Author: Zhong Yishan
Source: Zhenghe Island
Standing at the business crossroads in 2021, many entrepreneurs feel that development is difficult.
The biggest problem faced by small and medium-sized enterprises is the misalignment of supply and demand, and the goods cannot find people. The data shows that in September, the national CPI rose by 0.7% year-on-year, and the PPI rose by 10.7% year-on-year. The PPI-CPI "scissors difference" has expanded, and the recovery of consumer demand after the epidemic has been slow, and small and medium-sized enterprises are generally facing the problems of high costs, lack of demand and insufficient funds.
In this case of thin profits, MSMEs urgently need to acquire customers, but they are unable to run a large number of advertisements due to insufficient funds. If a chain is broken, it is easy to fall into a vicious circle.
In this era, AI marketing is crucial and has become an important starting point for solving the problem of supply and demand of enterprises. This can be seen from the financial reports of major companies.
On November 17, Baidu released its financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021.
In the third quarter, Baidu achieved revenue of 31.9 billion yuan and net profit attributable to Baidu of 5.09 billion yuan, exceeding the average market expectation.
According to the financial report, in the third quarter, thanks to the continuous expansion of marketing cloud services such as e-commerce functions, the proportion of managed page revenue in Baidu's core online marketing revenue increased to 43%.
It can be said that the hosted page business has become the core product of Baidu's commercialization strategy, and has also become the golden key to the digital marketing development of small and medium-sized enterprises.
Robin Li, Chairman and CEO of Baidu, said: "We continue to use AI technology to improve user experience, and many small and medium-sized enterprises obtain orders through Baidu marketing platform to achieve common growth of enterprises and brands. ”
01, the future of the Internet: both to understand the trend, but also to understand the user
Hosted pages are a platform built by Baidu for advertisers based on their own value and industry insights, which can enable small and medium-sized enterprises without independent website building capabilities to independently publish content, information and services, collect sales leads, achieve efficient connection and interaction with users, and precipitate public domain traffic into the enterprise's own private domain traffic.
According to the data, merchants have reduced the cost of leads by 25%, the length of user stay increased by 50%, and the number of leads increased by 30%.
Behind the growth of the hosted page business is Baidu's understanding of users and deep thinking about the transformation of the Internet.
Let's start with the understanding of the enterprise.
Let's give a concrete example.
There is a 70-plus veteran moving company in Chengdu that used to win customers by posting small advertisements on roadside telephone poles, but in the past two years, the list has become less and less. Veterans work plainly, but they don't understand the website and don't know how to spread. They can't be unemployed because they have their families on their backs. Later, with the help of Baidu Marketing, they built a platform on the Internet, and it was easy and more to get customers. In 2019, traffic patterns have changed. Baidu marketing consultants also helped Yang Lin understand the habits of netizens, teach them to take videos, pictures, etc., and show the handling process. After a series of adjustments, the effect is obvious, and the amount of consultation is getting larger and larger. The veterans had orders again and regained momentum.
That is to say, there are countless small and medium-sized enterprises in China like veterans who have not had enough money to invest in advertising, and they do not have so many technical personnel to do Internet promotion.
They urgently need to be empowered, not only for business value, but also for social needs.
Speaking of thinking about trends, enterprise growth is currently facing three problems:
The first question is how "traffic" becomes "retention".
At this point, bat three, Baidu has a natural advantage in it. Because the traffic based on the search engine is the real appeal of the user, such as what brand of TV is good? Which housekeeping is reliable? What kind of tiles to buy for decoration? This is far greater than the appeal based on brushing the circle of friends or visiting Taobao.
For Baidu, it has established its own ecological closed loop through hosting pages.
In the past, Baidu Search played a role as a "transit station", and the platform's exploration of the value of user traffic was very limited. Now that Baidu has begun to transform, enterprises can convert Baidu's public domain traffic into their own private domain traffic. The hosting marketing platform is becoming a SaaS for sales and marketing, and Baidu is also taking the route of technical services.
That is to say, through the service of the system, let the "traffic" directly become the "retention".
The second issue is trustworthiness.
When it comes to trust, every family has a difficult scripture.
Ali's problem lies in how to supervise hundreds of millions of merchants, they are mixed, consumers will question the voice of fakes; Tencent's problem may lie in the "private transactions" under the private domain of micro-businesses in the circle of friends; Baidu search external website links, control difficulties, and great risk factors.
For BAT and consumers, "the world has been suffering from false information for a long time".
Baidu hosting page is a good solution, because in the hosting page system, enterprises must first apply for access qualifications, and Baidu will conduct qualification review according to the information of the enterprise to block non-compliant merchants.
It is understood that Baidu has established a three-level commercial risk control system of "AI machine review + manual re-inspection + manual inspection", strictly reviewing various types of advertising materials in accordance with the Advertising Law, and only about 15% of the advertisements can finally be launched through the risk control system.
The third issue is accuracy and timely response.
In the business world of the future, timely response is very important, and consumer patience is pulled very low.
The biggest advantage of the hosting page is the addition of an instant response system, for example, for online education, the hosting page can provide online education special courses, service reservations, paid consultation, commodity transactions, coupons and other marketing games.
Baidu has even formed different solutions for different industries, such as life services, business services, retail and other industries, and provides special customization for different industries for different industries.
When Baidu takes the initiative to meet the changes in Internet trends and fully empower B-end users, Baidu's traffic advantages are creating greater business value.
In his book Value, Hillhouse Capital Zhang Lei wrote, "Society will ultimately reward companies that are crazy about creating long-term value. "Baidu is creating long-term value by creating a closed-loop ecosystem.
02. The digital transformation of traditional enterprises needs the empowerment of "ecological enterprises"
Baidu is an AI eco-company, and one of the greatest values of an eco-company is "empowerment".
