Lead Generation and Internet Marketing in Hong Kong

The Internet in Hong Kong

Hong Kong is one of the two Special Administrative Regions (SARs) and was handed over from British rule in 1997. Hong Kong is treated as an independent economy from China, apart from defence and foreign affairs. The constitution is known as the Hong Kong Special law. Hong Kong has an estimated population of 7 million people and an internet population of over 4.8 million or 68.6% of the population. The internet user in Hong Kong is committed and well educated with Hong Kong having a GDP per capita $10,000 higher than the UK at $45,277. Internet marketers entering into the Hong Kong online industry can take advantage of Hong Kong’s position as the intermediary between China and the rest of the world. The Honk Kong internet is not as repressed as China’s internet which is semi-locked behind the Great Firewall of China and blocks the IP addresses of sites deemed as inappropriate for the Chinese population. Also, Hong Kong has a favourable CPC of $0.37 on average.

Time Spent Online

On average, the Honk Kong internet user spends 25 hours on the internet every month and instant messaging appears to be the most popular activity, followed by entertainment and social networking. Time spent on instant messaging sites accounts for 16% of time spent online for Hong Kong internet users followed by entertainment at 10.7% and social networking at 7.7% according to a report by comScore. According to the same report 5% of time spent online is spent on business and finance websites.

Online Video in Hong Kong

An amazing 85.5% of internet users in Hong Kong spend an average of 10 hours a month watching a humungous 477 million online videos. The majority of internet properties used to view these videos were Google sites which represent 52.4% of viewed video content. The remaining videos were viewed via local sites Tudou and Youku sites each representing an equal 3.6% of the 477 million videos viewed. Facebook is fourth showing 2.8% of all video content shown in Hong Kong. It is helpful to know that 99% of all of the videos shown across all of these sites were provided by YouTube suggesting an amazing potential for video marketing using YouTube in Hong Kong. With such low average CPC costs in Hong Kong from search engines and Facebook, internet marketers can affordably implement lead generation using a variety of digital media promoted across search engines and social networking sites.

Social Networking Trends

Social networking in Hong Kong is dominated by Facebook unlike mainland China and 5.3 billion page views are received from Honk Kong internet users. The majority of Facebook users are reported to be between the age group of 18 to 44 and represent 75% of Facebook users. This suggests that most Facebook users are of working age and represent a sizable revenue opportunity for lead generation campaigns. Among the top audience interests are song lyrics and mobile & wireless. This indicates that a successful lead generation campaign could include free mobile song lyric downloads as an incentive to receive further information on mobile and wireless products and services. According to Google’s Doubleclick Ad Planner Twitter.com receives 5.6 million page views in Hong Kong every month and amongst the top interests are reported to be Campaigns and Elections. This supports the theory that Twitter is advantageous in garnering support for various socially responsible movements and can be considered in the light of the peaceful Egypt uprisings in February 2011. Media sources around the world suggested that the February uprisings in Egypt that led to President Mubarak stepping down from power, were allegedly spurred on by regular twitter updates on the logistics of the movement.

Search Engines in Hong Kong

Search engine market share in Hong Kong could not be more different to mainland China. Google has the largest market share, but not by a massive majority, representing 55.17% of the total market share. Yahoo is in second place occupying 43.11% of market share, followed by Bing at just 1.1%. The top Chinese search engine, Baidu.com, represents a meagre 0.14% of the Hong Kong search engine market share. It is quite possible that internet marketers could use Google in Hong Kong to gain indirect access to Chinese online consumers via social networking sites like Facebook, where direct access via natural search would be otherwise limited.