Practical planning for online marketing promotion

Today's main content outline:

Enterprise network marketing methods

Various marketing channels

What are the payment methods and examples for corporate promotion?

1. Enterprise network marketing methods

The earliest online marketing in China was the China Yellow Pages founded by Jack Ma in 1995. At that time, China Yellow Pages was in English and its customers were from abroad.

Foreign customers can browse product information, company information, etc. about Chinese industrial products through China Yellow Pages.

The development of Internet marketing is now not just in the form of yellow pages. It has many forms: text, pictures, videos, audio, etc., and these forms are what we often call full-network marketing. In fact, it is to use various platforms to promote one's own products and businesses, so as to increase visibility and find customers.

So what methods does a company’s online marketing include?

I summarized it roughly as follows:

It includes search (i.e. SEO), video platforms, social platforms, B2B platforms, portal media websites, classified information platforms, question-and-answer platforms, vertical industry forums, blog promotion, encyclopedias and other methods. Depending on the needs of different companies, all or some of the methods can be used for promotion, including pictures, text, audio, and video.

However, companies must focus on attacking 2-5 platforms in the early stages, so that they can concentrate on increasing traffic in the early stages. After the traffic and transaction volume increase, we will expand to other platforms.

2. Various channels of online marketing

Then let me talk about some channels of each online marketing method.

2.1

Search engines: such as Baidu (market share of more than 70%), Sogou, 360 Haosou, UC's Shenma Search, Google, and Bing. And these are divided into PC version and mobile version. The PC version is opened on a computer, and the mobile version is opened on a mobile app or a mobile browser.

I would like to mention here that now on search engines, the traffic from the mobile version exceeds that from the computer version. Therefore, when we promote our business, we must pay attention to the traffic from the mobile terminal.

This means that users use mobile phones more than computers. I have seen data that mobile traffic accounts for more than 75%.

2.2

Classified information platforms: 58.com, Ganji.com, Baixing.com, Yideng.com, Dengli.com and other classified information platforms.

If your business includes local services, then you can create a platform for local classified information.

2.3

B2B Platform:

B2B is the abbreviation of Business-to-Business, which refers to a business model in which enterprises exchange and transmit data information and conduct transaction activities through a dedicated network.

B2B refers to the process in which both the supply and demand sides of e-commerce transactions are merchants (or enterprises, companies), and they use Internet technology or various business network platforms to complete business transactions.

The difference between B2C and B2C, B2C (Business-to-Customer) is a type of e-commerce classified by transaction objects, that is, it refers to e-commerce from business organizations to consumers. This form of e-commerce is generally based on online retail, and mainly relies on the Internet to carry out online sales activities. For example, if you open a store on Tmall or JD.com and sell things, these are both types of B2C.

B2B platforms include Alibaba's 1688, Baidu Aicaigou Huicong, World Factory, Bawang Resources Network, Marco Polo Network, Qinjiayuan, China Suppliers, Yihubaiying, Made-in-China Network, Zhiqu Network, China Chemical Network, etc. Another one is Baidu Ai Purchasing.

The traffic of B2B platforms is very accurate, because basically only customers will visit B2B platforms, and ordinary consumers rarely visit them.

2.4

Forum Category:

Baidu Tieba, Tianya Forum, Sina Forum, Sohu Community, China.com Community, Xici Hutong, Rednet, Phoenix Forum, NetEase Forum, etc.

The forum has relatively little influence in the development of B2B business.

But let me mention again that if you are engaged in foreign trade or something related to foreign trade, you can go to the Fobu forum more often. There is a lot of information related to foreign trade on it. You can also advertise there. Posting is free and you can also leave your contact information.

Last year, many people who made masks and ventilators were looking for customers at Fobu. However, the prerequisite is that you are the manufacturer, or you are the source of goods, not a second-hand intermediary.

2.5

Portal:

Major portals, including Sina, NetEase, Tencent, Sohu, Southern News, Xinhuanet, etc., generally, soft articles can be sent to these platforms.

Generally, if you want to do soft-text marketing, soft-text promotion, brand promotion, and enhance brand influence, you can post soft-text on portal websites.

If the publication is from some authoritative portal websites, we can directly quote them when making encyclopedia entries.

