Canadian businesses may often fall into this dilemma when advertising their products or services: how to implement Chinese marketing effectively? Chinese customers are one of the most important groups in the market, they have strong purchasing power. Due to their cultural background, most of the Chinese audience visits Chinese popular sites, watch Chinese popular TV shows and use the most popular Chinese social media network – WeChat. You need to have a deep understanding of how these channels can help your business before you start advertising.
This article will help you understand the mainstream Chinese advertising channels, which are divided into offline advertising and online advertising (internet promotion). There are various Chinese marketing channels in Canada, this article only lists the top influential Toronto channels.
Offline advertising channels
First of all is the traditional offline advertising, which is the newspaper, radio, and television that we are all very familiar with. These three media platforms are the oldest and most traditional methods of advertising.
Newspaper ads and newspaper classifieds
Toronto’s current mainstream Chinese newspapers include Sing Tao Daily and Ming Pao, which are mostly for Hong Kong and Taiwan readers are sold in major supermarkets. The Toronto edition of the World Journal, was in Toronto for 28 years, was officially suspended in 2016 due to successive losses. Other free small and medium newspapers include Global China News, Canadian Times, and Dahua Business Daily are still available.
As more and more readers prefer to read online, newspaper subscribers have fallen drastically year after year. Due to the limited exposure of newspaper media, it is difficult to be seen by target audiences, and it is impossible to track the effectiveness of advertising. Now it is an indisputable fact that more and more businesses are reducing the investment in traditional paper media and turning to online media.
(“Ming Pao”)
Although the investment and return are not proportional, the famous brands with rich capital are still willing to maintain the necessary exposure in the Chinese mainstream media “Sing Tao Daily” and “Ming Pao”. When comparing the expensive advertising costs of mainstream newspapers, the advertising costs of free newspapers are relatively low. There are so many free Chinese newspapers in GTA that they can be collected for free at major supermarkets. Although the effect is not as satisfying as other Chinese advertising channels, due to the low advertising costs, it is favored by many real estate agents and small business owners for Chinese marketing.
Sing Tao Daily Classifieds Ads
Newspaper ads are classified into different small columns according to different advertising content. Each newspaper in Toronto has a considerable amount of space for classified ads. Classified ads are one of the important sources of income for the media.
The most famous in Toronto is the Sing Tao Daily classified ads. The classified ads in Sing Tao Daily include employment, admissions, job hunting, friend recruitment, courtship, house rental, and small commodity sales. They cover all aspects of social life. Classified ads focus on meeting the needs of life, not promoting brands. The classified ads of Sing Tao Daily are short, easy to make, and practical. They are more suitable for individuals or small businesses that are just starting out with Chinese marketing. However, due to the sharp decline in newspaper subscribers over the years, the effect of Sing Tao’s classified ads is not as good as it once was.
（Sing Tao Daily Classifieds Ads）
Radio promotion
Toronto’s main radio stations include Canada Chinese Radio, Mandarin Chinese Radio, and Mandarin Radio. In the past, Cantonese was the main language, but Mandarin programs are also increasing. The radio can only be listened to on the radio or on the Internet. The reach is narrow, and the advertising effect is also limited to Chinese marketing.
TV commercial promotion
The TVs in Toronto are mainly Fairchild TV, CityTV, Canadian Chinese TV, OMNI.2 Chinese, WOW TV, etc., which are targeted at Cantonese audiences. The problem facing businesses is long launch cycles, expensive, and unable to filter users and tracking data issues.
Online Advertising Channels
Next, we will talk about online advertising channels, which are Chinese news community websites, Google Ads, social media Ads and WeChat Ads.
News/Community Website Advertising
This should be the most familiar form of advertising for most people. It is mainly divided into three forms: web pages (computer, mobile, APP), business directories, and forums. The advertising prices for each area are different. From hundreds to tens of thousands per month, the business directories are often the cheapest, and you can choose according to your own budget. Forums have free and paid advertisements, but if the free post of the advertising is obvious, it is likely to be deleted by the administrator.
