After the rise of new media, will SEM advertising be finished?

I often hear from brother companies in the same industry that we should not place bids now because the cost of bidding is too high. To invest in new media, we must focus on new media. But when you look at the new media industry, it’s basically still virgin territory. The industry as a whole is still in the initial stage of new media. At present, I have not heard of any company that plays new media very well. Some companies do do relatively well, but they are only good. There are many reasons: I don’t know how to plan new media activities; I don’t know how to manage fans; I can’t produce useful content; etc. The core point is that this thing was not put on a strategic level. It was just recruiting individuals to take charge, so the result was only big thunder but little rain.

Looking back, let’s look at bidding. Danai Technology, a leading company in vocational education, has SEM as its core online market launch. More than 100 people across the country are doing this. Apart from SEM, there are almost no other marketing methods. We can think about why? Another awesome career Suntech Education, an education company, has taken SEM to the extreme. In addition to conventional bidding, it also conducts data model analysis, and even has different customer service and sales for each platform. These are indisputable facts that are several blocks away from the study abroad industry. . ?Why are these? You can figure out the answer with your toes. People must think this effect is good, so they focus on it. Some "charlatans" in the study abroad industry are clamoring not to bid, because the fees are too high. In fact, if you ask him what factors are related to quality, he has no idea what you are talking about; if you ask him again what is the relationship between creativity and wildcards, he will definitely be dumbfounded; what's more, some people have no idea at all. After seeing the backend of the bidding account, I also shouted that bidding is not good. Just like when someone eats pork, he just sees the unsightly behavior of others and concludes that the pork is not delicious.

Is bidding very costly? Is there any way to control the cost of bidding? Controlling market costs is actually suitable for all platforms and channels, not just bidding. Next, the author will analyze how to effectively control bidding costs through his own practical experience of investing nearly 100 million yuan.

Choice and team issues

1. Select the most knowledgeable person to manage the bidding team

Select the most knowledgeable person to be responsible for bidding delivery, select the most knowledgeable person The market boss comes to manage the bidding team, letting those who don't know how to do things and give random orders go home to look after their children.

All things are human affairs, and all problems are human problems. For example, the market bosses of many companies are from offline backgrounds and have little or no knowledge of online, or even have no contact with it at all. How can we manage bidding well if we just listen to one sentence here and there, read articles online, and piece together a bidding knowledge structure? If the boss doesn’t know the ropes, the whole bidding line will be poor overall, especially if it is a group. This is especially true for large companies. The marketing team is divided into more detailed areas, such as SEO, SEM, new media, website operations, public relations media, offline activities, etc. If the boss is weak in a certain area, then the group is weak because the boss is not knowledgeable and does not know where the core problem is. There is also another reason why the boss does not know his skills, and the market leader cannot perform well and perform effectively.

2. Build a detailed and professional bidding team

Some companies only have one person to bid for products nationwide, with more than a dozen products. It is a huge joke in itself for one person to launch more than a dozen products and then launch them nationwide. How can one person launch so many products across the country and do so well? The SEM department requires the company to add one person. Bosses often say that adding one person, plus salary, commission, social security, etc., is too costly. Yes, this kind of boss is just a layman. Take studying in the United States as an example. The cost of a single resource for studying in the United States will be between 400 and 450 yuan (data from the top three levels in the industry). The resource cost of some institutions is as high as 600 to 800 yuan (medium level), and even worse. They are all over 1,000 yuan (poor level). If the adjustment is not precise, the cost of each resource will increase by 200-400 yuan. If there are 1,000 US resources per month, it may increase the investment cost by 200,000 to 400,000 yuan. The waste of a group company is not limited to this amount.

How much does it cost for a few people? Especially when some overseas study companies lower the salary of bidders to the same price as selling cabbage, and you let them worry about selling white powder, how can they do it well?

Control market costs from the account opening stage

1. The problem of finding an agent when opening an account

We must open a bidding account before launching. Take Baidu as an example. If you want to open an account, try to open an account directly with Baidu instead of an intermediary agent. However, some group companies generally invest more than 20 million yuan. For such companies, it is best to find KA. KA serves large customers, while small and medium-sized companies serve small and medium-sized customers. There are also so-called KAs among small and medium-sized companies, and they are called LA. In order to prevent small and medium-sized enterprises and KAs from competing for customers, Baidu has formulated many policies and rules that are not conducive to customers, which has caused confusion among many customers. (See Figure 1)

Each company can set its own investment budget based on its business characteristics. Another core point is to get as many rebates as possible, so that we can achieve good investment expectations even if we invest less, and the difference can be made up with rebates. Suppose you want to use 20 million yuan to place a bid. For example, the rebate for 18 million to 20 million yuan is 30%. You can invest 18 million yuan in cash, plus a rebate fee of 5.4 million yuan, which adds up to one *** It is 23.4 million yuan, which can actually achieve the effect of 20 million yuan. This indirectly saves money, and it's still a lot of millions.

How to get higher rebates? In fact, there are many ways. One relatively simple and direct method is to find a third-party company, which can help you get high rebates. You only need to pay part of it. Just the service charge.