Some Internet companies now do the editing business of Baidu Encyclopedia entries. In fact, they use this method: they spend a few hundred yuan to publish articles on some authoritative websites, and then directly quote these contents when editing the encyclopedia entries, so that they pass the encyclopedia's review and charge customers thousands of yuan.

2.6

Major blogs:

Sina Blog, Phoenix Blog, Blog Garden, Sohu Blog, CICC Blog, Tianya Blog (the effect of blog marketing is much worse now, NetEase Blog has been closed, and Sina Blog is easy to be blocked, so there is no need to do this)

2.7

Question and answer platform:

The mainstream Q&A platforms include: Baidu Knows, Zhihu Q&A, Wukong Q&A, Sogou Q&A, Sina iAsk, etc. If you are interested in home furnishings, you can go to the Q&A of some real estate websites to do Q&A;

Question and answer marketing is a new type of interactive marketing method. It is one of the online marketing methods created by interactive marketing based on third-party word of mouth. This marketing method can not only interact with potential consumers, but also implant merchant advertisements. It is one of the good marketing methods for brand reputation and interactive marketing.

Manifestation:

1 Achieve the ultimate goal of marketing through question and answer.

2 Common question-and-answer marketing methods are generally one question and one answer, just like a conversation between people. However, most question-and-answer platforms offer multiple answers for one question. For example, Baidu Knows, Sina iAsk, Tencent Soso, etc.

3 The ultimate way of question-and-answer marketing is to cause controversy, while at the same time guiding the direction of the controversy in a controllable manner, and ultimately achieving one's own marketing goals subtly in the process of the controversy.

4 Question and answer marketing also includes disguised question and answer marketing such as comment marketing.

It costs about 8 yuan to do a question and answer on Baidu Zhidao.

However, in Q&A marketing, you generally cannot leave contact information, only the brand name, unless it is the Baidu Knows account of those companies

2.8

Encyclopedia:

Baidu Encyclopedia, Hudong Encyclopedia, Sogou Encyclopedia, 360 Encyclopedia; we can create entries for our own products and brand entries in these encyclopedias and add our own product advertisements. However, Baidu Encyclopedia's review is more strict, while other encyclopedias are not as strict.

The main function of encyclopedias is authority, especially Baidu Encyclopedia, but ordinary accounts cannot edit entries.

Authoritative certification of encyclopedia entries refers to the process of professional certification of entries by professional organizations to ensure the authority of the entry content and provide users with high-quality professional explanations.

Although anyone can edit it, in reality, the content edited by ordinary accounts will basically not be approved.

Only content edited by advanced accounts can be approved, so there are teams in the market that specialize in encyclopedias, and they charge a fee, usually a few thousand yuan.

2.9

Information sharing platform:

Docin, Baidu Library, DaoKeBaBa, 360 Personal Library;

If you have information in the industry, you can upload it to these platforms, but remember to find a way to leave your brand name, website, contact information, etc. in the document.

2.10

We media and videos:

Self-media marketing is a form of corporate promotion that requires us to spend a lot of time on.

Self-media marketing, also known as social marketing, is a way of using social networks, short videos, Weibo, WeChat, Toutiao, Baidu, Sohu, Phoenix, UC and other platforms or other Internet collaborative platform media to conduct marketing, public relations and customer service maintenance and development.

Also known as self-media marketing, social media marketing, social media integrated marketing, and mass weak relationship marketing.

Self-media platforms: Weibo, QQ space, Zhihu, Xiaohongshu, personal WeChat account, WeChat video account, WeChat Moments, WeChat public account, Baidu Baike account, Toutiao account, Sohu self-media account, Penguin account, NetEase self-media, Dayu account, Douyin account, Kuaishou account, Xigua Video, etc.

2.11

The last marketing method is the company’s official website. The official website is an electronic business card, which can be understood as: making a website.

We can put all business information on the company's official brand website. Customers can visit our website, and we can also get a lot of traffic exposure by optimizing the website ranking, so that we can gain customers.

Here we should mention that the company's official website content must be carefully controlled. It is not allowed to arbitrarily publish other people's copyrighted pictures, fonts, etc. There are many copyright rogue companies in China that specialize in making money by suing others for citing pictures on their official websites. For example, Vision China, Changsha Mituo, etc.

