Integrated Marketing Lights up Baidu World Baidu LBS Leverages the Trillion-dollar Life Service Market

O2O is a big market, including hotels, shops, restaurants, cinemas and other real-world businesses. However, facing the huge disruptive power of the Internet, how should traditional enterprises act? In fact, most businesses are still confused. The 2014 Baidu World LBS Forum pointed out the direction for tens of thousands of businesses. The integrated marketing system proposed at the Baidu LBS Forum can be regarded as a package solution for innovative marketing in the O2O era. The golden combination of Baidu Nuomi + Baidu Maps, combined with the new product "Direct Number", can enable businesses to connect "mobile" users at low cost and high efficiency, becoming the real winners in the O2O era.

In fact, from the practice of Baidu Nuomi in the past six months, we can see that this kind of integrated marketing based on interest points has had some successful attempts. Baidu Nuomi has also jumped out of the vortex of homogeneity and is conducting innovative explorations in integrated marketing together with merchants in many industries such as catering and cinemas.

LBS integrated marketing leverages the trillion-dollar life service market

The difference between integrated marketing and traditional marketing is actually the difference between group buying websites and life service platforms. Although the concept of integrated marketing was proposed by Don E. Schultz, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University in the United States, in his book Integrated Marketing Communications as early as 1993, the development of the group buying industry has never "managed all information sources related to products or services, so that customers and potential customers can access integrated information, generate purchasing behavior, and maintain consumer loyalty." On the contrary, Internet companies are more keen to use the "price difference" that is lower than on-site consumption as the core selling point, and use conventional promotional methods such as discounts, red envelopes, coupons, and lucky draws to make a living by relying on the huge number of users. However, this high-cost and low-efficiency business model is more like a one-time deal, which cannot withstand the test of time. Therefore, after the battle of thousands of groups, there were corpses everywhere, and the originator of the group buying industry was also dying.

With its first-mover advantage in the group buying market, Meituan has enjoyed the dividends of independent group buying in the past few years. However, the latest change is that Meituan, which has always insisted on not doing advertising and relying on word of mouth, has actually spent a lot of money on outdoor advertising. Why? The general interpretation of the outside world is that Baidu's entry has made the group buying market a competition of capital. As an independent group buying company, Meituan has no choice but to go public, and in order to go public, it has to advertise and build its brand.

In fact, the deeper reason is that Meituan has changed from a pioneer in group buying to a follower of life service platform. In less than half a year, Baidu Nuomi has left behind a number of group buying websites and become a pioneer in life service platform.

When a market is only using low-level and simple means to meet the complex and ever-changing needs of consumers, this market is inevitably close to the edge of change. The group buying industry is exactly like this! The reason why it is low-level is that group buying websites, as Internet companies, often lack the core competitiveness of technology. As a platform for integrating online and offline supply and demand resources, they have not actually integrated them. The more this is the case, the more the integrated marketing services proposed by Baidu World 2014 LBS Forum can help Baidu Nuomi and merchants to leverage the trillion-dollar life service market.

Personalization: The core and key of LBS integrated marketing

Don E. Schultz described traditional marketing as "consumers pay attention", while integrated marketing is "pay attention to consumers". For O2O life services, "attention" is indeed an indispensable element, but how to "pay attention to consumers"? Without understanding consumers' purpose (location) and needs (behavioral big data), everything is empty talk.

Just as group buying has shifted from PC to mobile, users' group buying methods have also changed from buying in advance and then consuming to buying and consuming on the road, in front of the store, or even in the store. According to the CNNIC report, mobile group buying has become the mainstream. The rapid development of mobile group buying and the change in consumption methods actually show that simple group buying can no longer meet people's life service consumption needs in the mobile Internet era.

Life service platform based on O2O personalized integrated marketing is the general trend.

In this regard, Baidu Nuomi, backed by a giant, has come to the forefront of O2O integrated marketing, has broken the shackles of traditional group buying, and made a big splash on the life service platform.

First, through POI-based integrated marketing, the goal of satisfying consumer needs is maximized, the response to consumer needs is optimized, and energy waste is minimized. This is also the first direction of integrated marketing proposed by Don Schultz. However, to achieve this, it is necessary to capture and meet the needs of more target consumers. In this regard, Baidu Nuomi's "Exclusive Seat" plan in the movie consumption market is a typical case. Through Baidu's big data to understand, analyze, discover, and capture consumers' potential needs, and then give play to Baidu's brand effect, resource integration advantages and offline service capabilities, the offline service provider - the product of the cinema - the movie seat, is "tailored" based on the potential needs of consumers. The "Baidu Nuomi Exclusive Seat" launched on this basis is hard not to be popular. In fact, not only that, Baidu LBS's powerful positioning capabilities and the integration advantages of Baidu Maps and Baidu Nuomi can play a meticulous and comprehensive role in satisfying consumers' life service needs. Now, users can directly link to Baidu Nuomi's related group orders in the nearby and surrounding functions of Baidu Maps, and with the further connection between Baidu Maps and Baidu Nuomi, the operation model based on integrated marketing will further enhance users' life service consumption experience.

