“什么值得买?” (Shenme Zhide Mai) means “what is worth buying?” It’s abbreviated as “SMZDM” for short. How could you pronounce that to make it easier to remember? How about “smooz-doom”?
SMZDM is a website and app that helps people find good deals on both physical and digital products.
If you have a website that sells products to Chinese consumers, it’s worth having some presence on SMZDM. Before deciding on how you might use SMZDM, it’s best to gain a basic understanding of how it works!
Who Uses SMZDM?
The typical users are male ages 25-34 with a university education and an income average of 8,000+ Chinese Yuan per month. The income level is surprising, especially for that younger age range. For a Chinese e-commerce platform, it’s also rare to see such a high proportion of male users.
Besides just reading, some users also share content of their own. As they share, they can gain points, improve their rank, and even earn tips from other users. If they gain enough clout, they can even charge advertisers for exposure.
The site incorporates various social functions; users can follow other users, follow brands, post comments, etc. My colleague Nara uses the site as an end user and says the comments are sometimes the most valuable part.
What Type of Content is on SMZDM?
There are three main categories on SMZDM:
- 好价 – “Good prices”
- 好物 – “Good products”
- 好文 – “Good articles”
Some content is user-submitted and some is submitted by companies.
Each product page links out to a place where users can make a purchase. Sometimes it is a major e-commerce platform such as JD.com or Taobao, or a smaller e-commerce website or a brand’s own site.
Every product has a value on a scale on the bottom measuring whether a product is “worth it” or not. It’s determined based on user votes.
Most of the content is text and image format, rather than video.
GOOD PRICES
Product prices can be very low. However, the site isn’t known for selling low quality items.
Here are two deals we see on the site today.
A 1.99 Yuan Chinese New Year special for Kindle books.
A bunch of commenters claim to have trouble receiving the discount though. Still, 99 users voted it as “worth it”, while only 15 voted “not worth it”.
Wuliangye baijiu for only 749 Yuan, including shipping – BUT, only for the first hour. The normal price is 1,599 Yuan.
Although there’s a sizable discount, this is still quite an expensive item. For those that don’t know, baijiu in China can range in price from just a few Yuan to hundreds of thousands.
Good Products
Let’s check out two of the “good products” that we see on the site today. This section doesn’t feature discounts- instead, it shows off products that are higher-quality in their niche. Rather than link to individual products, it usually links to short articles that feature multiple products on a topic.
One article features six different products that will help with baldness.
One of the cosmetic products, Etude House eyebrow pencil, is marketed toward women. This brand might be interested to know that it’s listed in a popular Chinese article for men, it could be a valuable market segment for them.
Another article features a list of the best Steam games of 2018.
It links out directly to the Steam store where users can purchase the game digitally.
Good Articles
This section contains articles that compare products or show how to make purchases on foreign websites. It’s similar to the “Good Products” section, except that the content is mostly user-submitted. It also doesn’t necessarily contain a purchase link.
Here’s an article on how to use video game deal platform Humble Bundle. It seems to be posted by a regular user. Did Humble Bundle pay them to post it, or are they just an enthusiast? There’s no way to tell. As a marketing agency, we often craft content like this for clients.
The post introduces Humble Bundle and how to use it, including detailed instructions on how to pay.
How to use it for marketing
We use SMZDM as part of a broader marketing campaign. In other words, it shouldn’t be your one and only source of traffic.
REPUTATION MANAGEMENT / ORGANIC MARKETING
When we spread the word about a company, we like to cover multiple sites. When their customers do a search for them online, they’re likely to find out lots of useful and accurate information.
SMZDM is one of the places that we post. But we also post on many other platforms. The choice of which platforms to use depends on the industry, cost, and expected benefit.
SMZDM will create pages for some brands, while others will need to pay to be listed. For example, Humble Bundle has a page that acts as a hub for all deals.
There’s two ways that this could be approached: for those looking to get some quick exposure for free, they can try posting for free. Whether or not those posts will rise to the top is questionable though. The other approach would be to analyze the various options and then make a more targeted effort. There are many types of content and co-operation methods available.
Plus, the content should be written in a way that suits the audience. It seems that practical and funny content rises to the top.
AFFILIATE MARKETING
SMZDM is useful for supporting affiliate marketing campaigns. More on that in this post.
Some affiliate networks have special arrangements with SMZDM that helps them get greater exposure. In other cases, individual affiliates may post on SMZDM or other places.
Plus, SMZDM even has its own affiliate network. This makes it even simpler to get started with a low-risk campaign.
For small businesses that sell products to Chinese consumers online, I think it’s a no-brainer to at least use the free features.
It only becomes more complex when you consider the broader strategy or want to perfect the way you present your brand.