Search Engine Marketing in the Era of Big Data: Who Is Streaking
Basic concept:
Speaking of big data, people tend to think of the massive data held by large institutions, such as the search habits of most netizens held by Baidu, the shopping records of each buyer by Taobao, and the tags of short videos that people like on TikTok. None of these seems to have anything to do with small businesses and individuals. As a matter of fact, we can analyze any records around us when they are accumulated to a certain amount and find valuable information. All of these are called big data. The visit statistics of corporate websites should also be included. Through the frequent analysis of these data, we can make better efforts in network marketing.
When it comes to search engine marketing, everyone has a different definition of its scope. Some people think that it means no more than paid advertising of search engines; some think that SEO (search engine organic listing) should be included; some think it should also include the publishing of free information (referred to as mass postings)… As far as I’m concerned, for a marketer of a certain industry, all of the platforms that ranked on the first few result pages when searching for various industry-related keywords should be considered the aim of search engine marketing. Taking Baidu as an example, there will be Baidu advertisements, natural listings of corporate websites, a certain column of large B2B websites like Alibaba, industry websites, related columns on Baidu (such as Baidu Encyclopedia, Baidu Knows, Baidu Tieba, etc.), a large amount of published free information, and so on.
There are many search engines on the Internet. How should we select them? I have been working on network marketing for ten years and I have daily access data of multiple industries. I can tell you that Baidu is still the first choice in the Chinese market. At least the data I have indicate that most of the search engine visits are from Baidu.
Then which method as mentioned above should a company’s network marketer focus on, the Baidu advertisements, SEO, or mass postings? The network marketing consultancies like to hype the advantages of free SEO and mass postings to beginners. I myself also have expressed similar views in the early days to emphasize the value of technology. But the truth is, according to a large number of order data from enterprises, the paid Baidu advertisements should be the main means of search engine marketing. And of course, if there are only paid advertisements, you will also lose some potential customers, like when people of the same trade stop advertising at night, or when the potential customers prefer to browse multiple search result pages rather than watch the ads on the right… As a complement, we need to improve the natural listings of the independent corporate website and publish a large amount of free information (as shown in Figure 1: the Results of “ballpoint pen factory” on the Second Result Page). So the correct search engine marketing strategy should be: focus on Baidu advertising, supplemented by SEO, mass postings, and several paid platforms.
Figure 1: the Results of “ballpoint pen factory” on the Second Result Page).
After clarifying the above conceptual questions, we can start today’s topic:
Network Marketing Through Big Data
The daily task of me, the network marketing team I lead, and the network marketers we coach from other companies is to observe and analyze the real-time visitor data of the website one by one. I likened this task to a movie called The Silent War, in which the protagonist is a blind man with extraordinary hearing. He can read a lot of information from the sender from the simple sound of radio waves, so as to dig out the radio station of the enemy agents. The data we acquire is much larger than information from radio waves. So as long as we analyze it carefully, we can dig out more potential customers. These data include access time, the location of the visitor, keywords searched by the visitor, which pages the visitor has viewed, and how long they stay on a certain page. More detailed visitor information include the visitor’s IP address, computer serial number (note: the serial number of each computer is unique), the operating system and browser the visitor uses, and even the resolution of their computer monitor. (As shown in Figure 2: real-time visitor data of a certain management software company. The seventh item lists the detailed information of the visitor).
Figure 2: Real-Time Visitor Data of a Certain Management Software Company (the seventh item lists the detailed information of the visitor)
If the network marketer is an experienced salesman, he can use the online chatting tool (Baidu Shangqiao, now known as “Aifanfan”) to talk business with the customer, or answer the inquiry call from the customer as soon as possible, so that he can communicate with the customer and make quotations while looking at the customer’s access information. In this way, the conversion rate is naturally much higher. This is like an experienced shop assistant in a brand clothing store, who can give an accurate recommendation of the clothes that the customer may like and quote a reasonable price by carefully observing the customer’s dressing and behavior, the clothes they keep their eyes on, and the subtle relationship between the couple. Talking business while analyzing data is much more effective than knowing nothing. Baidu Shangqiao (known as “Aifanfan” now) is particularly noteworthy. While using it to talk business with customers, you can see every word the customer is typing, even the words they have deleted, so that you can gain an insight into their thought and they have no idea of that at all.
