Bruce Fink Makes Investment in Australian Start-up Sinorbis
Sinorbis, a new digital marketing company based in Sydney Sinorbis.com

Capitalising on proceeds from the sale of its Australian company, Executive Channel Holdings (ECH) co-founder Bruce Fink has made a strategic investment in Sinorbis, a new digital marketing company based in Sydney. Sinorbis is reportedly altering the way western companies pursue digital marketing efforts in China. The $2.3 million injection from ECH brings Sinorbis a total of $3.9 million to allocate towards the completion of its digital marketing software platform, which aims to facilitate new channels of communication between western marketers and Chinese consumers.

Helping western companies succeed in the digital Chinese marketplace

With its plan to connect the Chinese market to the rest of the world, Sinorbis aims to enlarge the presence of western marketers in China, increase digital marketing success and therefore grow the overall foreign advertising sector of the economy. Its cloud-based marketing package offers a range of services to clients, including:

  • Creating and promoting a digital presence in the Chinese market
  • Optimising current digital marketing activities, including enhancing effectiveness of websites
  • Performance measurement with strategies for improving effectiveness

Co-founders Bruce Fink and Charles Parry-Okeden have expressed optimism for the launch of the new platform. Plenty of western companies look forward to market in China, and Parry-Okeden has observed that limitations come from a lack of understanding as to how to proceed, and more importantly, how to budget and protect one’s financial investments in the effort. It is these dilemmas that Sinorbis intends to address with its digital marketing platform.

Sinorbis offering two service packages​

Western companies will have two options to employ the Sinorbis digital marketing platform. They can continue to design and manage their own advertising and marketing efforts using the platform to measure effectiveness across multiple channels (such as Baidu - China’s version of Google, Weibo - China’s Facebook and RenRen).

Moreover, a company can sign up for the full package of services as described above, and Sinorbis will perform all aspects of a digital marketing campaign. Its 360 degree approach aims to expose the entire spectrum of the Chinese digital network for western corporations.

Sinorbis co-founder Nicolas Chu said that the company is filling a deficit in the Chinese marketplace. Current Chinese digital marketing companies reportedly lack the equipment to work with western corporations. Chu, who is based in Sydney, launched Sinorbis after stints at Expedia and HotelClub, where he led teams developing new technology platforms. In the absence of Facebook, Google and their platforms for optimising and budget advertising, the marketplace needed a new tool, which is what Sinorbis created during the development of its platform.

Spending marketing dollars will be different in China, so Sinorbis aims to help corporations start a successful campaign. For instance, despite the fact that almost all of the world’s consumer goods are purchased online as a result of digital advertising, the sector reportedly still has small presence in the Chinese marketplace. On the other hand, services such as travel and education are active in the Chinese digital world. The marketing budget in these categories is projected to be as much as US$4.7 million for this year alone.

Sinorbis plans to help companies avoid wasting marketing budgets by steering and guiding leadership to make the most productive digital marketing investments. Chu believes that western marketing in China has the potential to grow as much as $30 billion per year over the next ten years, and the co-founder is expecting Sinorbis to be at the leading edge of this growth.

The investment makes sense for ECH, considered a pioneer in the digital communications industry. It also delivers targeted digital media content in executive and commercial spaces across the Europe.

A total of 25 employees work in the Sinorbis offices in Sydney and Beijing. It also has a software development centre in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The new Sinorbis platform is currently in the beta stage and will be launched in June 2017. In addition to the capital infusion, Bruce Fink and Charles Parry-Okeden have joined the Sinorbis Advisory Board.