The most visited sites in Toronto are
Canada’s Sing Tao Daily (singtao.ca)
Canada Worry-Free (51.ca)
York Forum (yorkbbs.ca)
Canadian Money Express (dealmoon.ca)
Home Network (Toronto.iask.ca)
North American Life Network (beimeilife.com)
Super Life Network (superlife.ca)
Merchants can buy advertising space directly from these websites. It is simple to operate, and the audience is Chinese in the GTA. Like the three traditional promotion channels, these websites are only responsible for displaying ads. They cannot perform data analysis and optimization. There is no guarantee of conversion. These websites are good for creating brand awareness, as they are high traffic sites in the Chinese market, you can be seen by thousands of potential customers.
To start out, I suggest that you start with low-price areas, such as classified ads, look at the delivery results first, and then consider whether you want to spend a lot of money buying a banner of a prominent section.
（Quoted price from 51 website, specific cost can be found here）
Google Ads and SEO
The best digital marketing channel is Google Ads, it is so versatile and can be used for small businesses wanting to advertise locally and increase their ROI. It can also be used by International brands that want to increase brand awareness and increase their ROAS. Google Ads allows you to have the most control over your marketing strategy, and a perfect fit for all businesses.
Google Ads can be used to target Chinese keywords and Chinese audience which will connect to your audience on a deeper level.
It is the most transparent and cost-effective way to advertise. Google ads are mainly divided into search ads, display ads, shopping ads, and video ads. Merchants can freely choose where, when and who sees the ad. The millions of websites and apps in the entire Google Network Alliance can be used by you and it is widespread.
Unlike other advertising channels, you need to build a website or landing page (preferably in Chinese) with a conversion rate tracking system before you can start with advertising on Google, otherwise, it will be a waste of money. Google Ads requires certain technical knowledge and experience, it is recommended to ask a Google certified professional advertising team to help you create an advertising campaign. They will set up an advertising campaign structure according to your business and specific needs.
Google Ads are particularly suitable for the advertising of small and medium businesses, such as education, financial insurance, e-commerce retail, B2B services, real estate, travel, and so on. Google advertising fees can be at least $20 – 30 per day. After continuous optimization and maintenance by senior Google certified advertising professionals, it will bring you more than 10x return on investment. Most of our customers have clients coming from Google Ads, and the majority of our clients have asked to increase advertising investment after they see how well it increases their business.
You will also need to optimize your website or landing pages to rank for the Chinese keywords on Google’s search engine results page (SERPS).
Leveraging Google paid traffic and search engine optimization to expand to the Chinese market, it is highly recommended that you hire a reputable digital marketing agency that is specialized in Chinese marketing in North America.
Social media advertising
Finally, let’s talk about social media, which is mainly divided into Facebook, Instagram and WeChat. Unlike other channels, social media is highly interactive and can be liked, favourited, shared, voted, etc.
Facebook has around 250K Chinese active users in Canada. If you know a lot about your target audience, this can be a good channel for you, as you can target specific behaviours, likes, and criteria for your audience.
WeChat Ads
If your business is dominated by Chinese consumers, WeChat is an unmissable channel for Chinese marketing. It is similar to Facebook as it has a large user base, however, it is a closed social media platform that is limited to the Chinese market.
Advertising on WeChat can be complicated for North American merchants, as it is difficult to set up accounts and it is only open to specific industries and qualified businesses. If you want to advertise ads on WeChat, you need to find an experienced Chinese marketing agency for help. They will help you open your WeChat business account, place ads on WeChat and if they would be applicable to you, such as Moments Ads, Official Accounts Ads, and mini-program ads. The threshold is high and you need to have a large sum of budget to get started.
Conclusion
There is a wide variety of ways to advertise to the Chinese market across Canada with offline and online marketing. We have experience with over 18 years of digital marketing experience, managing 50 million US dollar budgets, and successful case studies published by Microsoft. A team of experts from Noah Digital Marketing is led by Dr. Tang Bin and Mary Wang to build well-known brands. Start your journey of Chinese marketing from here now!
