Marketing Advice That Matters
An extremely large volume of searches in China happens through the search engine Baidu, making it one of the country’s biggest. However, the audience in China behaves differently from those in the other parts of the world, making search engine marketing and advertising on Baidu different from that performed elsewhere. Online marketing in China needs a different recipe altogether, and for marketers, brands, and e-commerce players looking to grow brand awareness tap into a new set of customers, or to improve sales through Baidu advertising, here are a few things to know.
# 1 – The audience network is extremely huge
China has the world’s largest population. The country also has one of the largest online population, which gives marketers a compelling reason to advertise their products and services through Baidu. However, the large number of online users also means that your advertising efforts may not meet its target if not monitored or fine-tuned correctly. Therefore, it becomes important to know who in this large pool of audience you want to attract. This avoids dilution of efforts by money being wasted on attracting the wrong set of people towards what you want to sell. It is also good to have realistic budgets in place for all your advertising efforts done through Baidu as capturing potential customers from this large pool can soon exhaust budgets if not monitored carefully.
# 2 – There is a lot of paperwork to be done
The Baidu search engine and its associated marketing and advertising activities are monitored heavily by the Chinese governments. Advertising on Baidu may not be as easy and effortless as creating a campaign account on other search engines. So, as a Western brand or company looking to gather traction in China, you need to be prepared to go through a lot of bureaucracy, paperwork and contract before you can have your Baidu ads up and running. For instance, to open the account, you need a company registration and finance documents to be submitted. If your product or service lies in a highly restricted industry like an airline, finance, or healthcare sectors, you may also need additional documents to get the process done. While this may not be seen in the Western world, such procedures are fairly common when conducting search engine marketing or advertising in China. As someone new to Chinese waters, you may find these processes tiring, but with the help of a marketing or ad agency, you can get your paperwork in place in a breeze.
# 3 – Chinese landing pages can make a world of difference
People are searching for a product or service through Baidu usually do so in Chinese. While these searches can be redirected to a webpage in English, the efficacy of your efforts can be better when the search gets redirected to a landing page in Chinese, as the latter performs better. From the user’s perspective, a person conducting a search in Chinese, when presented an English result page, may not stay for long to discover what you have to offer. This can increase bounce rates, causing you to lose potential leads just because you did not cater to their language needs. It can also result in your Baidu marketing efforts being pushed down the drain.
# 4 – Socio-cultural differences need to be addressed
Chinese audience are different from those in the Western world. The socio-cultural differences are evident in how users perceive products and services and respond to marketing and advertising campaigns on a search engine like Baidu. So, when testing the waters in the Chines landscape, be prepared for some surprises. What works for online advertising campaigns elsewhere may not give you many results in the country. So, before you begin your advertising efforts on Baidu, it is good to speak to experts who have experience advertising in this market. Also, trend and consumer needs and preferences are constantly changing, so getting some expert help can be of immense value especially if you are a novice to marketing in China.
Baidu advertising may be tricky when compared to online marketing efforts elsewhere, but with the right approach and efforts, you can meet your targets and see results, with ease.