2. Cooperate with various search platforms

There are many search platforms, such as Baidu, 360, Sogou, Shenma, Google, etc. Except for Google, the unit price of resources on other platforms is lower than Baidu. As long as we have the right strategy and let 360, Sogou, Shenma and Baidu cooperate well, we can reduce resource costs and thereby drive down market costs.

Google, haha. The search area is temporarily unavailable, but Google Network Alliance can also be considered as an option. This is much more accurate than Baidu Network Alliance. In addition, you can also invest in Facebook, especially for overseas study institutions. This is a virgin land, business secrets, hush!?

3. Regarding the signing of framework households

Act within your ability. Move forward and retreat freely. The advantage of the framework is that you can increase your rebates, but the disadvantage is that you have to spend the money after signing the agreement. In reality, some companies will constantly adjust their bidding budgets due to factors such as team instability or business transformation. As a knowledgeable bidder, I am actually very opposed to adjusting the budget back and forth. Simply speaking from the perspective of bidding accounts, adjusting the budget back and forth will lead to unstable quality, which will affect the ranking and ultimately affect the delivery effect.

From the perspective of business operations, if a company always adjusts its bidding account back and forth, it either means that the company is relatively small, or there is a problem with operation and management, or the leader does not know how to do it. This is a very serious problem for businesses. ?

Control costs from the account level

1. Create closed-loop accounts at the account level

Customers generally recognize a product or brand through hearing, understanding, Consultation, comparison, purchase, use, and sharing complete the purchasing and sharing process. We should also use this method when setting up a bidding account, thus forming a closed loop of search. For example, I heard that in this link, we can set up several plans, such as the brand word plan, which includes small units of brand words, competitive word units, famous teacher units, etc. Even the names of famous leaders in the company can be used as keywords Deliver. ?

Understanding this link is divided into understanding the business and understanding the enterprise. We can plan according to the business: there can be American units, British units, etc. In addition, in addition to searching for Chinese, customers studying abroad will also search for English keywords, so they can also submit some keywords for English schools. It can be seen that a real expert needs to know a lot of things to be able to do it well. It is not just a bargain price to find a bidder to help you adjust your account, nor is it possible for an individual to adjust your account.

Bidding is a very comprehensive science. Understand this aspect of the company. Strong companies can put in products, while weak companies can put in brand starting lines.

The author searched for peers online and found that some medium-sized or small overseas study companies did not even have a starting point for investment, so in fact, bidding in the overseas study industry is a weak link. Coupled with the fact that a layman directs an expert, this link is really bad. ?

2. Control costs at the regional level?

Another way to reduce costs is the multi-regional distribution strategy. Taking Beijing as an example, the cost of studying abroad in the United States is between 400 and 450 yuan. If it is only released in Beijing, resource costs will inevitably remain high. If we add the investment in Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi and other cities, the average cost of resources will be brought down. This is a multi-regional investment strategy. The group company may have branches in many key cities across the country. The way to reduce costs at this time is a multi-platform launch strategy, combining 360, Sogou, Shenma and other platforms to create a combination. ?

3. Time-level cost control?

Use the period analysis in the background of the bidding account to analyze which period of the day is more effective. Then communicate with customer service to determine which time period has greater traffic and better conversions. We can make statistics using several months of data samples, and we will find some regularities. Usually there is a small peak around 10:00 in the morning; there is a peak period between 2:00 and 4:00 in the afternoon; and there is another small peak between 8:00 and 10:00 in the evening. Then focus on these periods and increase the budget. Other periods can be Relatively reduce the budget. Instead of focusing on investing all day long, without a strategy, and without prioritization, this has resulted in a lot of ineffective waste. (See Figure 2)

4. Accurate delivery of Baidu products

Baidu products are divided into many categories, such as bidding, network alliance, library, encyclopedia, Tieba, Zhiba, mobile DSP, etc. It is necessary to Choose according to the characteristics of your product. For example, if you want to bring precision marketing, you must choose bidding; the effect of online alliances is getting worse and worse. What is the reason? I can only say haha, from the recent incident of "leukemia, hemophilia and other post bars being purchased by Baidu" "You can get a glimpse of the leopard.

Some uninformed institutions are still investing heavily in online alliances. This is a big mistake. Some people also told me that they need to invest 100,000 yuan to promote the event before the event. I could only reply haha. Online alliances have a display effect. According to the age characteristics of our customers and the attributes of the crowd, we can select some platforms to cooperate with the bidding to expose and display a brand. It costs 300-500 yuan a day, which is enough. If the company is small, there is no need to invest at all.

Another aspect that I attach great importance to is knowing the platform. Because the customer left a phone number through your bidding, in the comparison process, in addition to comparing with peers, he will also check your online reviews. If you have negative information or other unfavorable comments online, then the order will be gone. . From the perspective of business nature, the solution to negative information still depends on superior products and good services, rather than relying on **. This principle is very simple, but it is rarely done.

