Baidu Marketing Strategy & Marketing Mix (4Ps)
Marketing Strategy of Baidu analyzes the brand with the marketing mix framework which covers the 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion). These business strategies, based on Baidu marketing mix, help the brand succeed in the market. Let us start the Baidu Marketing Strategy & Mix to understand its product, pricing, advertising & distribution strategies:
Quick Glance:
Baidu Product Strategy:
The product strategy and mix in Baidu marketing strategy can be explained as follows:
Baidu is one the leading internet based companies in the world from China. Baidu’s products are majorly concentrated into the web search category. Apart from providing web search Baidu provides other searches such as image search, news search, video search, dictionary and web directory. All these are the products in Baidu ‘s marketing mix. It also provides community based platforms like PostBar an online discussion forum, Space a social networking platform. Baidu also has certain knowledge and experience sharing products such as Baidu Knows and Encyclopedia.
It also has products for the mobile domain of which mobile search, mobile assistant, mobile browser and Duer a voice assistant are quite popular.
Apart from these Baidu provides maps for location based services which is also used for third party agencies. Baidu also has a cloud service for personal computing uses. This platform gives access to 2TB of storage along with data backup and security for files shared on the cloud. Baidu also has a wallet service, Takeout Delivery a food ordering service and Nuomi which is a platform for all kinds of booking and reservations. Baidu has newly come up with iQiyi video services to capture the entertainment domain with a huge library of video content.
Image: flickr-photos/jonrussell/
Baidu Price/Pricing Strategy:
Below is the pricing strategy in Baidu marketing strategy:
Baidu has got an immense presence which leads to a wide pricing range in its services. Online marketing services provides a large chunk of its revenue from pay-for-performance services.
The pricing strategy in the marketing mix of Baidu is discussed as follows. The customers place their links and pay when they click. The payment per click is pre decided. The customers also get access to vast range of marketing tools. Baidu also gets its revenues from time-based advertising wherein customers pay on the basis of duration of placement of advertisement on various platforms of Baidu and Baidu union members. The performance-based online marketing services brings in revenue from customer who pays on the basis of effectiveness of the links floated which are based on the number of users brought in, bookings done ,registrations etc. It also gets revenue from its transaction services which consists of cloud, wallet, online food ordering services and Nuomi. After acquiring the IQiyi video platform which provides a huge library of video content, Baidu gets subscription fees from the premium subscribers.
Read more about Baidu
Baidu Place & Distribution Strategy:
Following is the distribution strategy in the Baidu marketing mix:
Baidu is present across China, as it a website and easily accessible. Baidu is heavily dependent on third party distributors for its local markets in China. Baidu has its direct sales channel presence in some of the major cities of China such as Beijing, cities in Guangdong province and Shanghai for online marketing services sales. As customers are quite widely distributed and these are mainly small and medium enterprises are catered by the distributors. For larger businesses and corporates, third party agencies and direct selling team is present. The third party agencies also bring in foreign customers. For other services such as for transaction services, in bigger cities customers are provided direct services but smaller cities and provinces are approached by distributors. Baidu has also made itself available in various platforms such as Android, IOS and online.
Baidu has also increased its global presence by entering into Brazil, Egypt and Indonesia.
Baidu Promotion & Advertising Strategy:
The promotional and advertising strategy in the Baidu marketing strategy is as follows:
Baidu promotes itself as the biggest Chinese language web search provider which keeps it way ahead of other global players. Baidu uses mostly its advertising and online marketing platform for promotions in its marketing mix. The customers use advertising of the website to and hence penetration of Baidu is quite high. This makes it easier to promote its own products as well as Baidu Union members’ products and also propagate itself as the best web search in China. Baidu also uses resellers for advertising its products. It also provides consulting services to its customers in making their businesses better which in turn makes strong relationship with the customers and is a method of self-promotion. To stretch its business outside China and reach non-Chinese users it has started making an English version of the site. Baidu also uses this version to promote its products.
Since this is a service marketing brand, here are the other three Ps to make it the 7Ps marketing mix of Baidu.
People:
Baidu has been increasingly recruiting more employees especially more software engineers for its research and development centres and the AI Lab at Silicon Valley. Baidu had 40,000+ employees which consists of full time as well as part time employees as reported in 2015.T Baidu sell its products and services majorly to the Chinese crowd and hence they should be well versed in Chinese and hence Baidu hires mostly Chinese people. But as told by their employees for the technical positions if the employees are not to be posted in China they can be of other backgrounds also. Especially the research and development centres in Singapore and upcoming in America they are looking for talent rather than Chinese language as a requirement.
Process:
Baidu has several processes in its business be it online or offline. Baidu reaches customers through its distributors and third party agencies. Baidu also takes help of third party distributors with the help of cash incentives and sales promotions. Awards are provided to the distributors and agents on the basis of performance which are reviewed periodically. Even the distributors are chosen very meticulously are these will be responsible for providing consultation and other guidance to the end customers. The medium and small scale businesses which are scattered in throughout the country are approached by the distributors who require software support and technical assistance. The bigger corporates are reached through direct sales people who customize their product for them who also provide consulting services. Baidu also reaches its customers through online platforms through subscriptions. Third party agencies are also used to identify new potential customers. It also provides certain free tools to attract more customers
Physical Evidence:
Baidu has made presence in the Chinese market and having a market share of over 80% speaks for itself. Baidu is very well perceived and it follows a lot of rules and regulation and has yet provided its services which most of the other companies are not able to provide. The consultation and backend services the company provides is what attract the customers. Baidu helps consumer with the knowhow of its tools and also selling of the products. Also the Chinese language in the searches provides convenience to the customers. Hence, this complete the Baidu marketing mix.
About Baidu:
Baidu is an internet services company which is based in Beijing, China. The Baidu company was founded by Robin Li and Eric Xu in 2000. It caters to the customers present globally and is one of the largest in the world in the internet domain in terms of traffic. In local market also Baidu has market share to the tunes of 80%. It has revenue of $ 10+ billion and has an employee base of 41,467. Apart from providing web search products Baidu also provides internet community-based platforms as well as digital marketing platforms. Baidu has brought in many products made available by the top internet companies in the world to its Chinese customers in the form of multimedia, online encyclopaedia, search engines etc.
Baidu has been ranked among the top in internet rankings and has also featured in Forbes list of “The World’s Most Innovative Companies”. Looking ahead Baidu has now trying to incorporate artificial intelligence into its searches to make the results better.
This article has been researched & authored by the Content & Research Team. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.
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