Bilibili Marketing Strategy to Promote Your Brand on the Chinese Video Platform

Bilibili is a video-sharing platform popular in China. Here, users can watch, share, and create videos. While it may not be as well-known outside of China, Bilibili is a powerful social media tool for marketing products and services to Chinese consumers. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the ways that businesses can use Bilibili to reach Chinese consumers. We’ll also explore some of the unique features of this video-sharing platform that make it such an effective marketing tool. So let’s take a closer look at Bilibili Marketing features so you can use start using the platform to promote your business in China!

What is Bilibili?

Bilibili, also known as B-station, is one of the largest video streaming platforms in China. Although the Chinese consumer base is mostly occupied by larger names such as iQiyi and QQ Video, Bilibili’s rapid growth over the years is a feat that businesses are gradually beginning to take advantage of.

Despite falling behind other leading platforms, Bilibili China is quickly making a name for itself as one of the fastest-growing social platforms in China today. Bilibili is even listed on NASDAQ next to companies such as Alibaba. The content on Bilibili is largely composed of videos, games, live streams, and more.

Who Uses Bilibili?

The content on Bilibili is consumed and generally targeted toward members of Gen Z and influencers. Seeing as Bilibili focuses more on user-generated content and videos, it is much easier to appeal to their targeted age groups. This is because Gen Z highly enjoys high-quality content that they can relate to. That being said, the genre and types of content being shared on Bilibili have resulted in the formation of a dedicated pool of users. Brands have recently begun using this as an asset to their business.

With the range of influence that Key Opinion Leaders (KOL) possess and the marketing options offered by the Bilibili China platform, brands are benefiting greatly from partnerships and paid advertisements.

How Chinese Users Join Bilibili

Bilibili China is known for its unique sign-up process. The site limits some features, like commenting, unless you’re an authorized member of the site. Chinese consumers are known for their commenting habits, which adds motivation to create an authorized account.

To maximize Bilibili China’s features and sign up as a user, you need to pass an exam. Although the concept sounds strange at first, it’s actually a very useful method to keep away trolls and malicious users on the internet. The test focuses on ethical questions and has a 79% retention rate. This method has been most effective in filtering trolls away from the platform, ensuring that users can enjoy interactive and non-toxic communities.

Interesting Data About Bilibili

Bilibili’s growth in recent years has been exceptional, which is why so many businesses have looked to it for marketing potential. Let’s take a look at how Bilibili China managed this growth.

When did Bilibili begin its journey ?

Bilibili was initially established in 2009 as a leading anime streaming platform in China. Despite being a diverse platform today that offers an extensive variety of high-quality content, Bilibili China previously revolved around providing a specific category of content: ACG, which stands for anime, comics, and gaming. Back then, Bilibili was purely for watching and consuming ACG content, but eventually, users were given the chance to use the platform to create their own content.

This concept was inspired by a similar site in Japan called Niconico. The new changes to Bilibili China were a hit for the Chinese audience, generating massive growth over the years. Now, Bilibili China has trumped Niconico in popularity, being named a leader in ACG content and video streaming in China.

How Much Does Bilibili Make Today?

Bilibili China is indeed a force to be reckoned with on Chinese video streaming platforms. Despite there being more popular options, the numbers cannot deny Bilibili’s success on its own. In 2021, it was reported that Bilibili China made a whopping 2 billion USD by the end of the year.

The growth of its community has largely contributed to its success. Similarly, the number of active users for Bilibili China has also shot up. In the fourth quarter of 2021, statistics displayed that Bilibili China had reached over 271.7 million active users. Among that number, 20.1% were paying users who took advantage of the site’s extensive and premium services. This shows a significant improvement compared to the numbers found in 2020, with a total of 20.9 million paying users.

Bilibili VS Youtube

Bilibili has been named numerous times as “China’s YouTube” because of its similar features and concept. However, they’re quite different due to the cultural differences and user habits in China. One defining feature that sets Bilibili apart from YouTube is “bullet chat” aka Danmu.

It can be compared to the array of comments that come in during Twitch or YouTube live streams, but with Bilibili China, it can be seen in real-time on normal videos. This is because Chinese users love expressing their thoughts through comments and reading through what everyone else has to say.

