Search engine optimization and search engine marketing are the undisputed leaders when it comes to reaching online users. Baidu is the largest search engine in China with more than 76.4% market share in China’s search engine market.

Learn how Baidu SEM can help in growing your business.

Targeted Advertising on Baidu

Baidu PPC platform allows advertisers to target selective audience groups based on various factors like devices and interests, location, demographics, keywords. The Baidu advertising platform gives advertisers full control over your marketing campaigns.

Every day millions of Chinese users are searching for products and services. With Baidu SEM (adstochina.westwin.com/Baidu-SEM) you can reach a vast number of potential users who might be interested in your products and services. With more than 60% market share, Baidu SEM also increases the chances of returning the client as well as targeting a new customer base. This can expedite business growth.

Immediate Results

Unlike Baidu SEO, Baidu SEM offers businesses immediate results. Time plays an important role in business growth. Losing time is equivalent to losing business opportunities. Baidu PPC allows businesses to showcase ads right in front of people who are searching for your products and services.

With Baidu PPC, you can narrow down on the list of keywords to use at different times of the year to optimize the results of the marketing campaigns. This allows you to keep costs in control and also get a good return on Baidu PPC investment.

Measurable Results

As with all marketing campaigns and strategies, you would want to measure KPIs to determine the level of success of the campaign. Baidu SEM provides you with Baidu Analytics that provides detailed report data along with accurate demographics data.

Analytical tools like Baidu Tongji can provide you with accurate insights into your webpages. Some of the data and insights that might be helpful to you are keyword ranking, crawling error, page index.

Baidu SEM analytics tools give the ability to measure universal SEO KPIs like organic traffic, direct traffic, referral traffic, bounce rate, session time, new versus return visits, conversion ratio, and the number of pages that get at least one visit.

With this data and analytics reports, you can make adjustments to your advertising campaigns, and discover new ways to optimize your website to increase traffic and conversions.

High Performance to Price Ratio

Baidu PPC has a high-performance to price ratio that ensures businesses can get potential clients without spending much money. No matter what your business size, Baidu SEM is perfect for all sizes of businesses. With a small investment in Baidu SEM, businesses can experience an increase in business sales volume and brand recognition.

 The Baidu PPC charges are based on results like how many potential customers it brings to your business website. With Baidu SEM, businesses have complete control and flexibility on their online marketing investment allowing an organization to optimize their campaigns for the highest possible return on investment.

Baidu SEM and Baidu SEO Work Hand In Hand

There is no doubt about the importance and effectiveness of Baidu SEO to grow business. One good thing about Baidu SEM is it complements Baidu SEO in different ways. Baidu SEM can help you find the most perfect keywords that can bring more traffic. Once you know the popular keywords that can bring the traffic you can use these keywords on your website to attract organic traffic.

Also, you can choose keywords that don’t rank well organically in Baidu PPC and attract traffic. This way Baidu SEO and Baidu SEM complement each other and help you target a wide variety of keywords used in your business niche.

Unique Paid Marketing Products

Baidu SEM offers a variety of paid marketing products like Baidu Pay for Placement, Baidu Pro Theme, and Baidu TV.

• Baidu Pay for Placement allows businesses to buy priority placement where you can have your keyword permanently tagged on the first page of SERP. This gives you a significant advantage over competitors.

• Baidu Pro Theme allows businesses to display their ads on apps for desktops and search engine tools.

• Baidu TV offers you access to Baidu Union Members website and allows you to choose where to exactly show the video advertisements.

Do you’ve any questions about Baidu SEM?

The business opportunities in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries are on the rise due to the new scientific and technological developments that are happening worldwide and particularly in China. To make it easier for industry professionals to share industry-related news and take advantage of the innovations, biopharma companies and institutes regularly organize bio conferences. Whether you are a new entrant or an established industry professional, these are events that you shouldn’t miss. Here are some of the reasons why you should consider attending:

They will feature current and upcoming biopharma developments

Bio conferences serve as meeting places for the leading researchers, scientists, and entrepreneurs of the biopharma and life science industries. By attending a China bio conference, for instance, you will have the opportunity to hear the industry leaders from China speak on important pharmaceutical and healthcare industry issues in the country. You will also be able to attend or participate in discussion panels and presentations to get better informed.

Not only that, but you may hear of ground-breaking research that hasn’t yet been made public and get new and useful perspectives on various biopharma industry concerns. Additionally, if you have any questions, you might be able to find the right experts to answer them.

They can help you expand your connections within the industry

As having extensive connections within the industry can help advance your business or career, you need to make an effort to meet and engage with other professionals in the biopharma and health fields. Attending a China bio conference is one way of doing so. To get the most out of it, you should find out about the programs and the attendees in advance. You can then plan to participate in specific programs and also arrange mutually beneficial business meetings with key people from the industry.

