Chinese New Year: Marketing Inspiration for 2019

Written by Sarah Hunnings February 19, 2019

Kung Hei Fat Choi! Chinese New Year (also known as the Spring Festival or the Lunar New Year) started on February 5th and festivities last for another 15 days! This blog is a little different from the usual marketing and industry content we produce. This time I (Tom) thought I’d write my first ever article on the subject that is close to my heritage and heart…

There are many myths, traditions and customs associated with Chinese New Year (CNY), and we’ll look at some of the ones you could take some inspiration from for your 2019 marketing strategy.

A time for reflection

The new year is always a time for reflection on what you’ve achieved, CNY or not. If you’ve done this already then well done. If you haven’t, then take stock of what you did and didn’t achieve last year.

This step is important as it will align your marketing goals and aims for the rest of the year. This could mean that you noticed your engagement rate on LinkedIn has increased by 888%. Dig deeper and find out why – and then perhaps experiment with video content instead or focus on increasing conversion rates. The idea here is to reflect, learn and implement.

Preparing your home

Before CNY begins it’s important to clean your home and buy new clothes, socks and bed sheets etc…to start the new year fresh with renewed luck. Especially, when your favourite (and not so favourite) aunties, uncles, cousins, as well as new extended family members you didn’t even know about come to visit.

Does your overall marketing strategy need a clean-up? Do you need to update your website to increase conversion rates with an SEO review? Or are you simply using the wrong marketing software? Putting your ‘house’ into order is key to any marketing strategy and campaign, no matter how niche or top level it is.

Firecrackers – Make a bang

Mythical creatures and beasts have always played a major part in Chinese culture. In ancient China, tales of these creatures were often used to explain natural and social phenomena and they are now deeply rooted in religion, tradition and culture.

From my knowledge (and a quick Wikipedia search), CNY started in ancient China when a mythical beast called the ‘Nian’ plagued a village and ate any unfortunate souls in its way. Fireworks and firecrackers were used to combat and frighten the ‘Nian’ as they conveniently realised that loud noise scared the beast away.

In today’s content climate, audiences are constantly bombarded by information on various types of channels. You need to be able to make a loud enough bang to attract the attention of your audience. A well thought out marketing plan supporting your campaign can make all of the difference by helping you to effectively cut through all of this noise.

Review what channels you are using; do they represent your target audience? Perhaps you need to take a look at your PR strategy and forge new relationships. You may want to build brands and profiles surrounding key team members. This could be done through interviews, comments in the media and of course speaking opportunities.

Consider making a louder bang with a smaller audience. Do you have any data available to you about your customers? Can you create a targeted campaign to engage with them? Smaller niche campaigns can be very rewarding as there is less competition and noise.

Red, the luckiest colour of them all.

Red means many things in Asian culture. Not only does this colour bring good luck, but it was also used to scare away the Nian, who was fortunately petrified of the colour. Colour is an important part of brand identity and is often overlooked these days. A good brand can make the difference between your target audience scrolling past a Facebook advert or gaining several seconds of engagement.

So, whilst red may not be the ideal colour for your brand, paying that extra attention to detail and making sure your brand tells your story, who you are and what you do clearly is paramount. Branding helps to build a personality and is a tool to communicate with your target audiences. Do you need to adapt your messaging to reflect your brand more closely? You may simply need to update your branding to reflect your audience and the competition you are surrounded by.

Food and more food

One of the main reasons I love CNY is – the food. During CNY there are certain foods that you eat on certain days. For example, a sticky glutinous rice cake or ‘Nian Gao’ is normally eaten on the 3rd day of CNY and so on. So how do sticky rice cakes relate to marketing?

When you are planning a campaign, you need to ensure that all of the components are integrated and ‘stick together’ throughout. Hit the audience at the right time by taking a look at your social media statistics, or email data, and find the optimal time and day to post. Then look at your campaign calendar and start scheduling or planning your activities.

Could you use retargeting to follow up on website visitors via niche publications under topics related to your product or service? Have you set up a follow-up email to increase open rates or nudge people to attend an upcoming event? By planning and integrating your activities, you are taking your audience on a journey or down the sales funnel, where you can then start the conversion process.

Your campaign calendar should then be fully optimised with the right content using a mixture of channels so that your message is communicated to your target audience effectively.

Red Envelopes

During CNY, children (and adults who aren’t married) are given red envelopes with money inside (this is one of my favourite traditions ). The red envelopes were originally introduced during the Qin Dynasty and were used to bring good luck and ward off any evil spirits.

Maybe it’s time to give back to your customers through a quirky campaign. This could be something as basic as running a competition for exclusive discounts codes or offering a free trial. Perhaps you could give a teaser of your product or service by demonstrating your offering using YouTube. You may need to think about your retention marketing strategy? Can you give out your own red envelopes via a prepaid gift card or ask your account management team to dedicate more time to your existing customer base in order to keep them happy?

San Nin Fai Lok (Happy Lunar New Year)

There is no one size fits all solution here, however finding what works for you is most important. Play to your strengths and work on your weaknesses. Hopefully, you will come away from reading this article feeling enlightened, somewhat luckier and will have learnt a thing or two about Asian culture and CNY. Primarily, how it can influence your marketing strategy and that Asian people are very superstitious!