DiligenceChina

Your China entry will take longer than you think it should. But once the action starts, it’s hard to control the pace. There was a time when China organizations were so hard to establish and so cheap to run that efficient roll-out plans were the least of your worries. Now that rents, salaries and operating expenses have been skyrocketing, cost controls should be built in to your planning – not considered as an afterthought at year-end.

The best way to get bank from your buck (roar from your renmenbi?) is to do as much as possible from home.

We’ve already talked about how to set up you business and the best way to manage the timetable here. Lawyers, accountants and real estate consultants are three types of consultants you will need just to get your company formed. HR will be your biggest headache in China once you start operations, and you should start a conversation with a head-hunter, HR consultant and RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcer) early in your China set-up process.

But what do to about marketing? Should you just wait until you have operations set up before you start promoting?

Yes and no. If you are setting up a retail or sales organization, be aware that you can’t issue invoices (the all important Fapiao) until you have your WFOE formed. But brand awareness is tough to build here in China, and you don’t have to wait. Start getting your name in the market early with a strong online presence, online directories, and some basic brand-building programs that will give you a head start while your legal and business set-up teams are working.

Web Presence:
Use your existing site or have a new site built special for the Chinese market. If you plan on using the site you have now, you’ll have to localize the important pages and include a very obvious button on the top of the home page. A strong online presence is important in China – particularly if you aren’t on the ground yet. You can set up a relatively simple Chinese language site that will let you build a list of interested potential clients, answer basic inquiries or simply let people know who you are and when you’ll be arriving. (ChinaSolved has some tips on building a China-oriented website)

Buy your names.
Buy the Com.cn and the .Cn from home. Each will run you about $30, give or take, and you can buy on line with a major credit card. There is some controversy about this, but as long as you are hosted overseas there is no need to involve the Chinese government in the early stages. If you plan on hosting your site in China and/or using the side to transact in China, you will have to register it with the local authorities. If you have a recognizable brand or product name, you may want to consider buying the .CN versions of them too. COMs are still the dot of choice in China. Com.CN and CNs are easier to find, though, and will probably make a decent investment.

Access
Contrary to popular belief, internationally hosted sites work just fine here, barring unusual circumstances. Unless your site gets very involved with dissenting opinions about local corruption, Taiwan, Tibet or military matters, you shouldn’t have any issues with censorship. Be aware, though, that the Great Firewall of China usually blocks entire servers and hosts. If you use free hosting, certain blog-hosts or the same servers as a certain cult religions, you will be blocked.

Language
Chinese people approach the internet differently. Many Chinese professionals who have to read English at business school and on the job have no interest reading English online if they don’t have to. Chinese prefer reading Chinese if they have a choice, and if you want them to read about your company, then you probably want give them that choice. Translation is a tricky issue in China – it’s surprisingly difficult and expensive to find good ones, and you have to be careful. (I once delivered a presentation on marketing management, and the phrase ‘sales prospecting’ kept popping up as ‘digging holes for customers’ in Chinese.)

Design
Beyond the language issue is the design. Chinese websites fall into two general categories: the highly ornamented list, and the high-concept design piece. The list-type site is just a double column of dense, single-spaced text that hyperlink to more text. They dress up the site with enough flashing buttons, beeping boxes and floating Picaqu’s to induce epileptic reactions. Chinese people SAY they love this, but I suspect otherwise. Lately, highly stylized artsy sites have been on the rise. Some of the work is absolutely beautiful, but the heavy reliance on flash can make search engine optimization tricky.

Entertainment
Chinese are heavy internet users, but the bulk of China’s online hours are spent on entertainment. That’s not to say that there isn’t work or research getting done online, but the big numbers we’re always reading about tend to be gamers, chatters, and other forms of what passes for fun among Sino-Tweens. Every Chinese yuppie worth his salt is packin’ a laptop, but email still isn’t as big a deal here as it is back in the US. Online communication is more likely to be over an instant chat system – MSN is popular, Gtalk is growing – but the locally developed QQ is the emperor of the online kingdom.

Search Engine & PPC
Google works just fine in China, and tends to be the search of choice among business users. Baidu is a bit trickier to get picked up on, and tends to be skew to a younger, ‘funner’ demographic. Be aware that there are 2 Googles in China – the one you consider “regular” and the somewhat more controversial Chinese one. www.google.cn

Expectations and limitations
Websites probably aren’t going to find you much business out of the blue – at least it’s never worked that way for me. But if you are establishing a presence in a new market – like China, you’ll find that it’s an invaluable support tool. People will have a lot more confidence in your new China operation if you have a few bi-lingual pages that let people know who you are and what your plans are. You may find it very useful when you are trying to build a team or a client base – and people are checking you out to see if you are “for real”.