

2. Be hated but never be forgotten
There is no such thing as a bad PR. It’s even more important in China.

3. Move fast
Long term strategies might never work out so try to reduce the risks by setting short term goals. If something doesn’t work, drop it fast and try the other approach.

4. Be a gang, use simple metrics
Set the goals and let your team in China achieve it using all means necessary. Define a good performance-based reward and give them a license to kill (be prepared that they’ll be using things like porn traffic, pop-ups, redirects or spyware).

5. Use a separate brand
You don’t want all the things listed in 4) to happen under your much praised name.

6. Don’t assume users care about something
Do only what they actually ask for.

7. Get the cheapest traffic possible. Lots of it
Targeting worth nothing so don’t mess with it.

8. Use Chinese
The majority of internet users in China don’t understand English. All your copy should be localized.

9. Use monster homepages
Tell all cool things right on the homepage. Crazy colors, blinking banners and all the things, which would cause a heart attack to a western designer, are must have.

10. Monetize!
Don’t assume users in China are not rich enough to generate a revenue. Just don’t try to sell things, which they don’t want or can’t afford.

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