3. Paid promotion methods and cases

The above is a summary of the promotion methods based on the promotion channels. Now let me talk about how the company spends money on promotion from the perspective of payment for promotion.

Some of the channels I mentioned above are free, such as writing on Weibo and blogging. You can do it if you have the time, energy and content.

Before talking about paid promotion, let’s talk about a few marketing terms:

CPC/PPC is charged by click, how much is one click?

CPA, which is charged based on behavior, such as how much it costs to register a new customer on an APP;

CPM, charging by display, such as how much is one thousand displays;

There is also CPS charging, which means payment is based on the transaction, and no charge if there is no transaction;

ROI is the return on input.

So what are the paid promotions for enterprises?

The more mainstream one is search promotion:

3.1

Search marketing is what we often call SEM. Baidu bidding belongs to search marketing. Baidu bidding includes search promotion.

Baidu search bidding is CPC, which is charged by click, and the bid can range from 0.01 to 999.99 yuan;

Whoever bids higher will have his or her ad ranked higher.

Baidu paid promotion also has information flow promotion. You can set up promotion web pages, applications, stores, e-commerce websites, etc. You can set daily budget, promotion date, time period, region, population, gender, education level, operating system, etc. You can set the promotion goal, whether it is clicks, exposure, or behavior conversion.

In addition to Baidu search marketing, there are also Sogou marketing, 360 bidding, Tencent Guangdiantong and so on.

To do search marketing, you need to open an account, and the average cost of opening an account is 6,000 yuan or more.

For example:

In 2015, I worked in a listed company (Oupu Zhiwang 002711), responsible for the online promotion of a home furnishing sub-project. I also handled hundreds of thousands of advertising fees a year. All in all, I could only barely make back my investment. At that time, it cost 500 to 600 yuan to obtain the contact information of a valid customer.

At that time, one of the biggest competitors in furniture e-commerce was Meilele Furniture Network, and they estimated that their advertising expenses on Baidu exceeded 100 million yuan a year.

But it is a pity that the former company is now facing delisting, and Meilele Furniture Network has also plummeted. Now even the domain name is gone. It is really sad.

My experience is: when doing bidding promotion, you must choose the right product and make a good landing page, and bid on the right track, otherwise the advertising costs will be wasted.

Here is a misunderstanding: Some people think that Baidu specially hires people to post advertisements. In fact, it is impossible for Baidu to have its own people post advertisements, because this will do no good to Baidu. It is in the best interest of Baidu only if the customers' bidding is effective and the customers continue to renew their subscriptions.

Bidding is a test of your advertising skills. If the effect is not good, you have to look for the reasons within yourself.

3.2

Information flow advertising: Baidu information flow, Tencent Guangdiantong, Toutiao advertising platform, Sina Fanstong and other advertising platforms such as Sohu.

Information flow advertising pays great attention to optimizing the landing page, so as to increase the click-through rate, and to developing good online customer service software, so as to increase the conversion rate, etc.

What is an ad landing page? Landing page reference

Computer version: https://www.zhenglongedu.com/cr_pc_bm

Mobile version: https://www.zhenglongedu.com/zhaunti-xueli

3.3

Classified information, B2B platform,

Classified information and B2B platforms use high-authority classified information platforms to promote the rapid collection of information, obtain search rankings in a short period of time, and achieve the purpose of brand and product exposure.

For example, 1688, after launching the TrustPass, also needs to implement online sales, so that the effect will be better.

For example,

I have a client who does customization of automated mechanical products. Their company basically has no sales staff, and has been doing business on 1688. They have set up an online sales platform, which costs several thousand yuan a month for advertising, and many orders come from 1688. Now I am a 17th year member of Alibaba. It is not an exaggeration to say that Alibaba supports a company.

Don’t be fooled by the fact that there is no data in the DSR dynamic ratings, because they all add customers on WeChat and are business-to-business transactions.

Of course, this also depends on the industry. If it is the clothing industry, it will test the ability of the operators because it is a red ocean within a red ocean.

