Ninety days is the right planning window for a Chinese-market launch. Shorter than that and you will not build narrative density; longer than that and you will spend past the point where early momentum can still compound. This piece sets out the sequence we run, week by week, for a typical Web3 protocol or product launching into Chinese-speaking markets. It is deliberately prescriptive — the real campaigns we run diverge in places — but the shape of the sequence is the shape of the work.
Three phases: pre-launch (weeks -4 to 0), launch week (week 1), and compounding (weeks 2 to 12).
Weeks -4 to 0: Pre-launch research and briefing
The single largest predictor of whether a Chinese-market launch works is how the four weeks before launch were used. Campaigns that rush this phase spend the rest of the ninety days paying for it.
Week -4: Audience and positioning
Define the specific Chinese-speaking audiences this launch is intended to reach — not "the Chinese market" as a single block, but the named sub-audiences. Which chain's users? Which platform's regulars? Which investor archetype? Which city-level developer community? A launch briefed against "Chinese crypto users" will be outperformed by one briefed against "Solana-native on-chain traders based in Chinese-speaking Asia."
Complete a positioning brief in Simplified Chinese — not a translation. Different frames land differently. The word choice that sounds confident in English will often sound evasive in Chinese; the framing that reads as technically rigorous in Chinese may feel dry in English. A native-written brief is the source of truth; any English version is a back-translation from it.
Week -3: Media and KOL target list
Produce the target media list with per-outlet content type, placement window, and expected role in the launch narrative. Produce the target KOL roster — tiered, platform-segmented, chain-specialised, with historical-conversion rationale for each inclusion. Begin outreach to Tier 1s; they have the longest scheduling lead time and their availability windows will structurally shape launch week.
Sort community targets — which WeChat groups, which Telegram channels, which Binance Square CN activity, which Xiaohongshu creators if applicable. Community seeding starts now; community activation starts in week 1.
Week -2: Content production
Produce all Chinese-language content assets: announcement article, technical primer, founder interview script, Twitter/X campaign copy, WeChat official-account launch post, Binance Square CN launch post, AMA script, community FAQ, and a visual kit sized for each platform's native format. Assets must be produced by Chinese-native writers; any translation step becomes visible in the final work.
Complete legal and compliance review. Chinese-market content carries specific risks around token promotion, exchange mentions, and regulatory phrasing; these are real and should be handled before content goes into distribution, not after.
Week -1: Briefings and rehearsal
Brief every KOL with their specific creative direction, references, and timing. Brief every media placement partner. Confirm launch-day AMA logistics. Set up the community operation — moderators, language coverage, on-call coverage for the launch window, and escalation paths.
If any part of the week-1 sequence depends on a piece of product functionality going live (contract deployment, frontend, claim page, referral system), confirm it now. Launches that slip a day because the frontend wasn't ready on Tuesday waste the rest of the week.
Week 1: Launch-week orchestration
Launch week is an orchestration problem, not a content problem. The content is already produced. The work of launch week is making sure each surface goes live in the right sequence, at the right density, with the right amplification.
Day 1 (Tuesday–Wednesday ideal)
Tier-1 media placements publish (two or three, scheduled for staggered morning windows across Asia-Pacific time zones). Tier-1 KOL posts go live on X and Binance Square CN within the first twelve hours. WeChat official-account long-form post publishes. Internal announcement channel (official X, official WeChat account, official Telegram) lights up simultaneously. The Chinese-language AMA is scheduled for day 2 or 3, not day 1 — it should amplify the initial signal, not compete with it.
Days 2 to 3
AMA or Space (co-hosted with a Tier 1 KOL or a Chinese crypto media outlet). Tier-2 media placements start publishing. Tier-2 KOL first wave (six to ten posts). Community activation — WeChat group seeding, Binance Square CN official account cadence, Telegram channel engagement.
Days 4 to 7
Tier-2 KOL second wave. First Tier-3 wave (ten to twenty posts focused on specific sub-audiences). Any incentive campaign tied to launch — referral, points programme, early-user quest — goes live and is amplified through KOLs and community. First weekly recap published on WeChat official account.
Weeks 2 to 6: Narrative density
Weeks 2 through 6 are where most launches underperform, because most agencies run these weeks as a maintenance mode. Actively run them as narrative density.
