Australian retail and tourism businesses are leaning on Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent International Business Group (IBG) to connect with Chinese consumers at home and abroad.
Tencent IBG, part of the same parent company who owns WeChat, has launched an advertising solution to assist local brands reach Chinese nationals.
China now accounts for Australia’s largest tourism group with 1.44 million Chinese visitors coming to the country for the year ending September 2019.
Tencent IBG head of business development Ian Chan says brands in the retail and tourism industry have huge opportunities to capitalise on this.
“The immediate opportunity for Australian businesses is with the retail and tourism industries – within retail the engagement is around luxury goods, food and beverage items,” Chan says.
“Australian products have a reputation of being natural and manufactured under the highest quality standards.”
According to research by McKinsey, in 2018 Chinese consumers at home and abroad spent $167 billion on luxury items, equivalent to a third of the global spend.
This outlay is set to almost double by 2025 when 40% of the world’s spending on luxury goods will be conducted by Chinese consumers.
Locally, brands like L'Oréal and Myer have partnered with Tencent IBG to take advantage of this opportunity.
Tencent IBG has helped both brands understand the spending preferences of Chinese consumers in Australia and target them accordingly.
Chan says the company is helping other brands learn how to leverage the advertising solutions across WeChat and some of its other platforms including news, video content, social networking and online gaming.
“In China, most individuals do not use the same social media platforms or apps which are popular in the rest of the world,” he says.
“Therefore, if a local marketer or advertiser is trying to reach a Chinese tourist here, they need to deliver an advertisement through an app, such as WeChat, that the Chinese consumer will already be using to connect to their friends and family in China and around the world.”
WeChat currently accounts for 34% of all mobile traffic in China and has more than 1,151 million monthly active users around the world.
Tourism Australia has leverage this reach with native social feed style display ads to offer coupons and credit card deals on the platform which targeted inbound Chinese tourists.
The campaign saw 200% increase in engagement compared to the average and more than 10,000 shares.
“Tencent’s advertising solutions feature advanced data and targeting capabilities to ensure advertisers are connecting to the right audiences with the right message, including geography-specific targets,” Chan says.
“Brands have become savvier about outbound Chinese tourism, recognising that they must reach Chinese consumers while they are planning trips and purchases abroad, not just while they are in-market; our new capabilities allow them to do both.”
Tencent’s local clients include L'Oréal, Myer, Briscoes, food delivery platform EASI, Tourism Australia and Tourism New Zealand.
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