January 1, 2018

Israel and China are a perfect match – China is an incredible opportunity for Israeli cybersecurity, medical devices and artificial intelligence industries. While at the same time Israel is a source of talent and know-how with its startup culture – something that China is lacking. Bilateral ties between Israel and China have increased significantly in recent years, sparking the launch of the Israel-China Innovation Committee and the Israel-China Economic Task Force.

The US is the typical route for Israeli companies expanding abroad. Language and culture make China seem daunting at first, and certainly for consumer-oriented companies trying to figure out the Chinese customer has led to many failed enterprises. B2B opportunities, on the other hand, are a perfect setup for Israel companies. Possible access to capital for expansion and growth another major reason to look at China.

How to break into the Chinese market:

Understand the target customer and other stakeholders

Find the right strategic partners to help you. Consumers in China are entirely different than what you are used to. They are on different channels, they have different expectations, and there are important cultural norms you’ll want to be aware of. A local team on the ground with the experience and tools to understand and effectively target customers is crucial to preventing big blunders.

Regulatory concerns

It is critical to spend time researching and understanding the regulatory environment prior to making any decision to enter the market. China has extremely strict laws protecting consumers, including quality, standards and other regulations covering most industries. Sensitive industries such as medical devices and pharmaceutical are especially strict.

Trademark everything, immediately

As soon as your product comes on the scene in China you can bet there will be copycats. We’ve seen it with big brands and small, if you don’t take trademarking seriously, you run the risk of expensive, messy and prolonged legal battles. Before talking to anyone, start the trademark process and make sure you own the corresponding Chinese domain names (.cn and .com.cn).

Don’t assume what works in the West will work in China

Look no further than eBay and Uber, two remarkably successful international companies that failed in China. Chinese consumers have different tastes, different expectations, different cultural norms and customs that are deep-rooted in society. On top of all of this is an unrelenting drive for innovation, which makes brands with a weak positioning strategy extremely vulnerable. If you take your brand to the China market and your messaging is unclear, or your branding is weak, there is a good chance your product or service will be copied and eaten up by a domestic brand.

Find a decent Chinese name

It doesn’t have to be a direct translation, or even exactly the same as the Western version. The Mandarin language is comprised of thousands of characters that all have a great deal of significance. Meaning there are lots of options for translations that can turn out great, or translations that can turn out… not so great. AirBnB fell prey to a naming mishap when they entered the Chinese market as 爱彼迎  (Àibǐyíng), which they explained means “let love meet each other” but to native Chinese this name conjures up images of a “love hotel”, and many complained that it is awkward to pronounce.

Even if you think you’ve settled on a great name, test it, test it and test it again.

Start with distribution and expand from there

You don’t need to set up shop right away. After you’ve trademarked everything, going through a distributer to test the waters is a good way to enter the China market. Many SME’s in the medical industry routinely work with distributors to get their products into hospitals in China.

Set up your website

Number one piece of advice; put your Chinese website on a server in China or Hong Kong. Shrinking attention spans haunt every content marketer, so don’t lose your audience even before your beautifully, well-crafted home page loads. If you are hosting on a local Chinese server you are required to apply for the ICP license and this also means you need to have a local entity already organized. You’ll typically need to apply for an ICP license from the Chinese Government; this will lead to better search results on Baidu and allows you to run PPC campaigns.

Don’t forget to make your website mobile optimized! In China more than 95% of Internet users are using their mobile phones to access it.

Choose the right trade shows

This goes hand-in-hand with understanding your target customer and stakeholders. There are hundreds of trade shows in China every year, with thousands of exhibitors. It can be tempting to try and get your foot in the door to as many as possible, but this will leave you out of budget and exhausted quickly. Can you team up with similar brands? Make connections with attendees beforehand?

Enter social media with your big toe in the water

With all the hype around WeChat in China, many brands are ready to dive headfirst and go all out for this mega-app, but take a step back. WeChat is completely different than Facebook, Instagram or any other typical social media platform you are familiar with using. It is important to set the right expectations, and the right strategy. Become well versed with the app, it’s functionality and it’s limitations before setting your KPIs. While it is important for brands to have a WeChat account, there may be other channels to investigate.