Bilibili China in the eCommerce Industry

Bilibili China made its debut in the Chinese eCommerce industry in 2019 when it first announced its mini-programs for brands and sellers. Bilibili’s success did not go unnoticed. Later that year, one of the biggest eCommerce platforms in China, Alibaba, shelled out a large investment to the video content platform to aid in its new selling features. Since then, eCommerce through Bilibili China has become a great way to generate profit for Chinese sellers.

Despite branching into an industry that’s somewhat different from their content creation origins, the items and products they offer on the site still stay true to their original ACG targeted theme. Gen Z users in particular greatly enjoy the wide array of ACG products they have to offer on the website, which has contributed greatly to Bilibili China’s success as an online retail platform.

Bilibili also took advantage of its community’s love for engagement and user-generated content by collaborating with another known platform called Taobao to launch campaigns, merchandise, and content to promote interaction throughout the platforms.

Bilibili Marketing Features

Bilibili China’s features and unique structure offer many opportunities for marketing and promotion. There are four types of marketing features that are most commonly used on the video content platform; here’s a brief overview of each one.

Brand Accounts

Having an official account on Bilibili China can help your brand greatly during promotional activities. A verified account will have additional features compared to a regular user account, seeing as it is created solely to help increase your brand awareness. Unfortunately, the list of foreign areas included under their criteria is quite limited; they only allow brands from the USA or East Asia to promote their video content on Bilibili China.

Keep in mind that there are two types of verified accounts. The first one is for influencers, wherein verification will only be granted to accounts that have more than 100,000 users following them on the platform. Next, you have business accounts. Both have similar benefits: You can reach a larger audience with more opportunities for visibility and gain access to a set of advanced advertising materials called Zhuanche. However, influencers have an additional benefit of being able to collaborate with brands to try out their products and services.

Influencers (KOL) and Live Streaming

Live streaming is incredibly popular in the Chinese market and entertainment industry. They cover a wide range of different genres, including eating shows, shopping hauls, and quick chats with their audiences. In this case, Bilibili China offers services for content creators that let them conduct a video stream and communicate with KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) and KOCs (Key Opinion Consumers). This is actually the most popular marketing feature on the website today, emphasizing the Chinese audience’s interest in interaction and engagement.

Influencers and KOLs partake in this feature called Uphost, letting them stream their day-to-day lives and interact with their audience. This is a great marketing tactic for brands. Partnering up with KOLs and influencers can generate a hefty amount of profit and awareness for their business, considering how word of mouth and reviews are one of the biggest factors that influence consumer behavior in China.

B-Station Native Ads

Bilibili China also offers paid advertisements that can be flashed throughout its platform. They come in the form of:

• CPC, or Cost Per Click bidding
• CPT, or Cost per Thousand Advertising
• CTR, or Click Through Rate Prediction
• CPM, or Cost per Million bidding

Types of Paid Ads on Bilibili China

Paid advertisements on Bilibili China can be scalable and diverse, depending on what a brand needs from their ad campaigns and what they can fit into their budget. There are three types of paid ads in total:

• News Feed Advertisements: News Feed Ads can be found while users are looking for videos. As the name suggests, they are displayed in the video feed section. They come in different sizes and types: small single-picture ads, large single-picture ads, or ads with multiple pictures — up to three, to be exact. These also include a brief title and a description.
• Native Banner Advertisements: These types of ads have more visibility compared to news feed ads, since they are larger in size and are displayed on the home page or while videos are playing. They have various sizes and types to choose from. They’re seen as banners that are set either on the top right side of the page or under the video.
• Occupationally Generated Video (OGV): OGV is one of the most effective types of the paid advertisement, but it’s also comparably expensive because it involves sponsoring official content by Bilibili China to promote your brand. It’s effective, but it’s most ideal for large-scale companies because of the cost.

Want to explore Bilibili marketing or a Chinese Video platform as a means to promote your brand?

There are many reasons why you may need an agency to help with your Bilibili marketing strategy in China.

• First, they will have a better understanding of the Chinese social media landscape and how to best utilize bilibili for marketing purposes.
• Secondly, agencies usually have a team of experienced professionals who can create and execute an effective marketing campaign more efficiently than most brands can do on their own.
• Finally, working with an agency can save you a lot of time and hassle in the long run, since they will handle all the details and coordination involved in putting together a successful marketing strategy.

Contact us and ask for an appointment with one of our experts to discuss your project in China. It is free and does not engage you in anything 😉