How to Win with Baidu Paid Search

“Return on Investment” (ROI) that’s the name of the game, after all whether you building your business because you want to change the world, build your ideal life or you’re in it for the profit you’ll need revenue to grow.

With Baidu SEO, your ROI is going to be slow and you probably won’t see return on your investment for at-least a good 4 to 6 months at minimum. With Baidu PPC, Google PPC, or any other form of advertising for that matter you’ll typically see a return pretty quickly.

Difference Between Baidu and Google Ad Platforms

If you’re serious about succeeding with Baidu PPC then it should know that while there are some similarities between Google and Baidu but Baidu is not Google. Baidu is different and advertising on Baidu is different…

Account Creation

You can create a brand-new Google AdWords account in about 10 minutes or less if you know what you’re doing. Baidu, on the other hand, is going to take a considerable amount of effort and time as with many things in China.

For one Baidu Tuigang account will require a ton of supporting documentation and it will take a minimum of 2 to 4 weeks to be approved. If you’re interested in opening up a Baidu Tuigang account here is an article, we wrote on how you can do that yourself.

Account Management

Contrary to the articles out there you can manage your own Baidu account and run ads yourself. Baidu just prefers that you work with one of their appointed agencies. However, even though you can manage and run ads yourself on Baidu would you really want to?

Google AdWords is in English and it is easy to get started but hard to master, Baidu, on the other hand, is hard to get started and hard to master.

Delivery Method

Google has 2 delivery methods, a standard which spread your ad budget throughout the day which is ideal for advertisers with a small business with a local marketing budget and Accelerated which spends your budget as fast as you can.

With Baidu, you don’t have any choice at all. There is only one delivery method and that is accelerated. This is also why getting results on Baidu will also be a lot more expensive even though CPM maybe cheaper.

The reality is advertising in China is expensive, Baidu is not the out lawyer rather the standard. If you don’t have sufficient budget for China, testing and figuring out the best performance on Baidu is very difficult.

Budget Requirement

With Google, there is virtually no requirement to start advertising on Adwords I believe you’ll need to be able to spend at least $10 a day and you can shut it off anytime. Baidu, on the other hand, require you to put down a minimum deposit of 30,000 RMB to just open up an account.

Of course, you don’t have to spend the 30,000 RMB all at once or even in a month, you can spend it however you like but you’ll have to spend it. This means that if for whatever reason Baidu ads are not working for you, you’re now out of 30,000 RMB.

To be fair, like I said previously advertising is expensive in China, and 30,000 is not a lot for most decent businesses.

It’s also worth mentioning that Baidu has a tool called Yusuan LeiJi Bao which is Baidu’s budget management tool that allows you to reallocate any remaining daily budget to a different day. Let’s say your daily budget is 50 RMB but you only spend 30 RMB, then Baidu will allocate the remaining 20 RMB to another day that has more impressions.

Baidu Ads Types

On Google, there are generally 3 types of ad that you can run. Google’s search network (PPC), Google Display (DPS), and Youtube Video Ads. Baidu, on the other hand, has a lot more types of ads you can run because it has a lot of different products.

Baidu Search & Display Ads

Just like Google, Baidu has the standard search ads and a display network.

Baidu Mobile Apps:

Unlike Google, Baidu has a mobile app. I’m not talking about Baidu Map but an actual Baidu app that allows people to search from within the app. This makes Baidu vastly different because as far as I know, Google does not have a Google app when people want to search on Google, they use a browser. Naturally, Baidu allows you to run sponsor feed ads on their app much like Facebook’s sponsor posts.

Baidu Knowledge, Baidu Wiki, Zhidao, Baidu TV:

Since Baidu owns a whole bunch of other properties such as Baidu Knowledge (similar to Quora), Baidu Wiki, Baidu Forums, etc…  as a Baidu advertise you can also choose to run feed ads on these properties as well.

Baidu Brand Zone

This is Baidu’s product that is specifically designed for a business who has a decent brand presence in China. Baidu’s Brand Zone ads allow the advertiser to promote and introduce their brand on the very top of the SERP results even above the standard search network ads whenever searcher searches for your brand

The down side to Baidu’s Brand Zone ads is that they are pretty expensive (a flat rate of around $1,500 a month). 

Baidu PPC Keyword Research

Like SEO doing keyword research and creating a good list of keywords to bid on is one of the keys to succeeding on Baidu. But unlike SEO where you may target a broader set of keywords who may attract a broader set of audience. The goal of Baidu PPC is to attract sales, leads, and new customers.

Here is our some guidelines on selecting your Baidu PPC Keywords:

High Commercial Intent of the Keywords: The goal of any none branding advertising campaign is to sell, thus when selecting Baidu PPC keywords you should look for high commercial intent as they’re more likely to buy from you.

Competition: Some keywords are highly competitive and can be very expensive to bid on. Even though it may be a higher commercial intent keywords but you have to look whether you have the budget to compete with your competition on this keyword.

If not you may need to select a bunch of less competitive keywords with bigger search volume instead.

Search Volume: This is also important, if there is no search volume even if you bid on it you’ll get very little traffic and conversion from the keywords making it difficult to scale your campaign.

ROI: This one is a bit harder to determine as it will require you to have some data and testing to figure out.

Most business will track clicks and some even conversions, but very feel business tracks ROI from each keywords. You’ll find that certain keywords will give you a much better ROI than others, and those are the keywords you should spend more on.

Rules of Succeeding with Baidu PPC

Before you chance a dime on Baidu Ads or any other means of gaining more business, consider the potential and probable ROI of your actions. You won’t know the actual results until after you’ve taken the plunge, but you can (and should) perform a pre-launch analysis of your situation to give yourself the best shot for success.