At the conference, you can make a point of introducing yourself to the other attendees and join in on business conversations. By networking in this way, you may be able to find experienced and knowledgeable people to collaborate with or partner with on current or future business projects.

They can help raise your company’s industry profile

Ideally, to do well business-wise, everyone in the industry must come to know about you and your company. At a China bio conference, you will have plenty of opportunities to promote your company to the right people. Along with networking extensively with industry professionals, manufacturers, distributors, and investors, you can sign up for the speaking and presentation sessions. Guest speakers with valuable insights to share are very much in demand with conference organizers. So, it will be a great chance to establish yourself as an industry expert and use the platform for business promotion as well.

It will help to have plenty of business cards and promotional business literature to pass around. You should also prepare detailed responses to possible questions that interested parties might put to you.

It will help to expand your company’s business scope

You can consider attending a China bio conference as it might prove to be immensely informative for expanding your business operations abroad. As one of the fastest-growing markets in the world, with a large and increasingly affluent population, China offers immense opportunities to pharmaceutical and healthcare companies. However, lack of sufficient knowledge of the language and cultural aspects can often prove to be entry roadblocks for many companies. There are also many rules and regulations that foreign companies must comply with to operate in China.

Attending a bio conference will put you in touch with Chinese biopharma representatives who can help you gain official approval to do business in China. They can also inform you about the various available licensing and collaboration opportunities. You probably might have a hard time getting such information and assistance on your own.

As you see, attending a China bio conference can open up incredible business opportunities that will only benefit your company in the long term. You will be able to learn about and incorporate the latest pharmaceutical research in your business. That will cement your place in the industry as a relevant, up-to-date company and guarantee that you can provide topnotch service to customers around the world.

With Baidu claiming more than 75% of China’s market, the search engine landscape in China is totally different from that in most Western countries. Baidu is the most preferred platform for companies to run search marketing campaigns in China.

Below are the few reasons why you should also focus on Baidu SEM but let’s understand first what Baidu Search Engine Marketing is.

What Is Baidu Search Engine Marketing?

Baidu search engine marketing is all about using paid tactics to gain exposure and generate leads. It mainly consists of Baidu PPC, which is similar to Google Ads. Baidu PPC includes setting up ads, placement of ads, and optimizing ads to gain higher ROI.

Baidu PPC is a paid marketing tool that requires an initial investment of 5000 RMB to open an account. Once you have set up the Baidu PPC account and made the deposit, the funds are immediately available for your PPC campaigns. The price of your ads depends on various factors like competition in the industry, bidding prices, and the quality of your ads.

Here are some unique benefits of Baidu search engine marketing for your business.

Improve Revenue

The primary objective of any marketing campaign is generating more money. In simple words, companies expect a high ROI from their marketing campaigns. Baidu and other social media platforms offer profitable playgrounds for search ads that bring more money for businesses. Anyone who has run a Baidu search engine marketing campaign knows this.

At the end of the day, Baidu PPC offers brands and agencies great potential to make money through search engine marketing activities.

Increase Brand Awareness

SEM plays an important role in increasing brand awareness as paid ads can increase it by 80%. Even if people do not click ads, the brand names are still visible on the top of the page, and people can easily see it while searching for related information.

Baidu has a unique feature known as in-feed ads which display native ads on bulletin board system, mobile site, and browser. The in-feed ad feature allows businesses to tap into growing mobile usage and changing consumer behavior.  In-feed ads allow companies to reach new audiences, increase brand awareness, and retarget existing users.

Baidu displays your paid ads above organic search results that guarantee the best views for the display and text ads. While Chinese consumers may directly go to an e-commerce site to make a purchase, many Chinese consumers still search for more information, reviews, and advice while purchasing products and services.  Hence, Baidu SEM can play a greater role to inform, attract, and divert traffic to your website that will help your business achieve its objectives.

More Conversion Focused

While search engine marketing is money-focused, companies cannot ignore other important conversions. Marketing campaigns also have other important objectives like new subscribers, contest entries, newsletter groups, which are other types of important conversions for businesses.

Baidu search engine marketing is an important conversion driver for any type of marketing campaign for the China market. Baidu PPC offers different choices and tools to control the ad spends like targeting based on interest, people with similar search behavior or with specific interests like instruments, business consulting, and manufacturing. Also, Baidu delivers all ads in accelerated mode by default.

Baidu SEM allows linking of paid ads to conversion-focused landing pages/sales pages that move web traffic through the sales funnel.  While SEO can also help in top sales funnel activity, it is paid ads that really focus on a specific sales/marketing goal and end of funnel conversions.

Brand Protection

Brand protection has become a necessity for businesses. You cannot ignore the possibility of your competitors bidding on your brand term and driving traffic to their website. Fortunately, Baidu PPC offers different levels of brand protection, which prevents your competitors from bidding for your brand keywords.

