China Insights | Blog | China marketing – How a global software company turned users away from piracy

China marketing – How a global software company turned users away from piracy

Chris DeAngelis

Written by Chris DeAngelis

05/26/2021

In our recently released report, “How a Western Software Company Overcame Piracy to Thrive in China,” we discuss how a US software company used China marketing to turn Chinese users away from pirated versions of its software.

China omni-channel marketing

Globally, the company’s products are well known, with the vast majority of customers outside of China buying directly from its global website. At first, the company thought its globally-leading position meant that Chinese enterprise customers could be attracted through basic inbound China marketing. However, piracy was so out of control that it was a real challenge for any potential buyer to understand if they were buying authorized products or not. ADG worked with the company to develop a proactive China marketing approach to communicate its value, the risks of hacked software, and how and where customers could buy the legitimate and supported products.

The company focused on demonstrating its commitment to the local market through activities including creating a local “.cn” website, building a local digital community for users and partners, translating SEO-optimized tutorials, user guides and videos, and making small investments in paid search.

Getting these massive, 700,000 word HTML-based user guides translated and SEO-optimized for Baidu was a large undertaking but drove nearly 50% of user views to the .cn website. As an added benefit, having this work outsourced in China was faster and saved the client around US$70,000 compared to quotes in the United States.

Finally, to develop its community in China, the company focused on where its partners and end users congregate online, including WeChat, Zhihu (China’s Quora) and local industry focused BBSs. By late 2020, the company’s users and resellers increasingly recognized and began interacting with the legitimate brand.

Download the full report to learn more about how this company is succeeding in China!

Latest Resources

ADG and Dotmatics team up for a 5th time to bring FCS Express into the China market

ADG China is excited to announce the launch of FCS Express flow cytometry software in the China market. FCS Express, developed by Dotmatics subsidiary De Novo Software, is industry-leading scientific software that offers its users intuitive flow cytometry data...

China software piracy: Does your company already have paying customers you don’t know about?

As China’s professional workforce has continued to grow, professional users have become more sophisticated and are very interested in using world-class software for their needs. However, especially for more vertical solutions, many global software companies do not...

Software distributors in China: Practical differences and best practices

Generally speaking, the largest difference between software distributors in China and other markets is the comparatively extra workload that Chinese resellers put on Western software companies. This is especially true for software that is not already a well-known...