How To Run Baidu Advertising Campaigns: A Step by Step Guide

Your Baidu advertising strategy is about to get serious. In this article, we’ll walk you through everything that’s needed for a successful run-and it doesn’t even involve magic! We’re going to cover all the basics from setting up your Baidu ads account and making an ad targeted at just the right audience so they can see what makes our product/service different than other products on their search engine results page (SERP). And don’t worry—we will show how these steps work together in order to yield better metrics when executed correctly.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur or marketing director looking to improve your visibility within China, this step-by-step Baidu advertising guide will help you get a better understanding of the tool! If you are already ready for the next step and want to get started, check out our Baidu PPC (& SEO) solutions here and drop us an email!

The Benefits of Using Baidu Paid Advertising

There are many reasons why you should consider advertising on Baidu, one of China’s most significant search engines and portals. For example:

• Reach and Visibility: Baidu has an estimated 70% market share in China, so it provides excellent reach and visibility to your products/services. Paid ads are a great complement to your Baidu SEO Marketing strategy
• CPC Pricing: Baidu is one of China’s best-priced paid advertising platforms. Their average conversion rates are higher than many other search engines (still expensive tho!).
• Customer Personas: Baidu most likely covers your most valuable customer personas (they cover most age groups, and most industry categories).

NB: In the long run, an SEO strategy will be more beneficial than PPC. Indeed organic traffic is of better quality and less susceptible to sudden spikes in competition from other advertisers who bid on your keywords higher than you do. However, Baidu Paid ads also tend to outrank organic results and are great to get initial traffic or to get a boost for a specific event.

With all this in mind, it makes sense to try Baidu PPC advertising if you haven’t already.

Baidu Paid Advertising & Types of Paid Ads Available to Brands

Baidu is a search engine that’s often called the Google of China. Baidu paid to advertise is a way for advertisers to promote their brand, products, and services within Baidu search results to appear alongside organic search results when potential customers conduct a relevant search on Baidu. Paid ads are also displayed as banner ads on Baidu’s particular interest pages.

In Baidu, you can choose from various ad formats, including text, image, and video ads. This way, you can ensure that your ads appear before your target audience in the most appropriate format possible.

Every time a customer clicks on your ad, they’ll be brought to a landing page. A Baidu landing page can either be a URL you own or a Baidu sub-page that you’ve created for this specific campaign.

Baidu Tuiguang aka Baidu Phoenix Nest: Baidu Keyword bidding system

Baidu Tuiguand aka Baidu Phoenix Nest is the automated bidding platform of Baidu. Baidu Tuiguang, Baidu’s main advertising product, is similar to Google Ads and AdSense. It is a pay-per-click advertising network that allows advertisers to place adverts on Baidu search results in pages and other Baidu Union websites. It allows you to run ads on Baidu Serps as well as every other website belonging to the Baidu ecosystem (ex: Zhidao, Tieba, and so on). Much like Google ads, they are displayed between organic results and you can distinguish them thanks to a small tag

NB: The Baidu Tuiguang admin interface is available in both Mandarin and English. In order to use this service, you must have an address registered for your business within China or some parts of East Asia such as Hong Kong;

• ProTheme: The Baidu Pro theme service is a great way to promote your company’s products and services through highly targeted ads that are only available for members of the Union and display promotional links on specific web pages, as well as music players, apps, desktop apps, etc.
• Pay for placement (P4P): The program places your site at the top of searches related to relevant/chosen keywords. Your ads will appear in search results
• Baidu TV: Available to Baidu’s union members, this type of ad is designed for video advertisement format.
• Information Feed Ads: The Baidu information feed ads launched in 2016 were an innovative way to mix organic content with paid advertisements and distribute them across the company’s many products, such as Forum posts or News articles.

Baidu Brand Zone: Basically buy Baidu’s first page for your branded ad

The Baidu Brand Zone is a space where you can find all the information about one specific brand. It often includes links to their website, online store, news related to them, and promotional offers for customers. The brand zone can be fully customized to match a brand aesthetic and take up most of the first page of results, while on mobile the brand zone takes most of the screen as well.

NB: The cost of Baidu’s brand zone service is around $1,500 a month. If you do not have much brand awareness in China yet, we would suggest you work on that first.

Paid Advertising on Baidu: In Practice

Baidu paid to advertise brings people from Baidu search results or Baidu’s particular interest pages to a landing page that you have created yourself or own. In other words, when your ad is clicked on in Baidu’s search results pages, the user will be sent to your landing page, where they can find out more information about your product or service.