If your brand has good recognition in China market, you can go ahead and own the SERPs for your brand and trademark items. Baidu paid ads triggered by keywords are rich in multimedia and allows brands to occupy the top position for their brand terms at all times.

These are some of the benefits of Baidu SEM for your business.  Do you’ve any questions?

Before we begin… what is Baidu?

Well, as most people call it, Baidu is the Chinese equivalent of Google. What Google is to you is what Baidu is to a Chinese person! This extensive web service company was founded in the year of 2000 and is easily one of the world’s biggest internet companies today. It offers multiple services, the most commonly used of which is its massive search engine. Almost 80% of the searches that happen in China occur through Baidu (and not Google- surprising, isn’t it?)

Now, if you’re thinking that Baidu advertising is anything like Google, Facebook, or LinkedIn advertising, you thought wrong- as it turns out, it is very different from other Western websites! Most people choose to opt for Baidu advertising when they want to expand their brand into a foreign land (in this case, China). If this is the case, you will need to learn a little bit about this internet company before diving in.

Advertising on Baidu in English?

But before we go on to some of the important factors to keep in mind about Advertising on Baidu, let’s answer the most pressing question of all: is Advertising on Baidu in English possible? The answer is YES! You most certainly can. However, one must keep in mind that this is not 100% recommended.

The reason is simple: if you were to search for your favorite restaurant nearby and the landing page was in Mandarin, how would you react? Similarly, when in China, know your market! As most searches occur in Mandarin on Baidu, the subsequent landing page is expected to be in Mandarin as well. If instead of this, they see an English page, they will most likely leave the website immediately, resulting in an unusually high bounce rate for the landing page. This ultimately results to a failed campaign, as you may have gathered.

Insisting on Advertising on Baidu In English

If for some reason you cannot go on without advertising your landing page in English, fret not, for there are workarounds. While your landing page might be in English, certain SEM agencies would recommend using Mandarin keywords, leading customers to a said landing page. This shoots up the search engine optimization (SEO) while permitting advertising on Baidu in English. Even though this is a possibility, keep in mind that this won’t be the most successful campaign. In fact, you’d have to be extremely hopeful that something good would come out of this. The fact is just that Mandarin landing pages would perform better than English. Ensure to weigh the pros against the cons and make a decision based on that! Advertising on Baidu in English could cost you…

Things to Know When Advertising on Baidu in English

1. The Role of Bureaucracy

Keep in mind that Baidu is regulated heavily by the government! This means that any Western company wishing to advertise on Baidu (in English that too) would have to go through a tonne of paperwork and form elaborate contracts. A company registration and finance document would have to be made before opening up an advertising account. Needless to say, advertising on Baidu requires the right documentation: this is the first thing to keep in mind while hoping to advertise on Baidu in English (or any other language for that matter).

2. Mandarin-Recommended

As mentioned earlier, Mandarin landing pages for Baidu advertisements are highly recommended. Even though English landing pages fueled by Mandarin keywords is an easy fix, you cannot be guaranteed a great output. Since 99% of users perform searches in Mandarin, studies have shown that a large chunk of them would abandon an English landing page after searches on Baidu because it was not in Mandarin. If you are ready to deal with the high bounce rate, you may go ahead advertising on Baidu in English!

3. Differences: Social & Cultural

It’s not all about the language! Keep in mind that your target audience has taken a shift: both socially and culturally! What works for western audiences may not work in China at all! In fact, you may end up offending them in ways you never meant to. Make sure to do your research thoroughly beforehand and hire an experienced, trustworthy SEM agency if needed.

Ultimately, keep in mind that Baidu advertising is much trickier than advertising in different parts of the world. However, with the correct approach and know-how, the sky’s the limit (even advertising in English!)

Baidu, in other words, in the Google of China. A leading search engine and the world’s 4th ranked website by Alexa, Baidu brings with it a plethora of opportunities for digital marketers and brands who want to exhibit their products and services to the Chinese audience. Text, image, and video searches made by online browsers can be put to good use through Baidu advertising, or more specifically, the pay per click (Baidu PPC) program. When people browse for specific information, products, or services on the search engine, Baidu displays a set of organic results, as well as paid ads that typically make it to the top or bottom of the search engine result page. Baidu PPC (adstochina.westwin.com/Baidu-PPC) allows your ads to be displayed among these, provided you have bid for those keywords as part of your campaign. As more browsers click your ads, customer engagement, lead generation and conversions improve.

Benefits of adding Baidu PPC to your digital marketing efforts

Your digital marketing strategy for Chinese audiences can include many social or web search engine media, as well as the multiple advertising options they provide. However, Baidu PPC is a must-have on the list because it offers many benefits. Here are four important ones and how they give an edge to your marketing efforts.