You can try out the emerging mobile DSPs. The industry is offering them, but I did not offer them, but other DSP platforms. Others are relatively common, so I won’t go into details one by one.

5. Selection of bidding words

One of the core points of bidding is the selection of keywords, and this core point actually requires relatively high standards for bidders.

Secondly, you must understand marketing and customer psychology. The cognitive sharing principle mentioned by the author above is a scientific basis for account construction and word selection. If you don’t know how to do it, you won’t have a clear idea. It seems very busy, but in fact a lot of useless work has been done and the core problem cannot be solved.

Again, you need to know how to choose precise words. Most education companies are using Leyu or 53. The search terms can be seen in the background of these dialogue software. We can use the background to see which words convert well and focus on them, instead of asking the sales department to select a few words for you to put. It became a joke. Because sales understand business, but they don’t understand bidding at all, and there are many things involved in bidding, which are very complicated. A layman has no idea what’s going on inside, and they are just looking at flowers in the fog and looking at the moon in the water. In addition, people who are truly knowledgeable in the industry either do not speak out, or their positions are too low and no one listens to them. This creates an unbalanced situation in which sales are strong and the market is weak.

Finally, pay attention to the addition of negative words and the exclusion of IP.

Through the use of statistical tools, we can know which words are accurate conversion words and which words are high-traffic words, and make a choice based on a comprehensive analysis of these words. In addition, due to keyword matching problems, some inaccurate delivery will occur. For example, if you are advertising about studying in the United States, there will be words like having children in the United States, and you have no related business, so it will also cause a lot of waste. There are also some malicious clicking behaviors by some peers, causing you to go offline soon after going online, and basically no dialogue occurs. At this time, it is necessary to block the IP and reduce the area in time. Although there are searches in some county-level cities, there are almost no conversions, so they should be blocked. In fact, bidding placement is very strategic and tactical, and it cannot be done by a bidder selling cabbage.

Most companies don’t know how to do it. The general managers of most companies in the industry are all salesmen. They don’t understand bidding at all. They only know a few concepts. So when I searched online, why was there no word about us? Why did others place ads for us? ’s words? Why don’t we put other people’s words? I’ll tell you a few words that you want to put in, and ask a bunch of questions that make professionals look low-level and ridiculous. If sales are strong and the market is weak, the market can't do anything at all, because it's the laymen who direct the experts. But in fact, this phenomenon exists in many companies. The boss does not know the business, and the sales director does not know the business. If the marketing director does not know the business, the bidders will be in dire straits.

6. Don’t listen to the instructions of lay leaders

Control costs through data analysis

1. Front-end delivery

2. Mid-end website adjustment , Optimization topic

Don’t simply guide customers brought by Baidu to the homepage of the website. Customers are impatient and lazy. If they can’t find the information they want, they will contact you as soon as possible. So he jumped away because he could find N institutions online. Therefore, the bidding landing page must also be made professional so that customers can find the information they are looking for. At this time, the bidder must use the theory of understanding the business mentioned by the author, otherwise he will not know what the customer is concerned about. In addition, it is also necessary to communicate with the business department and ask the business department to provide some points that customers want to know during the application process, so as to achieve better conversion and achieve the effect of cost control.

3. Back-end optimization of customer conversion rate

When it comes to the best way to control costs, in addition to accurate market placement, another core point is to improve the conversion rate. This conversion rate includes customer service conversions and sales conversions. If the customer service conversion rate increases by 1-2 points, a lot of costs will be saved, especially for group companies. If the national sales conversion rate of a group company increases by 1-2 points, the turnover will increase by several million or even tens of millions of yuan. Conversion rate improvement is a very important core point. Of course, there are many ways to improve sales conversion rate. At present, overseas study companies are doing this using sales routines instead of raising it to the marketing level. This is due to lack of knowledge and is also a kind of sadness for marketers. There is no place for heroes.

4. Detailed data analysis

Another very core point of bidding is account data analysis, consumption, click-through rate, CPC, dialogue, phone volume, sales volume, ROI, etc. . These data require a very detailed analysis. Almost all overseas study companies have conducted data analysis based on call volume, which is not related to sales volume or ROI at all. This analysis only plays half the role and is incomplete. And these analyzes are all manual analyses. There are almost no study abroad companies that use professional data analysis software. This is a big gap, because most companies have not realized it, or they have realized that they cannot implement it. I can only say haha ??for the specific reasons. .

Although new media has developed, many of the methods used in the study abroad industry are wrong. It should really be operated as an Internet product, rather than the current method of studying abroad institutions. In the current situation where new media has not formed a market strategic advantage, bidding must become the core strategic commanding heights of the enterprise market. Whether it can become a strategic commanding height, the core issue is still the market leader's problem. If you know the business, you can achieve it. If you don't know the business, you can just talk on paper. Of course, the ceiling for this matter is the boss. The boss must be knowledgeable, understand the principles of bidding, and understand why bidding is used as a market strategy; otherwise, no matter how knowledgeable the market boss is, he will only miss out on the talent.

New media is a new strategic breakthrough point, but it must be combined with bidding.