Baidu's global marketing, for more than 20 years, has been adhering to one thing is to empower B-end customers - empower enterprise growth, empower digital transformation and industrial upgrading.
Shandong has a veteran mold company - Zheng's Mold, it was established in 1983, after three generations of grandchildren's efforts, the current scale of 50 people, assets of 20 million. In the early days of their business, the father and son took the train and rented other people's bicycles to the factory to talk about business, which can be described as a blue wisp of the road. The epidemic in 2020 had a great impact on the economy at that time, and during that time, the days of Zheng's mold were even more difficult than in the early days of entrepreneurship, and the painstaking efforts of three generations of grandchildren were about to be wasted... At this time, Baidu Marketing's stargazing disk helped them a lot, through intelligent algorithms, helped the company lock in several enterprises with high demand for products and the epidemic situation was not so serious, focusing on these areas. After experimentation, found an order of more than 3 million yuan, and later received orders one after another, in the case of the impact of the epidemic and the dismal withering of the whole industry, such a value clue is indispensable to the enterprise.
There is also the empowerment of digital transformation.
Anhui Heli is a veteran enterprise for more than 60 years, formerly known as the Hefei Mining Machinery Factory built by the state in 1958. Heli has grown from a small factory to a world-class brand in the world. Now it can sell 20,000 forklifts a month, and has ranked among the top ten in the global forklift industry, realizing the transformation from Chinese manufacturing to Chinese brands. However, with the development of enterprises, bottlenecks have also been encountered. With the operation of huge sales stores and thousands of sales teams, enterprises have put forward higher requirements for accurate control of data and strategy formulation, that is, Heli needs more intelligent marketing and digital transformation. Through Baidu's jimu fish to do clue precipitation, and then use Aifanfan to do clue transmission, the clues are quickly decomposed into 500 stores, and high-quality and efficient transformation is done. This targeted expansion has made Heli's sales exceed 10 billion. At the same time, Anhui Heli has also worked with Baidu's artificial intelligence to create intelligent handling solutions, and with the help of Baidu's AI technology advantages, Heli has opened a new chapter in the green intelligent handling of new energy forklifts + driverless forklifts.
This is the power of ecology, which is also the value of ecology, which lies in empowering enterprises to develop better from all dimensions.
03. The greater value of "ecological enterprises" lies in empowering society
Drucker is famous for saying, "Business is the organ of society." "The value of the existence of enterprises is to solve social problems.
A great value of ecological enterprises lies in solving social problems.
If Chinese society wants to achieve "common prosperity", to achieve "common prosperity", it needs to do increments and need the development of enterprises. We have a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises, according to the official data released, small and medium-sized enterprises account for more than 90% of the main body of the market in China, solve 80% of urban employment, contribute 70% of innovation, 60% of GDP and 50% of tax revenue.
It can be said that small and medium-sized micro enterprises are the basic cells of the national economy, small and micro activities, employment is booming, and the economy is prosperous.
Therefore, to achieve common prosperity, it is necessary to activate small and medium-sized enterprises and let them release "big energy".
At this point, the biggest value of Baidu's global marketing formed through the hosting page is to efficiently match supply and demand, improve customer acquisition efficiency, reduce customer acquisition costs, and solve the urgent needs of small and medium-sized enterprises through digital marketing technology.
The highest value of business lies in empowering society.
Finally, I will tell a "story of post-80s rural teachers raising chickens":
Liu Xiaogang is a rural teacher after the 80s, and in 2007, he took 20,000 yuan to drill into the mountains of Bailipo to start a business. After twenty thousand yuan to buy equipment, there is nothing left. It was the local people who trusted him and supported him with more than 100,000 yuan of chicken seeds and corn. He did not want to live up to everyone's hearts, and every day he got up early and rode a motorcycle to transport grain and chickens on the rugged mountain roads. Liu Xiaogang said: "At that time, the most difficult thing was not the breeding technology, but the sales of chickens. Selling only a few dozen chickens a day is a drop in the bucket for maintaining a chicken farm. Liu Xiaogang was still selling chickens in the town with his mother on his back, and people laughed at him, saying, "You are a college student still selling on the street." Later, I heard that I could sell things on Baidu, and he made a web page himself. Within a month, I received an order for 40,000 yuan. Network promotion not only saved the chicken farm, but also made him close to 100,000 yuan a month in revenue. Nowadays, under the leadership of Liu Xiaogang, 70%-80% of the orders of the black chicken farm in the old courtyard of Bailipo come from the network, and the black chicken goes to all parts of the country. The chicken farm has achieved "self-hematopoiesis", Liu Xiaogang voluntarily funded the construction of a road on the mountain for the villagers, insisted on giving away chicken seedlings to the villagers for free every year, cultivating chicken technology, and helping them sell chickens. Baili Slope has become a typical example of rural revitalization. There is a longer-term goal in liu xiaogang center, he wants to develop the combination of agriculture and tourism, so that organic agriculture will turn the 12,000 acres of green water and green mountains in Bailipo into golden mountains and silver mountains...
The spark of a spark can ignite the plains. China's future development needs more such "sparks" to help the development of countless small and medium-sized enterprises and show a "trend of fire".
This is an ecological technology platform, which should have a posture.
"Enterprises are the organs of society", Baidu has insisted on developing together with millions of small and medium-sized enterprises for 20 years, which is a very long-term thing.
Enterprise ecological enterprises are not to be an empire of "one will become a thousand bones", but to do technological innovation in a down-to-earth manner, to do mutual benefit and win-win ecological community with small and medium-sized enterprises, and to help the benign and healthy development of the national economy.
This is the mission of the times for Chinese technology companies.