# 1 – A wide reach

The prowess of Baidu is evident from all of the following. It is the largest search engine in China and the largest website in Asia. It is also the largest Chinese search engine in the world, with a penetration rate of 95%, covering over 135 countries in the world. It receives billions of queries every day and is used by not just people in China, but also Chinese netizens around the world. So, imagine the impact a simple ad on this platform would bring to your business. Not only does it improve visibility, but every time your ad pops up for the keywords searched, your brand recall goes up.

# 2 – Charged only for clicks

The beauty or the biggest advantage of pay per click or PPC ads on Baidu is that your account gets charged only when a customer clicks on the ad link. There is no cost for display or impressions. Because most customers who click on your ads are people with genuine interest, this model makes for a better option and gives you better returns in the long run.

# 3 – Use of targeted keywords

Imagine placing an ad for your product or service in the newspaper or magazine. Or putting up a display hoarding or running a minute-long advertisement on the television. All of these would cost eat up a considerable portion of your marketing budget, but not necessarily give you the returns you want simply because they do not reach the intended audience. You have very little control over who such ads get delivered to and can only hope for a small percentage of these folks to be prospects who are actually interested in your product or service. Baidu PPC ads are very different in this regard. Built around search keywords or search queries, these ads get delivered only to those people who specifically look up for the given keywords on the Baidu website. This improves the chances for your product or service ads being delivered to the right audience.

# 4 – Can be customized

Yet another plus with advertising on digital media is that your campaigns can be customized to your organization’s needs. The time, the placement, the duration of the ads, the maximum cap on budgets – all of these can be customized when you place a digital ad, including Baidu PPC. There is also a great deal of flexibility with such ads. If you are unsure of what strategy will work and would like to do an A/B testing with Baidu ads, that is possible too. You can spread your budgets across different ads and see which one gives you better results. You can always stop running the non-performing ones, and up the money on ads that give you better traction.

When it comes to promoting your business in China, leveraging the power of Weibo advertising (adstochina.westwin.com/weibo-advertising) can work considerably to your advantage. As one of the leading social media microblogging platforms in China, Weibo has more than a million users, and many of these people access it several times a day. Whoever your target audience is, it is almost a guarantee that you will find them on Weibo.

By deploying the right advertising campaigns, you will be able to reach the right audience and raise brand awareness about your products and services. That can vastly improve your chances of potentially converting many of these Weibo users into loyal customers.

Here are a few tips for maximizing results for your Weibo advertising:

Create attractive banner advertisements

Visual branding is crucial in social media promotions and essential for increasing social engagement. People are more likely to notice your company if your advertising has the design, colors, and content to make it stand out from the competition. On Weibo, you can put up promotional banners of different dimensions for both web and mobile use. Clicking on these banner advertisements will lead users to your website to learn more about your products and services. If the quality of these matches the promises of your advertising copy, you will make conversions.

Select the right keywords and phrases

Ranking high in Weibo’s search engine results is essential if you are to maintain an online presence. For this, you will need to select and use the right keywords and phrases in your content. That way, when people use those words and terms in their searches, your website will show up in their search engine results. Ideally, you want your site to show up in the first three pages, as most people don’t have the time or patience to look beyond those.

Target the right audience

While Weibo has millions of users, just pushing out advertisements and expecting instant conversions is not going to work. For your Weibo advertising to succeed, you must target the audience that is most likely to care about your products and services. And, towards this end, you should spend some time researching and identifying these potential customers by their ages, genders, professions, and locations. You should also pay attention to their buying habits. Using this data, you can then create content that will attract and engage your target audience.

Post useful content regularly

Along with creating content that appeals to the right audience, you will need to post it regularly to keep their attention. Posting consistency is the key to building up a following on Weibo. You don’t necessarily have to post every day, but doing it a few times a week at least will keep you on everybody’s radar. Use variation in your content, such as posting images, videos, and text, to keep your audience interested and engaged. The more people see your content, the more familiar they will become with your brand. Such brand awareness is essential for effective marketing.

Promote your posts, accounts, and apps

By actively promoting your posts, accounts, and apps, you are likely to catch the attention of a wider audience. Weibo offers Fan Headlines and Fan Tunnels for post promotions, and you might find these very useful in increasing your following. Fan Headlines are available for your posts, for those of other people, and accounts, while Fan Tunnels help push your posts, apps, and accounts to the top of the target audience’s feed.

Engage with your followers

Along with posting appealing content and posting it regularly, you must also take the time to engage with your target audience. While it is not possible to engage with everyone on an individual level, creating an impression that you are accessible and interested can go a long way in converting people. Always maintain a professional and courteous tone when you interact with people and respond appropriately to their queries and concerns regarding your products and services.

By implementing these tips, you should see a positive difference in the results of your Weibo advertising campaign. You will be able to reach and convert the right audience to your brand, increase your sales, and establish your business as a trustworthy, reliable entity.