Two weeks ago I was talking to a trade show organizer in Hong Kong. They wanted to improve their online marketing spend but were still feeling skeptical about how much the exhibitors and buyers, mostly the SMEs in China, had adopted the Internet. Well, I certainly can answer this question with confidence. The SME’s adoption of Internet in Mainland China is very high.

Last week I was in a coastal city of China, Xiamen, to moderate SMX China. I have been participating the search marketing event since the first SES held in three years ago. During the two-day event, I met with many Chinese digital marketers. Everyone shares the same observation. Today marketers in China are very keen to improve their digital marketing experience.

Contextual advertising in China is growing very strong. We also know China has somehow abandoned the CPM model. CPC is leading the market practice, other online advertising are mostly selling in cost per week or month. CPA is still selling in an unrealistically low price. It probably takes another year to rationalize the whole CPA model in China. Overall, the majority of the SME advertisers are extremely ROI-conscious. Conversion is now the big buzz word in SME marketing.

Baidu is still dominating the market. However, according to Inway Ni, the man behind SMX China, actually some Chinese websites such as hao123.com, 265.com, and the social space like QQ are driving signifcant traffic to the Chinese search engines. Inway said to me,

… Every search engine is reaching for partner sites. Which means they are trying to put their search box every where.

We also see SEO and SEM practice in China are getting more mature. I talked to Jianfei, the Head of Google.cn search quality team and a couple of Google guys in China. They have spent tremendous effort to improve the quality of the Chinese Google’s SERP. They also see many advance white hat SEO practices and many Chinese advertisers are now concerning quality over the cost per click for their paid search ad campaigns.

Indeed, in one of my panels, we talked about keyword research and tools. The speakers and the audiences had shared many quality discussions. Also in my another panel, Alibaba was demonstrating how search preciseness would enhance buyer experience in B2B marketplace and improve conversion result.

My two-day SMX experience was very fruitful. The digital marketplace in China is growing vibrantly. We now have the world’s largest Internet population and the highest broadband penetration. So if you’re thinking of reaching your customers in China via a digital way, don’t worry, they are pretty much connected.

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