As such, it’s essential to consider which keywords you want to target and how you’ll determine the success of your campaign.

Who Can Run Paid Ads on Baidu?

As long as you meet Baidu’s general terms and conditions (e.g., age, gender, and availability), you should be able to run a Baidu advertising campaign to promote your products or services. Baidu targets specific demographics in some countries; however, it is not yet clear whether this extends to the Chinese market.

How To Set Up A Baidu Paid Advertising Campaign

Setting up a Baidu PPC advertising account is a time-consuming and complicated procedure in and of itself. For the record, any company wishing to open an account with Baidu is required to submit business documentation, make website updates, and pay a minimum deposit of 900 USD into the account, among other things.

This can be accomplished in two ways: by establishing a direct relationship with key Baidu branches such as Beijing and Shanghai, or by engaging with a Baidu-listed agency partner.

Prepare Your Chinese Website

If you have an English website, you should have it translated into the Chinese language at this point. This is a crucial step, as Baidu places a lot of importance on the quality of your landing page that will be understood by the majority of its visitors which are Chinese consumers. If you have a Chinese website, confirming that it can be indexed by Baidu’s search engine bots will also be necessary. This may require some server-side or HTML changes.

Submit a Complete List of Legal Documents to open your Baidu Ad Account

Before Baidu will approve an account, it needs the following documentation:

• Business license or registration certificate
• Company information on a government website
• Screenshot of one of the company representatives’ passport
• Authorization letter signed by the company representative
• Monthly bank account statement
• Photos of your office building

Usually, the process can take 2-4 weeks before your account is approved. Communication with Baidu representatives must be frequent to ensure that everything is proceeding as planned. The review procedure is rigorous, and you must exercise extreme patience throughout it.

You should work on your account structure while you’re waiting for final approval so that you’re ready to go as soon as you get the green light from them. Planning the structure, conducting keyword research, creating keyword lists, and creating advertisements are all options. If you have all of these items prepared, you can begin setting up your account as soon as you are granted access.

Account Activation for Baidu Paid Ads

Once Baidu has verified your documentation, you’ll receive an email that allows you to set up your account. Once your account is ready, you can begin running campaigns!

Baidu offers various advertising products, including paid search ads in the main search results pages and the right-hand sidebar. There are also banner ads, mobile ads, and targeted advertising based on location.

(Baidu) Paid Advertising Restrictions and Regulations

Advertising in China, in general, is strictly monitored and regulated. Certain products are not allowed to be advertised, and the ad networks routinely update this list. If you do not adhere to these terms, your account will be suspended immediately.

• Some industries that need approval such as metal dealing, pharmaceuticals, foreign exchange trading, VPN services, e-simulation, and online gambling, require specific approval.
• Certain words and phrases are prohibited from being used. They could be associated with certain sectors or terms that have been prohibited on the site. Even though there is no official list, we browse through enough advertisements in the course of assisting hundreds of customers to limit the likelihood of encountering such phrases. Before any advertisement goes live, we evaluate and approve it.

Tips for Improving Your Results

Like with any PPC campaign, the results you get are only as good as your budget and targeting. Here are some tips for improving your Baidu PPC campaign results:

• Budget: Set a daily limit on your budget so you don’t spend more than you can afford.  
• Ad Groups: Create specific ad groups to target different groups of customers. Baidu can accommodate up to 100 other ad groups.
• Ads: Create various ads, so you have several different messages to your target audience.
• Keywords: Bid on brand-related keywords and bid high for your top keywords.
• Placements: Try to get onto the first page of results. If you’re having trouble getting there, consider using a paid placement or expanding your keyword list and ad groups.

How To Optimize Your Baidu Paid Ads Campaigns?

To improve your Baidu paid ad campaign, there are a few things you should consider as part of the optimization process:

• Bid Management: Bid intelligently based on your bids and budgets. Continually optimize for conversions, but be careful to avoid bidding wars.
• Campaign Structure: Create specific ad groups and ads dedicated to keywords and phrases related to your business. This will help you maximize the return on investment from each campaign.
• Landing Page: Ensure that your landing page matches what you’ve promised in your ad so visitors know exactly where they should be going.
• Hire a Baidu Advertising Agency: just like us 😉

As a trusted advisor, it would be a good idea to include a call-to-action at the end of your ad. This will be an excellent idea if you’re also targeting Baidu mobile ads, as users are generally more likely to convert on their phones than on computers.

Baidu Advertising: should you spend money on it?

Well, it depends on your goals and evidently on your budget. Contact us, and let’s see together if running paid ads campaign on Baidu would be worth it for your brand!