30th November 2020
Franky Wang, Head of Asian Business Activation, BNZ
Shannon Xu, Business Development Manager, Pure SEO
“Kia ora. 欢迎。Welcome to this, the inaugural North Harbour Asian Business Group event.” Kevin O’Leary’s opening words were met with enthusiastic applause. He and Business North Harbour (BNH) ambassador Jess Huang provided a bi-lingual introduction to the evening, highlighting the importance of the district’s Asian business community and expressing hope that attendees would feel encouraged to attend more BNH events, not limited to this new group.
The first speaker was Franky Wang from BNZ, who offered a warm te reo greeting, totally in keeping with his overall theme of helping New Zealand Asians integrate into the broader community via home ownership and business participation. He gave an overview of China and New Zealand’s business history.“The countries’ relationship goes back to the 1840s. The first large scale arrival of Chinese here occurred in the 1860s, initially for gold mining. NZ and China established formal diplomatic relations in December 1972, and the relationship has developed rapidly since then. Today, tens of thousands of students and tourists travel each way every year, and meetings between political leaders and heads of state take place regularly.”
He talked of the positive impact of the 2008 New Zealand-China Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which was NZ’s biggest trade deal since the Closer Economic Relations Agreement with Australia in the 1980s. China is now NZ’s largest trading partner in goods and second largest overall including trade in services.
Day-to-day, Franky has a focus on supporting his customers in key growth areas: housing, SMEs (small and medium sized businesses), and international migrant and wealth. He can also assist with New Zealand export connections into Asia.
Pure SEO is a multi-award-winning digital marketing agency. In her presentation, Shannon Xu shared numerous practical tips about search engine optimisation (SEO) discussing both paid and organic options. She explained how the various strategies work together, and urged local business owners to make the most of the potential benefits of Google My Business and Google reviews. Usefully, she compared advertising on Facebook (highlighting its domination of the social media landscape), LinkedIn and WeChat, demonstrating the difference between ads to raise awareness, generate leads, and instantly convert.
The upbeat atmosphere continued then, as attendees networked while enjoying some light refreshments.
Click on images to view full size