B2B platform operation skills: the title should be fully written, both core words and long-tail keywords should be laid out, both required and non-required fields should be fully written, the details page should preferably have text, pictures, videos, multiple activities should be reported, the store should have transaction volume, 1688 products should have 7 stars, etc.

3.4

Paid promotion of soft articles, write the soft articles yourself, or find someone to write professional soft articles, and pay to publish them on major media platforms. If it is a new product launch or brand promotion, you can write some soft articles appropriately.

As mentioned before, the soft articles we publish in authoritative media can be directly quoted on Baidu Encyclopedia. It costs several thousand yuan for an Internet company to edit a Baidu Encyclopedia entry, but it may only cost a few hundred yuan to publish a soft article, and then just quote it directly. If we understood this, we could save thousands.

There is a very important skill in writing soft articles: the title must be well written. If the title is well written, the soft article is half successful.

As long as the money is in place, your product can be published on many media platforms,

3.5

SEO

Why is SEO listed as a method of paid promotion? Because Seo ranking clicks are free, but the ranking process does cost money.

Just like you don’t have to pay for eating at home, but you have to pay for buying vegetables and meat. If you want to have a good meal, you have to spend more money. If you want to have a simple meal and still be full, then spend less money.

The same is true for SEO rankings. The better the ranking, the higher the cost (for example, if the website has a high traffic, you need to use a better server, a larger bandwidth, and be able to defend against attacks).

Every year, there are people who say that SEO is ineffective or not worth doing. This statement is neither objective nor rigorous.

Because it depends on the industry you are in. For the manufacturing industry and some unpopular industries, SEO is actually a very cost-effective way of promotion. Why? Because if you are not in an industry, you don’t know that an industry actually has many professional terms. These terms are long-tail words, which have little competition and are easy to do.

Let me give you an example:

Do you know what "sextra" is? If you are not in the industry, you will not know.

The African swine fever outbreak two years ago and environmental protection inspections in various places led to a reduction in the domestic supply of live pigs, resulting in a sharp rise in pork prices. The highest should be more than 40,000 per ton.

This resulted in imported pork being cheaper than domestic pork, so in the year before last and last year, China had to import pork from abroad. China actually imports a lot of pork from abroad every year, but the demand has increased in recent years.

Six-piece pork generally refers to imported pork (excluding pig offal, with the head and tail removed and divided into six pieces).

If the local slaughterhouses and food processing plants do not have supplies, they will go online to look for them.

At that time, I was selling imported pork with a big brother. I built a website and optimized some keywords. These related words were easily promoted. The highest transaction volume at that time was a customer who ordered 5 containers, containing 135 tons of imported pork.

However, man proposes, God disposes. Later, the epidemic came and pork prices fell, and these projects became more difficult to implement.

In fact, many companies’ online marketing is very poor. As long as we put in some effort, you can surpass your peers.

There is a saying that it’s not how well you do that matters, but how badly your peers do. You are just a foil to your peers.

Therefore, I believe that website SEO optimization is a cost-effective way for companies, especially manufacturing industries, to acquire customers.

Some key points for corporate websites:

The website should open quickly;

Must have a mobile or adaptive version;

https authentication;

The website content should be kept updated, and original content is best;

Domain names must be registered;

SEO cannot provide timely assistance, but it can add icing on the cake.

For example, yesterday a network company in the same industry wanted to do SEO optimization. He shared a data with me. A local cleaning company made four to five thousand yuan a month doing Baidu bidding, but there was no effect. An effective consultation cost more than one thousand yuan. I think this is a very poor effect, but customers will still continue to place orders because their average order value is very high, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands. Then I would suggest that he do some keyword optimization. Anyway, the cost of SEO is definitely lower than that of bidding.

It is to combine bidding + official website SEO optimization to do it together.

But this is probably the current situation of marketing for many small and medium-sized enterprises. It is very important to promote the products in a more refined way.

Conclusion

The above are some of the ways of corporate online marketing. Due to time limitations, I cannot explain every promotion method in detail, as each has its own advantages and disadvantages.

For example, search bidding is very expensive, but it works quickly. As long as your ROI is positive, you can run it for a long time.

Author: Tang Xiaohan

Source: Tang Xiaohan