How to Advertise on Baidu in English

September 20, 2019 Walt Comments Off

China is a rapidly flourishing market for business and continues to stay a market that various foreign markets are constantly trying to tap into. Simply put, if you are looking to start or grow your business in China, there are a few things you’ll need to consider, one of the most important being Baidu.

What IS Baidu?

Baidu is to a Chinese person, what Google is to us. It is a massive web service company that offers multiple services, one of which is an intensive search engine. More than 80% of searches in China happen through Baidu, and not Google. Even though they were established in the year of 2000, they are easily one of the world’s largest internet companies today. Hence, Baidu is the Chinese equivalent of Google!

As it turns out, however, Baidu advertising is very different from other (Western) sites, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, or Google. So, if you’re looking to expand into China, you will need to know a little bit about the internet company before diving right in.

Advertising on Baidu in English?

Let’s address the most pressing question of all: can you advertising on Baidu in English? Well, the answer is: yes, you can. Is it recommended, however? Quite the contrary. It is recommended to have Mandarin landing pages, rather than English on Baidu because most users conduct their searches in Mandarin on Baidu. Expecting the subsequent landing page to be in Mandarin, users are most likely to leave the webpage almost immediately. This results in an unusually high bounce rate for the landing page, that ultimately leads to a failed campaign.

…But I WANT to Advertise on Baidu in English

If you insist that the landing page is in English, don’t worry, because this is possible. Your landing page remains in English while they make use of Mandarin keywords to shoot up the search engine optimization (SEO). However, as mentioned earlier, the fact is just that Mandarin landing pages have been proven to perform way better than English landing pages. You might want to weigh the pros against the cons while making this decision, because ultimately, it could affect the business.

Is It Tough to Enter the Chinese Market?

Now, even though Baidu is a fancy internet company, it is known that their revenue comes from advertising and marketing. Thanks to them, you can now optimize your business and promote your brand in China without much of a hassle.


The Question of Bureaucracy

The question remains, though. How hard it is to tap into the ever-growing Chinese market? Well, the truth is that for a Western company to advertise on Baidu, there is an exhaustive procedure involved. Baidu is regulated heavily by the government, and therefore, getting involved with Baidu involved plenty of contracts being signed and a lot of paperwork being processed. Bureaucracy at its finest!

But let’s get real here. It is rather common to go through this tedious process when advertising on any Chinese site, social network, or search engine.

The Kinds of Marketing With Baidu

Now let’s talk about some of the 3 most common ways to make use of Baidu’s services to promote your products and brand!

1. Baidu Tuigang

Similar to Google Adwords or Adsense, Baidu Tuigang is a very commonly-used pay-per-click advertising platform. It essentially permits advertisers to display their ads on Baidu’s search result pages, and therefore, helping to promote your brand in the best way known.

2. ProTheme

This is a service that is available to the Baidu Union members only, but is much more targeted, and could prove much more beneficial if you’re looking to enter a niche market. It permits the display of promotional links on particular web pages.

3. Pay for Placement (P4P)

This service permits a company to follow up on customers based on their relevant searches. Allowing businesses to bid on certain keywords, they then have their website link and other relevant information displayed on the search engine result page. Buying priority placement via site searches is not encouraged by Google, but Baidu allows it!

Is Baidu For Me?

Did you know that Baidu covers over 70% of the Chinese market share? If you did, chances are you wouldn’t be asking yourself that question. With plenty of competitors in China and other countries in Asia, Baidu is still way ahead of the game.