Web2Asia Founder George Godula Interview: Different Marketing Strategies for China and Europe/U.S.A.

George Godula, Founder of Web2Asia

George talks about how companies and businesses must adapt to local culture and customs when branching out into China. How do Chinese marketing strategies differ from those in Europe and the U.S.? George offers some insightful advice about tapping into Chinese digital and mobile markets.

Interview Transcript Summary:

Can we get a brief introduction to who you are and how long you’ve been here?

I’m from Austria, Europe, I’ve been in China for 2 1/2 years. I was originally sent here by an international direct marketing agency MHDirect to setup their Asian headquarters in Shanghai. We were doing business into China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, coordinating from here. This particular company is taking care of direct marketing services, and also outsourcing for e-commerce. When we first moved here, we had an increasing number of customers asking us to distribute digital products only; so they had no e-commerce products and were just selling online products on their websites. So this made us split the two companies and we have MHDirect, which we have subsidiaries in Europe, India, China, and Chicago, taking care of traditional direct-marketing but also EDM, new media, and Web2Asia is a new division that takes care of internet and mobile products. What we do is we help Western technology companies to expand into China, Japan, and Korea. We do the whole business development for them, localize their product, translate it, and then do ongoing marketing, customer support. They don’t have to send stuff here, or commit long-term capital, we’ll do that for them.

Is there a specific sector, what is your target? What is your ideal company?

For Web2Asia , if you take a look at the three country markets we serve: Japan, China, and Korea, China from the industry side is mostly mobile. For China, we have to say, anything that has interesting innovative technology, but also has potential to work in a different culture. We have to differentiate between content and technology, and it’s very hard to transfer content to other parts of the world, but the technology can be transferred, and can get it to local needs and local culture. The second part is also the investor; we do invest in companies here because we believe there is potential here. If we believe that they have a revenue streak or business model that’s can work here in China, we will tell them. For example, if there’s a company that only relies on advertisement income, I will tell them that it might not work here in China. If they have something that’s built on micro-payments or can be adapted to it, instead of having a monthly subscription fee in Europe or the United States, why not change the business model and break it down to micro-payment model where people can tweak their avator with mobile payment, that makes sense in China and I think that’s the fun part of China. The technology allows in combination the business model to adapt to the Chinese case, and is able to generate revenue streams immediately.

What kind of advice would you offer the novice player who is interested in the Chinese market before they come in?

In general, in every business, the key is people, it’s all about people, and that’s all about trust and also the hardest part. Whether it’s a trusted partner or employee, if you have trust, that’s half of the deal already. I think by now there are a lot of institutions, be it professional companies or state-owned institutions, that help foreign companies to find these partners here, it can a private owned company, or the U.S. Chamber of commerce, basically that’s the first thing you need to do; finding the right people. They consult you on how to get started. The other thing that is especially important for U.S. Americans is to accept that China is different, It is really really different. I’m not saying Europeans do not do that; they also have a hard time understanding that things work in a different way here. But Europeans are more use to adapting to different cultures, you have to speak a different language if you cross a border, and you realize that people are different there. In the U.S., you are more built on one huge market where everyone speaks the same language. It’s a really hard time for many companies because they realize you just cannot do the same thing here that you can do in the U.S. or in Europe. That mental process is a very important step to be successful here, and respect local culture, adapt to local culture, adapt to local business means. I think these two things:having good people, and the willingness to take a deep look into the culture and adapt to it, then you are almost done.

Where can people go to learn more information about your company?

Web2Asia , we also have a blog there, we do interviews with entrepreneurs who are interested in coming to China or already here. Our 2^nd company, the direct-marketing company is a german company called MHDirect.