Chinese B2C and C2C market size reached RMB 806 billion in 2011, according to a report by Analysis International, a Beijing-based Internet think tank. The report also showed that China’s group buying market reached RMB 23.7 billion in sales in the same year.

Due to the money-burning marketing methods adopted by group buy businesses and the large scale marketing input of leading e-commerce companies, etailers’ marketing expenditure has grown significantly in 2011, reaching 12.14 billion RMB.

Analysys International estimates that Chinese B2C and C2C market will reach RMB 2,568 billion by 2015, while the market scale for sheer etailer online marketing will reach 48.87 billion RMB at the same time.

Online marketing channels for etailers have been greatly diversified over the past few years. Mediums like search engine, branding, performance marketing, email direct marketing, social media and price engine have also played significant role in e-commerce online marketing.

The diversified online marketing channels have derived a group of third-party marketing service providers with focus on specific media platform. The e-commerce online marketing industrial chain has been refined, and a unique small ecosystem has formed gradually.

Given the diversified services available on the market with fierce competition, focus and technology are vital for the third party service providers to survive. From the perspective of advertiser, it is rather difficult to choose the appropriate partner. Analysys International had some suggestions on this matter:

Firstly, marketing should be chose to fit a company’s strategy rather than blindly follow the marketing trend, Sina Weibo marketing is good for some, but is it for you?

Secondly, in terms of SEM(search engine marketing), performance optimization would play a more important role compared to mere key words optimization.

Thirdly, the performance-based advertising will be the most important marketing platform.

Other metrics like the reputation and quality of an advertisement network, accuracy of the advertising and convenience of operation should all be taken into consideration for the advertisers.

Kang is a Tech writer, Event planner and Chairman of Beijing 3 Day Startup.

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1 Comment

  1. Good post. Today ecommerce takes business to the next level. People started focusing more on buying ecommerce software and run the sore. A report states that social commerce drives 26% of referral traffic to business website and sales are expected to reach $30 billion each year by 2015. I would personally say Multi vendor shopping cart would work out well. As they can receive profit ratio based on sales.

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