Welcome to the Digital Marketing Inner Circle

Firstly, having two senior members from the Government agency representing Chinese tourism (Mr. Hou Zhengang, Director General and Mr Xin Hong Ye, Division Director of IT Centre of CNTA) attend this event was a great acknowledgment in the interest that Social Media is having for the constituents working in the Chinese travel sector.  Note: CNTA (China National Tourism Administration) is directly regulated by the State Council and is responsible for developing, promoting and regulating Chinese tourism.

Our event started out with Mr Hou giving a short opening speech. (It is easy for Westerner's to underestimate the importance of having senior Government officials attend this type of event and give their support). Then, our MC for the event Kate Chang, Managing Director for PATA China introduced each of the speakers and invited us up to deliver our topic.

As the first speaker, I gave a broad view of the Chinese Social Media in China and then drilled down on some practical skills that can be easily taken when starting a Social Media Marketing (SMM) campaign. (download my presentation here) As a Social Media marketer, I use a framework and approach in formulating a SMM plan. The biggest area for confusion remains in the area of measurement and metrics so I tend to speak about the concept of ROP (Return on Participation) as an alternative to traditional clicks, impressions and CTR's.

The second speaker was Dr. Grace Pan, ex- AC Nielsen and now Chief Strategy Officer for SinoTech. She presented research finding on the hospitality & tourism sector and the greatest take away for me was the impact of word of mouth on consumer purchasing decisions and well as her message for digital marketers to be  ‘Be Creative, Bold and Daring’. Download Dr Pan's presentation here.

Ms. Donna Li, represented the Chinese SNS site; Renren.com. She is the General Manager of Strategic Marketing and gave a great presentation about their research findings of Chinese consumer behaviors and their SNS. She concluded her presentation with two case studies (An Accor Hotels campaign and McDonalds campaign). Readers who want further information, please download Donna’s presentation here.

The next presenter, Mr. Simon Li represented RIM Blackberry. This is the second time for RIM in supporting our seminars as a sponsor but only the first time we have managed to have him present. As the Director of Marketing in RIM China, it was great to get his insights via a case study about the merits of integrated digital marketing. He spoke of how RIM Blackberry conducted a successful Hong Kong campaign using email, affiliate, search and social media marketing to achieve some impressive goals. (download presentation here)

Our last speaker, Ms. Elizabeth Gualtieri, Director of Marketing and Brand Strategy at Accor China used their ‘Invite a Friend’ case study to illustrate the importance of multiple digital channels for this campaign. Elizabeth provided some very practical and concrete examples of the steps that were used in this campaign. (download here).

This seminar provided the platform for many to hear about the social media landscape and hear from actual companies conducting social media marketing within broader digital marketing initiatives.  It also saw a great many of those attend win some great prizes. Accor, providing dining and rooms at Pullman and Novotel hotels (Thanks) and Blackberry providing us all with bags (Thanks). SinoTech Group for providing cute sinotechian dolls (Thanks).

Thanks to all that came (and to our co-organizer PATA, our sponsors'- Blackberry RIM, RenRen.com, and SinoTech Group). Looking forward to the next seminar in Shanghai, sometime in mid March. Also, huge thanks to those from our DMIC community in turning up and getting a change to meet.