In the era of big data, every decision of network marketing—such as the selection of keywords, the allocation of advertising cost, the judgment of important time periods, the writing of website content, and the selection of free information for mass postings—can not be easily made by an individual, whether he is a company owner or an expert in network marketing. It should be made according to the data. There is a saying in our business, “Speak with data.” According to our analysis of the website access data of the management software company mentioned above over the years and Baidu’s industry keyword index, we predicted that the time after the Spring Festival and after the National Day each year is the season for the industry to gain the most customers. Before the season came, the company would make full preparation with a sufficient advertising budget and added personnel. So the rewards they reaped during the season were undoubtedly greater than their counterparts. (As shown in Figure 3: if searching for “ERP” in the Baidu Index Tool, you will see the curve showing the search volume for this word in recent years on Baidu, the peaks of which all lie in the month following the Spring Festival and the National Day).
Figure 3: if searching for “ERP” in the Baidu Index Tool, you will see the curve showing the search volume for this word in recent years on Baidu, the peaks of which all lie in the month following the Spring Festival and the National Day)
As we can see in the figure above, the longer the data remain, the more accurate the prediction of the future trend is. This is the longitudinal data along the timeline, from which every enterprise can obtain the statistics of its industry and its corporate website. But the cross-sectional data, like the statistics of multiple corporate websites in the industry, might be hard to get except for Baidu Inc.
Fortunately, our team has access to such cross-sectional data in two industries and has used the data to optimize network marketing efforts for relevant companies. One of the two industries is blister packaging (a plastic processing industry). I used to be the director of a blister packaging factory. When I started using search engine marketing (SEM) to find new customers, my friends of the same trade asked me to help manage their corporate websites, too. The solutions I worked out in one company would be immediately applied to another one (for example: if there were malicious clicks found from an IP address, it would be blocked by all these websites; if a negative keyword on Baidu was dig out from a corporate website, or if a new keyword was found through the background analysis of a certain website, they would be added to the other corporate websites immediately). The other one is a Fortune 500 management software company that asked me to provide training and consulting services for their agents at all levels. The fact that I was directing ten of their companies with similar businesses dictated that they have similar marketing approaches, thus creating a monopoly on certain keywords in the industry, which was exactly what the large company wanted to see— let agents conduct SEM with wolf-pack tactics. The monopoly also provoked malicious clicks from competitors in the industry who, worse, knew very well about network and software and applied more sophisticated technologies to the clicks. But with the access data from multiple websites, these malicious clickers had nowhere to hide since it was easy to find out their pattern and lock on to them.Paired with such functions as “block IP”, “block old visitors”, “exclude IP”, and “set promotion area” provided by Baidu, our ads would become invisible to these malicious clickers. In our circle, we humorously compare these functions to that of “bullet dodging” in CS (Counter-Strike, an online game).
Based on the data analysis of visitors’ search terms, we can make a reasonable and effective layout for comprehensive SEM. For example, facing the limited budget for Baidu ads, some enterprise is having a headache that a large amount of their money is spent on invalid clicks and people seeking for certain knowledge rather than potential customers. Such search terms include as follows: “What is blister packaging”, “What’s the difference between injection molding and blister packaging”, “How much volume of goods can a container hold”, and “What are the specifications of bearings”. These words are certainly not as likely to convert into orders as the following: “Shanghai blister packaging manufacturers”, “How to quote for injection molding products”, “freight forwarding companies in Ningbo”, and “wholesale of bearings”. For the core keywords that are more likely to form orders, we should run ads for them on Baidu immediately; for knowledge-related keywords with low conversion rates, we can run fewer or no ads for them. Besides, we can answer questions these knowledge seekers raised by using SEO and mass postings. (As shown in Figure 4: when searching for “How much volume of goods can a container hold” on Baidu, you will only find results made by mass postings from knowledge columns, forums, and blogs. Attention: there aren’t any paid ads, and everyone knows the reason. But only people who know about mass postings can advertise their companies and find new customers through this search term).
