Search engine Baidu is often called the “Google of China.” However, like Alphabet, the Chinese company offers more than just Internet searches.
In 2021, the company released Aifanfan, a customer data platform (CDP) chat tool to help companies communicate with customers (think of it as China’s answer to Salesforce).
Unfortunately, this application hasn’t received much attention in the English media, so I’d like to cover some of its features and show you how your company can use it for your marketing strategies in China.
For our marketing campaigns, we help foreign customers drive sales and leads in China. Aifanfan is our app of choice because its chat tool lets us communicate with potential customers on the website in real time.
This article will explain Aifanfan’s chat tool feature and how Nanjing Marketing Group uses it to acquire leads, provide customer support, and manage customers.
Summary
- Around 80% of Chinese companies provide real-time customer support.
- Baidu Aifanfan is a customer support tool provided by Baidu, which
- integrates with Baidu ads, allowing marketing and sales teams to share data to improve marketing campaigns; and,
- adding real-time customer support via Baidu Aifanfan can be the difference between a profitable and unprofitable marketing campaign (in Nanjing Marketing Group’s experience).
Connect Baidu Ads With Aifanfan
Before I go over its main features, I should add that the app is best used if a customer already has Baidu Ads set up. This not only makes the tool free to use but also allows users to take advantage of Baidu’s full ecosystem. In the next sections, I will get into this more.
Aifanfan’s Main Features
Aifanfan’s three main features can be summed up as follows:
#1. Chat Tool: This chat tool makes it easy to talk with all our potential clients in one place (and is the main reason we use it).
#2. AI-driven Marketing Data: Aifanfan can help a company take note of its products and target audience. Since the app is synchronized with Baidu and Baidu Ads, its data management abilities allow users to analyze customer behavior better.
#3. Integration with Baidu Pay for Click Ads: This is another possible feature when a user links Aifanfan with Baidu Ads.
By integrating with Baidu Pay and utilizing Baidu’s data analytics, an advertiser can adjust ads in real time to get more conversions and leads.
Once Aifanfan and Baidu are integrated, companies can use an optimized cost-per-click (oCPC) bidding feature and observed data to optimize the cost-per-click ratio. While this rarely works better than our carefully human-managed accounts, it is an option to consider.
This feature not only works for customers. These tools make it easier for companies to invite marketing agencies, suppliers, and contractors to send them business proposals (tenders).
Conversely, companies can also use it to search for bids and tenders.
You may also want to use this feature to tweak and test keywords to see which ones attract the most traffic.
Who is Aifanfan for?
Aifanfan is primarily made for Chinese companies, so, understandably, it doesn’t have an English-language option. One way Nanjing Marketing Group can assist you is by translating or managing the app.
Beyond this, Baidu targets two specific groups:
- Business Owners: Any company interested in using Baidu’s data and tools to better advertise to consumers and manage customers/clients.
- Third-party Customer Relationship Management Service Providers: Companies working with Baidu to enrich the experience on Aifanfan.
As you can see from the picture below, many companies have had success with Baidu’s product. While the Chinese companies may be unfamiliar, I am sure you know 3M, a powerhouse manufacturer that makes anything from masks to Scotch Tape.
Overall, 390,000 companies have chosen Aifanfan.
Given the nature of their clients, it is generally thought that the app is more of a business-to-business program, rather than a business-to-customer one. I will speak on the importance of this later on in the section “B2B Marketing.”
This doesn’t mean you should overlook Aifanfan’s usefulness for managing customers or its other benefits.
Why Should You Consider Using Aifanfan?
There are several reasons. If you use Salesforce in other countries to manage customer data, you’ll understand why Aifanfan is important in China.
While Aifanfan is not as comprehensive as Salesforce, here are some good reasons to use it.
Convert More Website Visitors
Whether selling a product that can be purchased online or generating leads, your conversion rates will increase greatly after offering real-time chat options (Baidu Aifanfan and WeChat are our favorite two).
Acquire Leads
Aifanfan gives companies access to leads from all the platforms it works with, which not only includes Baidu but also other search engines.
B2B Marketing
Aifanfan illustrates a change in China’s economy. In the past, marketing apps were mainly used to sell to customers, while business-to-business relations relied on sales teams and direct conversation.
However, as the internet has matured, it has become more expensive to put ads on websites like search engines, social media, or newspapers. Aifanfan solves this problem by allowing businesses to look up and directly message customers and other companies.
Managing Clients & Customers
With the ability to directly look up and message others, Aifanfan can help your company better organize and manage resources. This, in turn, is beneficial to any business wanting to design its own customer engagement processes, especially small organizations that can’t afford frivolous spending.
For example, users get access to a data tagging and categorization system that automatically classifies and archives new leads.
As the above picture shows, users can again search for companies, people, and products using these tags whenever they want. There are 65 tags to choose from, including
- industries,
- locations,
- shareholders,
- government officials
- trademarks, and
- business scope.
This search function is managed through its lead manager. As shown below, users can add contact info for each lead.
Employees can directly edit a lead’s contact details from a chat.
Companies may be interested in this lead manager as it can help spot invalid leads, and the app automatically refunds users whenever this happens.
Overall, Aifanfan makes it easier for any company to communicate with others to collaborate or conduct sales.
All Your Messages in One Place
Another way Aifanfan helps companies better organize themselves is by enabling them to centralize their customer messages.
Here, we see all the conversations on the right side (and it even shows where the conversations are coming from).
Companies that sign up for Baidu’s app can analyze where their customers are coming from and even set up automated responses to common questions. Customers can be notified of your responses through WeChat notifications or SMS.
Aifanfan also helps companies monitor the entire customer experience, allowing users to see where a customer tapped on a promotion, how many visits a website has received, and all conversations that eventually led to leads.
With this feature, companies can more easily set goals and smooth out their marketing campaigns.
Data Protection
Another aspect to consider is China’s Personal Information Protection Law, which makes it harder for companies to rely on third-party data tracking. Aifanfan’s marketing tools help them better own and control their customer data without worrying about websites changing their policies.
Setting Up Aifanfan
If you are interested in setting up Aifanfan, please contact us. Once we have worked together to create an account, you can download the app yourself here.
From this interface, click 下载 (Download) for the device you’ll be using.
You can also log into the browser version by clicking 用户登录 (User Login).
This will take you to the following login page.
As we can see above, this login page is actually Baidu Ads.
Contact Nanjing Marketing Group
Again, we understand this is a lot to take in and that you probably have more questions regarding Aifanfan. Don’t worry. We are here to help!
If you are interested in marketing in China or improving your Aifanfan knowledge, feel free to contact us.
For more information on Baidu, check out some other articles on the subject on our Baidu or main website.