Tait Lawton

Hello, hello, 你好, 你好!

My name is Tait Lawton, also known as “泰特” (Tàitè).

Since 2002, I've been working to bridge the gap between China and the West, making cross-border collaboration more beneficial for everyone. 

I'm the founder of Nanjing Marketing Group, where I work as a bilingual digital marketing strategist helping Western businesses succeed on Chinese platforms.

This page shares my story, where you can follow me, and what I’m working on now.

Why China?

I was born and raised in Edmonton, Canada.

My Chinese journey really began back in high school. I wanted to learn a second language and thought Chinese characters were cool, so I started Mandarin classes. I then majored in International Business at the University of Alberta. Even as a teenager, I think I had the instinct to seek out cooperation in places outside of what I considered "home."

I first arrived in China at the age of 20 to study at Nanjing University (南京大学) for a semester. It was an amazing, eye-opening experience because so much about China is different from Canada.

Soon after, I found myself in the situation that, I’m sure, happens to many people who leave their home country for new lands—I met a girl. She became the reason to stay in China longer than I had originally planned, and then return as soon as I graduated. 

I started two businesses while in China: One very profitable and another that only reached hobby status (more on those below).
For most of my 20s and early 30s, I would spend most of my time in China and some time in Canada, bouncing back and forth once every couple of years.

My wife and I had two daughters, and when the ‘Old Big’ (elder child) was ready for school, we settled back in Canada.
Now, I work from my home office in Edmonton, coordinating with my core team in Nanjing and partners globally. 

Chinese Tour Guides

Synotrip.com is a website I launched in 2006. it’s a place for global travelers to find tour guides in China and elsewhere.

More than a hundred Chinese tour guides on the site offer customized private tour services across China.

If I were to take one lesson from this experience it would be how to get more organic traffic from Google than competitors with millions in funding.

It didn’t grow big enough to be my full-time job, probably because we didn’t charge tour guides a percentage of their earnings. But it still made enough money to break even and a capable manager, Echo, still manages it to this day.

During the pandemic, it went into hibernation to stay alive. In 2024, it came back to life with a new business model, charging a percentage of revenue.

Synotrip is one of the 40 projects I am working on. The rest are in partnership with clients at Nanjing Marketing Group.

Chinese Marketing Services

In 2008, I founded a small marketing agency, Nanjing Marketing Group, that provides Chinese-language marketing services to an international client base. From a small start, we gradually grew from offering only translation services to running ads, creating websites, and implementing content marketing campaigns.

The Chinese digital landscape is dynamic, with new platforms and apps emerging all the time, and the industry mainstays introducing new features to stay ahead of the competition.

With every new addition or development, we adjust our marketing services accordingly.

As an agency, Nanjing Marketing Group is older than some of the major names in the industry (WeChat, Zhihu, Little Red Book, Douyin, etc.).

We’ve worked with some big international names (Microsoft, Siemens, Papa John’s), but mostly we work with small-to-mid-sized companies and schools.

The best thing about this agency is that the teams never stop innovating. Our mantra is “探索，创新，发现” (explore, create, discover), meaning we generate a lot of new ideas, implement some, analyze, and repeat, very much like a startup.

With our help, international businesses and schools can start growing their business in China much more quickly and have a higher chance of success.

If you want to learn about Chinese marketing, you can see our content in the following places:

Short English Videos

I produce English-language videos on Chinese culture to help a broader audience understand what’s going on in modern China:

I try to keep the style lighthearted, which I hope is a breath of fresh air in the polarized social media environment. 

I currently have about 40K followers across platforms.

Platforms

English Videos About Marketing

I also create videos about marketing, with a specific focus on Chinese marketing of course. These can be highly tactical and are recommended for total marketing nerds that either want to manage Chinese marketing campaigns or just want some marketing inspiration from the Chinese side.

Platforms

中文短视频 (Short Chinese Videos)

I’ve created hundreds of short Chinese videos about language and culture.

One of the more popular series is me explaining how we might express challenging Chinese sayings in English…to varying degrees of success. 

Fans find it valuable when I’m able to bridge the language gap for tricky concepts, but they also find it funny when I misinterpret something.
As of May 2025, I have ~170,000 followers, and the average video gets about 30,000 views.

These videos are also a good way of recruiting contractors and employees in China.

Platforms

Ways to Work With Me

The best place to reach me is at tait@nanjingmarketinggroup.com