Meta has always been a top presence in the cross-border advertising market and a major customer acquisition channel for Chinese companies going overseas.

Meta CEO Zuckerberg mentioned at the recent third-quarter financial report conference that Chinese companies in various fields are actively going global, including e-commerce, gaming, and pan-entertainment.

Later, Huang Weixian, General Manager of Meta's Greater China Channel Business, shared with Chinese media his observations on the overall development trend of Chinese SMEs, the opportunities and challenges of going global, and the measures Meta has taken to empower SMEs to go global.

The essence part has been sorted out by IAN for everyone, let's take a look together~

Small and medium-sized enterprises are accelerating their overseas expansion

Huang Weixian said that Meta recently conducted a survey of 22,000 small and medium-sized enterprises in more than 30 countries and regions. The results showed that although the world faces many uncertainties such as inflationary pressures and geopolitical risks, small and medium-sized enterprises as a whole still maintain a recovery and development trend, with a decrease in bankruptcy rates and improved performance. Insufficient demand and tight cash flow are still the two major challenges they face. Among them, the inflation and cost pressures of export-oriented small and medium-sized enterprises are more prominent.

For China, small and medium-sized enterprises have always been an important cornerstone of the economy. Despite the severe external environment, survey data still shows that 29.5% of enterprises have implemented going global, and 19.9% are also in the process of planning to do so. Among the enterprises that have gone global, the proportion of small and micro enterprises is also considerable, accounting for 39%,17.5%, and 13.6%, respectively. With the support of national policies and market demand, these agile and flexible small and micro enterprises may become a driving force for China's going global economy.

The three major challenges faced by enterprises in "going global"

Huang Weixian believes that the challenges facing enterprises are changing, from the direct and scattered impact caused by the epidemic to long-term economic restructuring. He said that this is a long-term challenge, and adopting digital technology to cope with new situations is the correct solution. Small and medium-sized enterprises are also working towards this direction.

These companies face three significant difficulties in going global:

Firstly, different cultures make it difficult to accurately locate overseas user preferences; secondly, inflationary pressures intensify, even if accurate positioning, it is very difficult to efficiently reach Target Users; finally, there are differences in regulations and policies in various countries, which bring challenges to business operations and Market Access, and compliance costs are high. If you do not understand the advertising rules, your account may be blocked.

Despite the many difficulties, the growth rate of cross-border e-commerce is still 5 percentage points higher than that of domestic e-commerce in China. Therefore, small and medium-sized enterprises should think more about "how to go global" rather than "whether to go global".

Third, there is no unified standard for the model, and multiple innovative tools help enterprises go global

Social media is an important platform for providing creative inspiration for small and medium-sized enterprises.

It can be said that small and medium-sized enterprises are the core of the Meta community, and Meta also provides many tools for this.

Starting from 2022, Meta has launched the "Overseas Brand Creation Camp", which provides offline training and uses self-developed Machine Learning and artificial intelligence technologies to launch an exploratory e-commerce system to promote business conversion.

Huang Weixian revealed that Meta is making a lot of innovations in its products.

Firstly, it is AI-driven advertising tools and marketing solutions that can help enterprises achieve marketing goals from multiple levels such as advertising strategy, user expansion, and leads conversion. In addition, short video Reels, artificial intelligence platform Meta Advantage +, and instant message Messaging have also become key directions of focus. Meta is also actively helping enterprises use cutting-edge technologies such as AR and VR to create immersive and innovative customer experiences.

These rich products can help small and medium-sized enterprises go global, but enterprises need to make appropriate choices and applications based on their own situation and goals. Huang Weixian also gave several specific examples. For example, if a merchant wants to conduct marketing activities in the US, it is recommended to use short video Reels; if the goal is vague and needs to expand to multiple countries and regions, AI technology can be considered to intelligently match advertising creativity, budget allocation, and ad placement for intelligent delivery. For the South East Asia market, consumers are more inclined to use instant messaging tools such as Messenger and WhatsApp for one-on-one communication.