If you are interested in doing Baidu Search Marketing, the first question you are concerned about is probably ‘how to gain visibility in Baidu’s first page. In this case, you may want to resort to improving Baidu SEO as a long-term marketing strategy that sustains your website traffic. However, you might forget that there are existing players in your niche market! A lot of them are pioneers or well-known. In the end, you feel uncertain about how you can outcompete them. Do not lose hope! You may still be able to gain a foothold with Baidu Search Engine Management (SEM). This strategy is usually referred to as pay-per-click (PPC) marketing.
Businesses usually combine SEO and SEM campaigns to achieve an optimum result. In this article, you will be provided five tips to reach your target audience with Baidu SEM.
Keyword Research
Researching keywords is an important skill you need to master because you may end up on a different track if you select a wrong set of keywords. Also, there are thousands of competitors out there trying to occupy spaces on Baidu. Therefore, you should research local trends and, preferably, hire a language expert who knows the Chinese digital market. A downfall that marketing gurus have repeatedly discussed is that you should not create ads based on keywords you find in English. After all, Chinese consumers have very different tastes from the Westerners.
Some basic research tools
Some sites may sway people by telling them that they can use Google Analytics for Baidu. Google Analytics can be a double-edged sword when using it in China. Instead, it would be best if you try to explore Baidu’s tools.
Here are three powerful (and free) tools you do not want to miss for sure:
- Baidu Keyword Planner: This tool is integrated with the Baidu’s PPC platform and can be used with the P4P ads to tell the price you can bid on your keywords.
- Baidu Analytics: You can track the number of visitors, when, and where they are. Besides, Baidu Analytics helps you target potential audiences in the advertisement and reports which ads take most visitors to your site.
- Baidu Zhishu: You can think of it as a tool that tries to understand what drives the audience to consume your advertisement. Hence, you can get their behavioral, historical, and regional insights.
The Special Baidu ‘V’ symbol
A way to establish authenticity and credibility is to verify your site. This symbol can stop other sellers from counterfeiting your brand image. There are three levels of ‘V’ that specifies the length of the period your site has been verified:
- V1: Your site has been verified for less than one year.
- V2: Your site has been verified for more than one year but less than two years.
- V3: Your site has been verified for more than three years.
Baidu considers V3 as a trustworthy source. More visitors will click into V3 sites, and V3 will outrank other websites with a lower V symbol.
Note: you will still need to reauthenticate your website with Baidu every year.
Baidu Shangqiao （商桥）and Baidu Lixianbao（离线宝）
Baidu Shangqiao is a live chat tool for customer service management, online communication, and data analysis. This live chat allows you to respond to customers and track their communication behaviors 24h/7 quickly. Keywords used by different users during consultations may provide you with insight into adjusting your SEM campaign that no one can imitate!
Baidu Lixianbao is an option to increase your pay-per-click conversion. You neither know how many clients’ phone calls you miss nor track them back outside working hours. You will end up losing potential sales profits. In Baidu Lixianbao, visitors can leave their phone numbers for the call center to contact them back once you are online. The phone call is free of charge for the customers but will be paid by a company based on the length of the phone call.
Paid advertisement from Baidu
There are several types of advertisements in Baidu, e.g., small/large image ads, Baidu brand zone, display product ads, non-brand ads, etc. These advertisements help raise brand awareness and increase the clickthrough rate. There are also other Pay-per-click ads options offered by Baidu:
- Baidu Tuiguang: The same as Google Adwords, it allows your ads to display on Baidu’s search result pages.
- Baidu Tieba: A Chinese online community with lots of new information. You can put your ads up on the recommendation streams and post streams.
- Baidu Pay for Placement (P4P): Bid for priority placement of your keywords to make your links and brand content permanently shown on the first page of search results. It is possible to buy a priority placement in China, while Google does not exploit this technique.
- Other services available for Baidu Union members are ProTheme and Baidu TV.
Advantages of other Chinese search engines
There are a plethora of things that foreigners do not know about China, including Chinese search engines. Can you think of any option other than Baidu? Below are two popular search engines used in China today.
Sogou（搜狗）
Sogou is the second top search engine in China. It has a unique algorithm in which the SEO strategy does not work the same way as Baidu SEO. Sogou is also the only search engine being integrated into the WeChat search platform since Tencent acquired it. Therefore, if your business is looking forward to doing marketing on WeChat, Sogou may be an excellent choice to embark on.
Shenma （神马）
Given that most Chinese people are searching for information on mobile devices more than PC in daily life, Shenma is built to be a mobile-only search engine. The service is the result of a joint venture between Alibaba and UC Web.
Conclusion
Businesses invest in Baidu for the benefits of traffics flow and brand image. Thus, with marketing experience in China, one will enjoy many benefits on Baidu by using its free and paid packages for SEM and SEO combined.
We at EhaiTech can help you enter the Chinese market and leverage the power of Baidu SEM for your site. Contact us now to get started!