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OZ Global b2b

Let’s Talk About the Cheetah in the Room

By 
Nirit Elyovich, MBA
, 26/08/2025

Is your marketing sprinting in the right direction? A simple five-step process keeps focus on what drives real business results.

min read
Why a cheetah and not an elephant? Because an elephant doesn’t run anywhere - but a cheetah does. Blink, and the year may sprint past you before you’ve managed to focus your marketing on what truly matters for your business. You’ve finally closed your business strategy. The executive team is aligned and committed to the decisions and ambitious goals that were set. Until now, everything fit neatly into the Excel sheet. From this point forward, it’s up to the leadership team to prove execution. Each executive must ensure their function contributes directly to reaching those goals. You return to the office energized - yet not always clear on what this means in practice. How do you turn strategy into action? How do you transform ambition into results? Marketing owns the revenue side of the business. Which means it must be directly tied to business decisions. In our view, any marketing initiative that doesn’t move the needle on company performance - whether short or long term - is irrelevant. As one frustrated CMO once told me: “Unfortunately, whoever shouts loudest wins my attention.” Too often, urgent matters push aside the truly important ones. There are many reasons behind this frustration, which often prevents CMOs from focusing marketing efforts on the company’s core business anchors - prioritizing initiatives with deep impact on business results long before other requests land on their desks. As a company that leads Israeli B2B companies to success in the global market, we’ve developed a structured five-step process to ensure marketing directly advances the company’s business decisions.
  1. Translate business decisions into marketing initiatives Take a disciplined look at your strategy through a marketing lens and identify which decisions can be transformed into marketing moves. Not every business decision needs to land on the marketing desk - that’s exactly why you have multiple executives around the table. The CEO ensures nothing falls through the cracks.
  2. Prioritize five key initiatives Establish clear criteria and select the marketing initiatives with the greatest potential to impact business performance. Keep the list realistic and aligned with budget and leadership attention.
  3. Deep-dive into the chosen initiatives Define success metrics, risks, internal stakeholders, milestones, and timelines for each initiative. This thorough review will also help you reassess whether the initiative you’ve chosen truly has a meaningful impact on business results.
  4. Win executive approval Confirm these are the most meaningful initiatives and gain budget approval. This stage is also an opportunity to sync with fellow executives.
  5. Build the annual marketing plan Break each initiative down into specific actions, map them across the year, and create a logical, effective flow of execution.
From here, it’s all about consistent management - making sure the team works according to plan, monitors results, and improves along the way. The beauty of this process lies in its clarity. Every marketing effort is measured by its direct contribution to the business. If it’s not in the plan, there’s a reason. It may sound simple - and it is - but it requires you to pause, plan, and sometimes partner with an external professional. Someone who will hold you accountable, challenge your thinking, and keep you focused. Someone who’s done this many times before and knows how to steer the process. The cheetah doesn’t wait - and the year won’t either. Now is the time to focus your marketing on what truly matters for your business and drive real impact. We’re here to help.
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1250X600

Your Growth Engine for 2026 and Beyond: No, It’s not Paid. It’s Organic Marketing

By 
Liat Shaaf
, 17/08/2025

Is paid marketing enough in today’s digital chaos? How do B2B buyers really decide? Discover why organic drives trust, growth, and long-term results, while paid only accelerates.

min read
Growth Engine is the big question in today’s fast-changing digital world, where algorithms decide what we see. B2B companies keep asking: is organic digital marketing still worth it, or is paid the better way to hit business goals? It’s a fair question. Ad costs keep rising, buyers are harder to reach, and AI and privacy changes are shifting the rules on all of us. Both organic and paid have their strengths. But if we’re talking about long-term, sustainable results, organic is strongly becoming a key driver of real business results, 2025, 2026, and beyond.

1. Organic fits how B2B buyers actually make decisions

Every marketer understands that the B2B buyer’s journey isn’t a straight line. It’s a maze - multiple stakeholders, long evaluation cycles, and endless rounds of research before anyone ever talks to sales.

Where do buyers spend that time? On search engines, LinkedIn, industry forums, and reading trusted publications, not clicking random banner ads. That’s where organic channels like SEO, thought leadership, organic social, PR coverage, and influencer mentions come in.

When you’re showing up in those places early, you’re shaping their perception before they even start shortlisting vendors. You’re educating them on your value, building familiarity, and making it easier for them to say “yes” later.

You see, paid ads can put you in front of them fast, but organic keeps you in their line of sight throughout the entire journey, which supports business goals like higher lead quality, bigger deal sizes, and shorter sales cycles.

Here’s an example for you: I worked with an industrial equipment manufacturer that leaned into SEO and highly technical content. They started getting engagement from engineers months before RFQs were even issued. Those early touchpoints turned into warmer, more qualified leads down the line.

 

2. Organic builds the kind of trust you can’t buy

In B2B, trust isn’t just nice to have. It’s the currency deals run on. These aren’t impulse purchases; they’re multi-year contracts or mission-critical tools.

Sure, paid ads can grab attention. But buyers know they’re ads. That awareness puts a ceiling on how much trust you can build with them.

Now, organic content, whether it’s a deep-dive whitepaper, a webinar, or a mention in a respected industry journal, positions you as a credible authority. That credibility is often the deciding factor when procurement teams are weighing similar proposals.

The result? Bigger deals, higher win rates, and customers who stick around longer.

 

3. Organic content keeps working even after you’ve paid for it

IHere’s something paid will rarely give you: compounding returns.