Figure 4: when searching for “How much volume of goods can a container hold” on Baidu, you will only find results made by mass postings from knowledge columns, forums, and blogs.
A proper and comprehensive SEM process should be like this:
The first step, invest in Baidu paid ads and collect search terms as many as possible.
The second step, analyze the search terms and sort them into four categories of core words (keywords that are often searched by potential customers and have high conversion rates), non-core words (keywords that are between core words and long-tail words, not often searched by customers and have less high conversion rates), long-tail words (keywords that are rarely searched by potential customers; but once searched, they tend to have high conversion rates), and peripheral words (keywords that are often searched by netizens who are not going to be converted into customers for the time being). Please note that we never sort them out according to the length of words. To a Shanghai-based ballpoint pen factory, for example, its core words are “ballpoint pen factory” and “Shanghai ballpoint pen factory”, while its non-core word is “ballpoint pen” (as the purpose of the search for this word is too unclear and the search volume is too large), its long-tail word is “manufacturer of ballpoint pen 2001” (Note: 2001 is the model of a ballpoint pen in the factory), and its peripheral word is “processing of ballpoint pens” (it might be searched by new competitors planning on setting up a factory. It’s not our target customer).
The third step, apply keywords of different categories to different marketing methods to flood the search results with information about our own company.The general approach is as follows: run Baidu’s paid ads for all the keywords, promote regional and industry-related keywords through SEO (it was easier to improve the natural listings of these words), and promote long-tail words and less important peripheral words through mass postings.
The fourth step, keep supplementing Baidu ads with valuable keywords collected from different channels, and keep optimizing the channels such as Baidu bidding, natural search and mass postings.
It should be specified that it doesn’t mean that with good performance of SEO and mass postings, one can run fewer or no paid ads for keywords. Instead, they should keep doing it. If you don’t pay for these ads, your competitors will do it anyway. As they are more easily recognized than natural listings, you may lose potential customers if not doing it. Besides, let me share with you an interesting phenomenon that we have observed for a long time: even if you have had an absolute advantage in a certain keyword—for instance, on the first page of Baidu search results, there are not only your paid ads but your website displayed through organic ranking and a lot of information you posted—customers may not look at all of them. Some like watching ads, some prefer browsing corporate websites, and some just read a certain piece of information at random. Customers’ behavior is divergent. What you can do is to offer them multiple options as so at gain more customers. (As shown in Figure 5: source statistics of one month’s access traffic of a company that has been doing comprehensive SEM for many years). As is seen from the picture, most of the website access traffic comes from Baidu paid ads, with direct access coming ranking next (note: such a large volume of traffic from direct access is attributed to the offline advertising campaigns of the company and the long-term SEM efforts such as paid ads—which play a key role—and a large amount of posted information) and natural search in third place, which makes up for the weakness that the company doesn’t run ads at night and on holidays. As for the traffic brought by external links, part of it comes from mass postings and the other part from link resources. The natural traffic from other search engines accounts for only 5% of the total, which is why the company doesn’t invest in ads on other search engines. If they could bring over 20% of the traffic for the company, we would capture the market as well. But the truth is that the market outside of Baidu is far from big.
Figure 5: source chart of one month’s access traffic of a company that has been doing comprehensive SEM for many years
As is shown from the picture above, the company has succeeded in network marketing. Its monthly visits are as good as a small portal websit, which brings more order to the company. Should a company arrange for personnel to analyze and improve data every day, it could also achieve good performance.
Summary: Space lacks for a detailed description of it. I’m going to sum it up with the term “streaking” which was popular on the Internet a few years ago. If you have no idea of data analysis and comprehensive SEM, it is just like “streaking” even though you have invested in Baidu ads, because it is not clear which are the customers and which are salesmen, not to mention the malicious clicks caused by competitors.In that case, your money is spent on nothing, and the ads effect is unsatisfactory. On the contrary, if you have done a rigorous data analysis and keep improving your website, it’s like your customers and competitors are “streaking”,since their behavior on the Internet couldn’t escape your eyes. Most of the advertising fees will be spent on customers rather than salesmen and your rivals, and the business will be naturally booming.