Media. Place two or three tier-2 articles per week with deliberate thematic variation — one product-focused, one ecosystem-contextual, one founder or user story. Begin scoping a flagship long-form piece with a tier-1 outlet for weeks 6 or 7, positioned as the first "post-launch thesis" piece.
KOL. Staggered tier-2 and tier-3 posts with content rotation — explainer, analysis, interview, incentive post, partnership announcement, thesis post. Two or three livestream or Space formats through the period, ideally co-hosted with specialist KOLs in specific chain or sub-sector niches.
Community. Native-language moderation twenty-four hours during Asia time zones. Weekly community update posts on WeChat, Telegram, and Binance Square CN. AMAs every two weeks, each with a specific functional focus rather than a generic "ask us anything" structure.
Product feedback loop. Weeks 2 to 6 are also when usable product feedback from Chinese users starts to surface. This feedback is genuinely different from Western user feedback — use cases, friction points, and mental models differ. If the product team is not receiving translated, summarised feedback weekly through this period, the launch is under-extracting value from the campaign.
Weeks 7 to 12: Compounding and optimisation
The last six weeks are where campaigns either compound or stall. Compounding looks like: early users are converting peers, tier-2 outlets are covering the project unprompted, Tier-1 KOLs are referencing the project organically, and community activity is self-sustaining. Stalling looks like: paid posts fade, organic reach drops sharply, community depends entirely on team-driven content, and press mentions require fresh budget every time.
The work of weeks 7 to 12:
Retention content
Content that serves the users you have, not just the users you want. Product deep-dives, usage guides, builder tutorials, case studies of real users, community highlights. This is the content that converts a launched product into a lived-in product — and it is almost always skipped by launches that run on fixed budgets.
Flagship research piece
Co-produce a single long-form piece with a tier-1 Chinese outlet. Topic should not be the product — it should be the category or narrative into which the product fits. This is the piece that makes the market read the product as a serious participant in a real sector, not just as the thing that launched in February.
Tentpole event presence
Attend one major APAC crypto event in the back half of the window with clear intent — speaker placement, one side event, a founder dinner, not a booth. Token2049 Singapore (September), Hong Kong FinTech Week (October/November), Taipei Blockchain Week (December), or Consensus Hong Kong (February) depending on timing. Event presence in isolation converts poorly; event presence integrated into the broader campaign cadence is one of the highest-leverage lines in the budget.
Post-campaign read-through
Formal review in week 12. Reach, engagement, on-chain metrics, community growth and retention, product-side user metrics, press mentions (paid and earned), KOL performance by tier and format, platform performance. The purpose is to decide what gets retained, scaled, or replaced in the post-launch operating rhythm.
What a realistic budget looks like
Chinese-market launches run across an extremely wide budget band — from USD 50,000 for a focused, narrow-audience launch to USD 500,000+ for a broad-market campaign across all four work-streams. Without pretending there is a single correct number, a typical mid-market launch allocates roughly:
| Line | Share of 90-day budget | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| KOL campaigns | 35–45% | Highest single line for most launches |
| Media placement | 20–30% | Tier-1 placements are expensive line items |
| Community activation | 15–20% | Moderation, content cadence, AMAs |
| Events | 5–15% | Depends on whether a tentpole event falls in window |
| Creative + translation | 5–10% | Native-writing fees; not optional |
| Agency fees | 10–15% | Varies by retainer vs project structure |
Numbers to be read as ranges. Specific launches skew heavily — a consumer-Web3 launch leans into Xiaohongshu creators and event activation; an infrastructure launch leans into tier-1 media and long-form content. The ratios are starting points, not rules.
Bottom line
A Chinese-market Web3 launch is 90 days of sustained, orchestrated work across four disciplines that reinforce each other. The work cannot be reduced to a press release plus a KOL list. It cannot be run by a Western agency with a sub-contractor in Shanghai. And it cannot be compressed into launch week alone. The teams that get this right start the work four weeks before launch, run the launch sequence with real operational discipline, and use the compounding window deliberately.
If you're planning a launch and want a second opinion on the sequence, write in. Related reading: The 2026 map of Chinese crypto media, Chinese crypto KOL tiers, explained, WeChat, Binance Square, or Xiaohongshu?.