Frequently asked questions
Why do I need to market specifically to this community?
Statistics Canada's 2016 census shows that there are approximately 20,000 Mandarin-speaking Chinese Canadians on Vancouver Island, mainly in Victoria and Nanaimo. However, many Chinese real-estate agents believe that the total Chinese population has in fact reached well over 50,000 when including students and those who live on the Island seasonally as tourists.
That equals to more than HALF of the Nanaimo population! You can now get access to this market with little difficulty and great ease, with assistance from us!
Why is VI Weekly a better Choice?
Our online platform alone is now able to reach an audience of more than eighty percent of the Chinese residents on the island, almost instantly. This is mainly through our website and our social media channels including news feed subscriptions, postings and chat groups.
Most of all, no worry about cost as it starts from zero! And we also have much more low-cost and more flexible payment options if you plan to target this community a bit more.
What if my Chinese customers can not speak English very well?
Most of the Chinese Canadians on the island can speak and understand English, more or less. Most of the time what you need may be just a bit more patience.
If there does exist communication obstacles, either you or your customer can resort to the free Google Translation robot in your mobile phones. That tool is already very AI, very smart and very handy now.
Learn how here
What if misunderstanding or even dispute arises?
On the product-purchase side, it would be much easier as the purchase and sale process involves less language communications.
However on the services side, according to our past experiences, a lot of misunderstandings and informational gaps exist between local businesses and Chinese customers.
Sometimes it IS difficult for the Chinese customers to understand how you process your services or what the usual industry practices are like locally, as they are from a totally different cultural background.
In this case, there is always a solution as an old saying put it, ‘Do What Romans Do in Roma.’
Please let us know if there are any business practices or industry knowledge you would like to be better understood by the Chinese community. We can surely and will be very pleased to pass on that message to our readers.
That is our job!
What's special about this ethnical community?
Most minority people prefer to mingle within their own ethnic community, simply because it’s always somehow more convenient and easier, although most of them can speak or read in English to varying extent.
While both the provincial and national governments promote a multicultural concept as part of the nation's foundemental strategies, the minorities still feel or encounter hatred, prejudice and isolation issues/incidents from time to time.
Simply by becoming a vendor and making your products/services more accessable to the ethnic group, you can help build dialogues and communication with this social segment and therefore further help them get more integrated to the whole nation, instead of being isolated.