Douban Marketing  offers some unique opportunities for brands targeting niche audiences and could present an interesting opportunity to explore. Douban is a social networking platform that focuses on expressing oneself and one’s lifestyle. Users often post on Douban to discuss books, movies, music, and events. The landscape on Douban is constantly shifting and trends emerge and die off relatively quickly on the platform. This is another platform that is often considered to be something similar to a Chinese Reddit.

Douban makes it easy for users to book tickets for movies and concerts, download e-books and even listen to their own radio station, douban.fm, through their interface. Users also can connect with each other based on similar tastes and interests.

Demographically speaking, the platform is used mostly by citizens of Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. Douban has a relatively low user base compared to other platforms, primarily because it does not require users to sign-up and create an account to access content. While this might deter some marketers, this is an incredible platform for promoting more sophisticated and culturally oriented products. For businesses in the arts, this is one of the most popular platforms for social media marketing in China.

Why is Douban important for your business?

Douban has 227.49 million monthly total visits as of the 11 of April 2019, another promising number for advertisers.

Douban offers very little in terms of advertising, as they only offer banner ads (with a relatively high CPM of 15-20 RMB). However, Douban also allows brands to create a “brand station,” a separate page, where they can post about their brand story, history, logo, etc.

Due to the nature of the platform, utilizing word of mouth marketing on the platform can be very effective. The primary reason users come to Douban is for reviews, ratings, and discussions. Brands can seize opportunities to change and improve opinions of their brands or products on the platform, but they must also be careful not to aggravate the community as this could have negative consequences.

Brands can create events that are able to get people with the same interests together as a discussion group so that you and the consumers can have authentic interactions with potential customers. This is another amazing way to gather feedback on your brand from Chinese netizens.