By Yann Lombard-Platet
For those of us daily embroiled in the Chinese Internet's changing landscape, it's easy to take for granted the five most important reasons why using different channels on China's Internet can realize great return on investment.

5. TRUST through Internet Word of Mouth (WOM)
All marketers try to establish trust in their brands. Behind trust is the first purchase. Behind trust is the repeat purchase, the loyalty, the ambassadorship level. The origin of trust offline is a lot about being present, having seductive images and pushing the brand everywhere. Now it is all changing. Internet Word of Mouth is becoming critical in the way brands can build trust. Building trust now takes new tools, new strategies, new tactics and new thinking.

A 30-second television commercial can only give 30 seconds worth of content, focusing on opening your mind to dreams, creativity, and inspiration. A magazine advertisement can only give a page of details, usually covered more by visuals than text. The Internet has clearly brought a new channel to the audience to receive much more information. Over one third of Internet users in China go on BBS, blogs and social networking sites. The Internet delivers a lot of information and is not expensive. For bloggers to write a lot of words, show a lot of pictures, even a good or bad video about a product, cost nothing. On the Internet, there is so much information that can seriously influence the way somebody trusts a brand. In China, expressing oneself through user generated content is growing at a phenomenal rate.

Today, over 90% of the Chinese Internet audience, age between 25-40 years old, considers the Internet their main information channel. This is incredible. This is above newspapers 75% or TV 67%, magazines and books are not even reaching 25%. When it comes to authenticity, about 46% of the users consider the content on the Internet as authentic, much more than any other channel.

Don't believe that WOM or blogs are just gossip. Sometimes they are but most audience considers this channel as the most trustworthy before they make any purchase decisions. In a TNS Survey 60% of the audience also say that recommendations from friends and family were the most trustworthy. This is much bigger than independent reviews or publications. WOM, be it online or off line is by far the most trustworthy source of information and WOM is exploding online!

4. Social Media (SM)
Everybody has been talking about Social Media since the appearance of Linkin, Youtube and more recently Facebook. A lot of brands are embracing Social Media by seeing videos on YouTube, Google Video or Tudou and Baidu Video in China. So what is Social Media? SM is the ultimate consumer power and consumer distributed media. It is a media built, managed and distributed by consumers. Can a brand invade SM? Probably not, as the influence of brands in this is limited and usually not welcome.

The consumers have created a new trend, shown what they are ready to receive and interact with. What should the Brands do? Today Brands have to reinvent the way they engage or interact with their customers and start appearing as trusted guides. They have to help their audience make choices, understand the problems or opportunities. This has to appear more like an advice or guidance rather than a claim to be better or the best.

Can a brand in itself be a SM? Again, no. SM should be a reference, guiding brands to re-invent the way they build trust. If a brand has a deal with a major social network and suddenly it is everywhere, the participants will leave the social network and never go back. Consumers are now in absolute control of what they want to see and do. It is like when we had our first TV with a remote control. We can choose what we want to see. Well, it is even easier on the web! On the Internet, they will spend time on the website, on a blog or BBS to find what is relevant, exciting or entertaining and if it is too much like advertising, they skip it. So don't be in their face.

3. Search reinvented
Search is constantly being reinvented. AOL is a revolution. Yahoo is a revolution but the biggest revolution is Google. Google made it so easy to find relevant content including relevant advertising. In their new format Google provides information that people will want when they get their search results. It used to be just text and pictures but now there are maps, videos, 3D animation and much more rich content.

When you have a video on the website, tagging it correctly like a website will show up high in the ranking of a search. That video is probably what the searcher will see if he has a choice between a video and text. Once again, the kind of results that come out of a search and the type of content is very important.

2. Everything is measurable
Well, we love it when we are able to show amazing results and we hate it when we don't. We know because everything is measurable, quantitative and qualitative through digital channels. In China we spend too much time considering clicks, unique visitors, number of page views, impressions etc. There are a lot of new metrics allowing us to measure the success of a campaign, like the engagement or the sentiment value left behind. What is often overlooked is the buzz value of the number of people that talked about a brand and the time spent on a website. Two million people can spend an average of 2 seconds on a website. How valuable is that? Zero! 10,000 or 20,000 people spend half an hour on a website. Now this is incredibly valuable.

What about conversion rates? How many people looked at the website and out of these, how many have registered, answered questions, downloaded samples or forwarded to friends? Yes, we have attracted people to the website but have we converted this initial interactive audience into an even more engaged audience and eventually the ambassador of that website or campaign?

In the United States and in Europe, surveys are demonstrating that traditional advertising is a waste of half of the marketer's money and they now want to measure the returns of their investment. In China too, marketers are beginning to want to know if what they are doing is effective. They want to know how the digital channel can address the way a brand is perceived and is evolving once it has advertised offline. Online, the consumers join their social networking channels and start talking. This can be measured. So in a certain way, digital channels can measure the effectiveness of what is happening offline

1. It's all about CONTENT
At the end of the day it's all about content. The quality, the strategic creativity and the relevance of the content you give your audience. It is the content that will build a brand. It is content that will build trust, make consumers ambassadors and talk positively about the brand in their social networking channels.

About the author:
Yann Lombard-Platet is president of Nurun Asia and was previously CEO of the Shanghai-based interactive marketing agency he co-founded in 1998. During his years as head of China Interactive, Yann engaged in many leading interactive marketing campaigns for international clients established in China, such as Olay, Vidal Sassoon, Pantene, Colgate, Pernod-Ricard, FAW-VW and Pierre Fabre.

Nurun China is part of the global Nurun Inc. with offices in Canada, US, France, Italy, Spain, and China. Nurun Inc., founded in 1985 is the world's second independent Interactive Agency with 12 offices in 6 countries. It is also well established as No.1 in Canada, No. 2 in Europe and in the top 15 in the US, with over 800 employees worldwide .Nurun Inc. is a subsidiary of Quebecor Media Inc. Website: www.nurun.com