When a paid campaign stops, so does the traffic and the leads. But a great piece of organic content can keep attracting and nurturing prospects for months, even years.

That means the budget you put into organic keeps paying you back, without needing constant top-ups. Over time, that makes your pipeline more predictable and your cost per lead lower.

 

4. AI, Privacy, and Platform changes are making organic even more critical

The way people find and consume information is shifting fast.

AI-driven search tools like Google’s AI Overviews and Microsoft Copilot are pulling answers from trusted, authoritative sources. If your content isn’t seen as credible, you’re invisible in those results.

Add to that the privacy changes - cookie deprecation, tighter ad targeting rules - and paid ads are getting more expensive and less precise.

Meanwhile, organic channels help you collect first-party data (subscribers, event signups, community engagement) you actually own. That’s gold for account-based marketing, personalized outreach, and nurturing high-value deals.

 

5. Paid Still Has a Role, Just Not as the Foundation

Don’t get me wrong: paid still matters.

If you’re promoting a product launch, driving event signups, or retargeting high-intent prospects, paid can deliver quick wins. But when paid is your only engine, your costs rise every quarter just to maintain results.

The smarter play? Build an organic foundation that runs 24/7, then use paid strategically to boost your best content and accelerate deals already in motion. That way, you get both speed and staying power.

  So, you see, in B2B, where the landscape is only getting more complex: longer sales cycles, more decision-makers, new tech shaping how people discover solutions, organic marketing isn’t just about “free” traffic. It’s about meeting core business goals: generating high-quality pipeline, shortening sales cycles, increasing deal sizes, and building trust that keeps customers coming back. Paid promotion is a great accelerator. But organic? That’s your foundation for sustainable growth in 2025–2026 and beyond. Build it now, and it will keep paying you back long after the latest ad campaign ends.  
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seo to geo

From SEO to GEO: How to Make Sure Your Content Shows Up in AI Engines

By 
Einat Talal-Cohen
, 29/06/2025

Your brand is more than just a logo - it’s a powerful strategic tool. Discover how CEOs can leverage branding to build trust, differentiate, and drive business growth.

min read

SEO to GEO marks a new phase in online success. For years, success online meant ranking high on Google. And that’s still true - but search itself is expanding. Today, visibility doesn’t stop with search engines.

It also means showing up in AI-generated answers from tools like GPT-4o, Gemini, and Claude.

Here are some facts you need to know:

  • 67% of technical queries never make it to Google
  • They’re being answered instantly by ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity
  • Google’s AI Overviews now appear in ~13% of all searches - up from 6.5% in January 2025
 

If your brand isn’t part of those answers, you’re invisible to a growing share of your market.

Search behavior is evolving:

  • Queries are longer (23 words on average, not 4)
  • Sessions are deeper (lasting around 6 minutes)
  • And AI engines don’t just search - they remember, reason, and respond with personalized, conversational synthesis

SEO still matters. But it’s no longer enough on its own. That’s where GEO - Generative Engine Optimization - comes in: the next evolution in making sure your content gets seen wherever people search for answers.

Here’s how to start positioning your content to show up where it matters most:

5 Ways to Optimize Your Content for AI Engines

1. Build Topical Authority, Not Just Keyword Lists SEO taught us to chase keywords. GEO rewards expertise. AI engines prefer trusted sources that consistently publish valuable content on specific subjects. What to do: Create content clusters. Go beyond isolated blog posts and build topic ecosystems: guides, FAQs, thought leadership pieces, and deep dives.   2. Write Like You’re Explaining It to a Smart Friend AI engines favor content written in a natural, conversational tone. If it reads like stiff marketing jargon, it’s likely to be ignored by LLMs. What to do: Break down complex topics clearly and simply. Use questions, summaries, and direct answers. Write to inform, not impress.   3. Format for Easy Extraction AI engines love content that’s easy to lift, quote, and summarize. Dense paragraphs are ignored - clarity wins. What to do:
  • Use H2s and H3s properly
  • Add bullet points and numbered lists Start with a TL;DR or summary whenever possible Think: Could ChatGPT easily use this paragraph in an answer?
  4. Build Trust with Credibility Signals AI models look for trustworthy, well-sourced content to avoid hallucinations or misinformation. What to do: Use expert bylines, cite credible sources, include data, and showcase expertise. Think “thought leader,” not “content farm.”   5. Optimize for Zero-Click Visibility People may not click anymore - they may just read the AI’s answer. Your goal is brand visibility in the answer itself. What to do: Include brand mentions, URL citations, or phrases like:“According to [YourBrand].com…” Help the AI connect your expertise to your name.

Final Thought: Be Part of the Answer

SEO isn’t dead. It’s evolving.  GEO is the next layer, giving your brand the power to show up not just in search engines but in the AI-generated answers people increasingly trust.
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