Personal Data Name: Mike Golden Country of Origin: USA Location: Shanghai Time in China: Shanghai 4 years	Do a survey of your target market, run a focus group – do whatever it takes to really learn about your target clients. Everyone comes to China with ideas about their target market from reading the WSJ, but they often run into problems when they get here.
Company Data Position: General Manager Industry: Marketing & Communications Website: www.adsmithchina.com
Adsmith is a China-focused integrated marketing & communications company, based in Shanghai. Whether you have just started your business in China, or if you have been here for a decade, Adsmith provides expert marketing for all stages of your China strategy. Marketing Strategy, Brand Consulting, Public Relations and Event Management, Graphic Design, Advertisement Design and Planning. Send us an email or call us for more information. The international team is comprised of U.S. and Chinese marketing and public relations professionals. Our client base is half multinational and half Chinese -- we develop long-term clients through professional service, outstanding results, and a high level of integrity.

Hiring great people. It’s easy to hire people – there are plenty of people to hire. Its very difficult to hire great and amazing people. Can you hire diamonds in the rough and polish them? Yes, but I find that you have to go through a lot more unpolished stones than you would expect to – more than in the US. And there are amazing people to be found here – but it’s important to find someone who is really excited by the work they’ll be doing. We get a lot of general resumes – people who really aren’t interested in any particular kind of work. You need people who are positive and can communicate with other people. We hire directly from universities sometimes– usually as interns – but they need a lot of training. A Chinese graduate has fewer actual skills than a US graduate would. Communications skills, office skills – young Americans are more savvy about things like that. It’s harder to hire people with experience, but if you find the right person they can do amazing things for you.

Holding on to people is more than just salary or the package. It’s about showing them a vision of their growth potential and where the company is going. Offering a great place to work and an interesting job also matters.

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Finding good reliable suppliers. This is as important when working with services as products. We have to outsource projects – for example, photographers, website designers, and printers. If your suppliers mess up, that’s horrendous for your business. We use local Chinese firms to help control costs, and you can find great suppliers - but you have to dig through a lot to find the right ones. Reliability is the most important thing. They have to meet or exceed quality standards. QC in services is getting better, but you still have to watch standards carefully.

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Managing client expectations is a big challenge. Our clients are a mix of international and Chinese clients. We do everything from governments to multinational corporations to smaller Chinese brands, and a lot of exhibitions and trade-show PR. If a company has a well-known name in their home country, they tend to expect easy China entry and huge sales right away. The reality is that they meet up with suspicious, doubtful and very savvy Chinese consumers and clients. New brands really have to prove themselves on the ground here. I tell them you have to be here in China for a while, and it’s usually longer than they expect. It takes patience. Many new market entrants expect very low costs and fees, but Shanghai can be very pricey for some things. Advertising in China is cheaper than the US, but still very expensive. It can take a while to build awareness. People with marketing experience get the picture pretty quickly, but some overseas businessmen have unreasonable expectations that they don’t want to let go of.

Building our own business. All of our growth is organic For us it was very important to have the patience to stick it out. Our first year was very difficult. We had to change direction – so having the flexibility to change course was crucial. But then you can’t take every piece of business that you can get. You also have to focus on core businesses that you are good at that have strong potential to develop into a profitable market niche. We were careful to position ourselves. We don’t want to fight the giant international agencies for business. We’ll never have the global Coke account, but that’s ok. There are a lot of other great accounts we can get as a smaller company.

I want to have 50% foreign clients and a good number of local clients. We’re really good at consumer business, but the potential for B2B is also huge.

The Chinese businesses are really appreciative of our work and really love what we can do for them. Sometimes we have to tailor the package to offer a different group of services than international companies, since they are usually working on a smaller marketing budget, but it is very rewarding to work with these young Chinese clients who don’t have too much marketing experience. We have no problems collecting what we’re owed

We had to learn to market ourselves. You have to nail down your own business and develop a very focused message.

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Implementing strong internal processes. For example, for our PR service we now track everything through our online database. Every phone call, every placement, every contact with the media – we track everything now. IT, contractors, clients – everything needs to be systematized and processed. It’s all simple, routine stuff, but turning it into a process is important. The staff will cooperate as long as they know it’s important and can see the value in using systems.

Do research before you start your China business. Do a survey of your target market, do a focus group – do whatever it takes to really learn about your target clients. Everyone comes to China with ideas about their target from reading the WSJ, but they run into problems when they get here. The target market may not be interested in the product or service, or the way they want to market the product won’t work. A focus group is a quick, relatively inexpensive way to find out more about how the market will react. Use research to test your assumptions. It can be 10 people or 1000 people, but do a survey to find out who your real target market is and what they think of your product. For under $1,000 (US) you can get a good idea of how your target market will react to your brand. We’ve had focus groups that caused marketers to really change their approach to the China market. They loved the information, but had to rethink a major product launch as a result. It gives you some real data to work with, whether it’s a brand new company entry or a new product that you want to launch.