Secondly, personalized integrated marketing requires comprehensive observation, understanding, and insight into consumers. For example, a consumer is not just an individual who generates a service consumption demand at a certain time. The concept of a consumer is more complex. Consumers who watch movies are likely to have dining, taxi, and other needs before and after watching the movie. Users who have just consumed a group meal may also have KTV consumption needs. For users who have booked a hotel in a certain place on the life service platform, when the map locates the user has arrived at the place, they will inevitably generate a series of local service consumption. At this time, Baidu Maps can continue to "point the way" for them and serve as a guide, and Baidu Nuomi can meet the various established or random consumption needs of consumers in unfamiliar cities.

Therefore, this coincides with the integrated marketing belief that "observing consumers from multiple angles will create more opportunities, so that consumers do not make 'one-time purchases' or repeat purchases." With the help of big data, it is naturally possible to observe and understand consumers and their potential needs in a more scientific, efficient and comprehensive manner. Baidu Maps + Baidu Nuomi + Direct Number + Baidu Wallet can not only form a powerful business closed loop, but also have the integrated ability to provide consumers with one-stop life consumption in any city locally or nationwide.

Thirdly, O2O integrated marketing must also consider how to communicate with consumers in an efficient and personalized way. Because there are more "contact points" or "touch points" between consumers and brands, which cannot be achieved by media publicity alone. This is particularly important for life service platforms. An enterprise that does not know how to communicate with consumers or even merchants will not be able to quickly gain a foothold in the market transformation process. In the O2O market, communication here is no longer just face-to-face or social communication, but a higher level of "silent" communication. In other words, how to use technology to understand the needs of consumers, and then use service or product innovation to meet these needs, this is the indispensable way of communicating with consumers in the huge and trivial O2O market. To achieve this, it is still inseparable from big data analysis technology. The big data here does not only include one aspect, but also forms massive data through the demand content, trajectory, location, etc. generated by various online and offline including search, LBS, etc., and then integrates and analyzes them through the big data engine.

Seeing the integrated marketing concept proposed at the Baidu World 2014 LBS Forum, the author can't help but think of a concept proposed by "venture capital king" John Doerr in 2011, "SoLoMo". Among them, so stands for social; lo stands for local; mo stands for mobile. This concept is regarded as a golden rule for local business marketing. Baidu Nuomi, with its product and technical advantages such as Baidu Maps, Baidu Search, and Baidu Big Data, has the unparalleled integration advantages mentioned in the "SoLoMo" concept in the process of transforming into a life service platform. The POI-based integrated marketing service launched by Baidu this time is also in line with the innovative marketing concept emphasized by the SoLoMo model.

In 2010, Forrester Research estimated that the scale of "online-influenced commerce" in the United States would reach 1 trillion US dollars. In the same year, an article titled "Why Online 2 Offline Commerce Is A Trillion Dollar Opportunity" published on the famous American technology website Techcrunch was called the pioneering work of O2O. Alex Rampell, the author of the article and CEO of the payment company Trialpay, believes that "in the United States, the average annual physical transaction on the Internet is one thousand dollars, and the average income is forty thousand dollars. So where does the other thirty-nine thousand dollars go? The answer is: most of it is spent on local life services... FedEx cannot deliver restaurants, bars, yoga, playing ball and other experiences to your home... Looking at the domestic market, it is not an exaggeration to say that the scale of the O2O life service market exceeds one trillion. Some analysts have pointed out that there are currently 15,000 communities and 3 million service-oriented merchants in Beijing alone. If several types of services such as catering, SPA, massage, medical care, entertainment, venues, tickets, and training are well connected, at least a market of 300 billion can be formed. According to EnfoDesk iResearch monitoring data, in 2013 alone, the overall scale of China's O2O market reached 462.3 billion yuan, an increase of 69% compared with 2012.

In fact, leveraging the trillion-dollar life service market with POI-based O2O integrated marketing has become a game for giants. Independent group purchases with limited qualifications may even be blocked from this game. For the giant Baidu, not only can it help Baidu Nuomi transform into a life service platform with its expertise in big data and technology, but it will also eventually form a platform that perfectly covers offline life service models and connects people and services. Baidu's ultimate mission is to leverage the trillion-dollar market together with many merchants on the platform and ultimately achieve another revenue miracle outside of search. A market value of 100 billion US dollars is definitely not far away.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.