Ultimate Baidu SEM Checklist 2025

The facts: With Google blocked, Baidu is the go-to search engine in China with more than 50% market share. This makes it an essential platform for brands in China: High rankings and visibility on Baidu lead to increased brand awareness, traffic, qualified leads, and, ultimately, sales.

Your challenge: You represent a global or domestic brand in the B2B or B2C sector, the service or e-commerce industry, and you want to enter the Chinese market or expand in it. While you have an international website, your brand doesn’t appear on Baidu and consequently doesn’t get many product inquiries or customer requests.

The solution: SEM on Baidu ensures that your brand appears at the top of the first result page and catches the attention of Chinese mobile and laptop users.

We’ve run over three hundred Baidu campaigns for foreign businesses, including big names like Microsoft, Papa John’s, Nord VPN, Qatar Airways, and many small-to-medium businesses across all industries. We’ve also consulted with thousands of companies. 

Sometimes we provide a proposal right away, but other times we advise the company to slow down to do some preparation first.

The Baidu advertising experts from Nanjing Marketing Group put together this concise and actionable Baidu SEM Checklist. It aims to answer the FAQ: “What do we need to do to launch a successful Baidu search engine marketing campaign?”

Quick Recap: Chinese Digital Landscape

As Google (and other Western platforms) are blocked in China, Chinese online users rely on other apps to find information. Baidu is by far the most popular search engine in China, followed by Bing, Haosou, Yandex, Sogou, and Google (VPN users). Read up on Chinese search habits in more detail here.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is the sum of all strategies used to increase a website’s visibility on the SERPs (search engine results pages) through paid advertising. Search engine marketing does not include free/organic strategies.

Baidu SEM Checklist

Here is our tried and tested checklist to prepare for, create, and execute impactful Baidu campaigns that maximize your ROI. It’s meant for marketing managers who oversee a Chinese SEM campaign as part of a larger campaign.

The three key things that you must handle:

1. Responsibilities within your team and the budget for China marketing.
2. What you want to achieve in the Chinese market.
3. Make sure that your website and team, and handle the traffic and inquiries.

If you decide to work with us, we can help you with all the remaining six steps:

4. Setting up a Baidu account
5. Designing and optimizing landing pages
6. Keyword research
7. Creating ad copies
8. Setting a bidding strategy
9. Monitoring and continuous improvement

Let’s take a closer look at what each of these steps entails.

1. Clarify Responsibilities & Budget

Running Baidu campaigns is effective and has a high ROI, but requires some investment upfront, including:

• Baidu ad account setup and verification: 600 RMB per year.
• Deposit for advertising credit: 1,500 RMB. 
• Baidu ad management through your team or an agency: click here for our pricing structure.

While you need an agency to set up a Baidu Ad Account for you (more on that below), you can decide whether you want to run the Baidu campaigns yourself (requires a person who can read and write Chinese) or with the help of an agency.

2. Define Your Campaign Goals and Objectives

Before launching any campaign, clarity and a common understanding among the team is essential. You can ask yourself: What do we want to achieve?

Do we want to increase website traffic, generate leads, drive sales, or boost brand awareness? It could be two or more of these.

Ensure that your goals align with your broader marketing objectives. For example, if brand awareness is your priority, focus on display ads and broader keywords. For lead generation, prioritize conversion-driven strategies like well-optimized landing pages and compelling CTAs.

Our Tips:

• Define KPIs: Number of impressions, click-through rates, etc.
• Set measurable objectives, e.g., a 30% increase in leads within the first quarter.
• Allocate budgets based on campaign goals.

Once this is done, you can start creating the necessary accounts.

3. Make Sure You Can Handle The Traffic

If you’re working with us, we’ll handle the remaining steps below; however, it’s up to you to handle the traffic.

If users need to make purchases on-site, you should accept Chinese payment methods such as Alipay and WeChat Pay. Luckily, this is often easy to achieve by enabling those payment options in Stripe. 

If users will contact a salesperson to talk, you should have a Chinese-speaking contact available. Plus, you will generate about 3X more leads if you accept email leads via a form and allow users to contact you via WeChat or a live chat box on the website.

4. Set up a Baidu Ad Account

The good thing about a Baidu Ad Account is that it allows you to use and log in to other Baidu products, including the Baidu Official Account and Baidu Analytics Account (Baidu Tongji).

So, to set up a Baidu Advertising Account, these are the necessary steps:

1. Find a Certified Agency (1–2 weeks):
   • It’s not possible to register a Baidu ads account directly!
   • It is mandatory to collaborate with a certified agency.
2. Prepare Documents (1–2 weeks):
   • Business license, contact information, and website URL (preferably with an ICP license for hosting in China).
3. Submit Application & Deposit (1–3 weeks):
   • Register on Baidu Ads (Tuiguang) and pay the initial deposit (1,500 RMB).
4. Approval & Ad Campaign Setup (1–2 weeks):
   • Baidu reviews the application and activates your account.
   • Once approved, campaigns can be launched immediately.

Overall, the process takes 3–7 weeks and costs at least 1,500 RMB.

5. Design and Optimize Landing Pages

A fast-loading and well-designed website or landing page in Chinese is crucial for a high ranking on Baidu. Specifically, Baidu evaluates the following aspects as part of its quality score, among others: Chinese language with localized content (not just translated), loading time (less than three seconds is ideal), and user experience (UX).

Our Tips:

• Create a Chinese landing page with
  • Baidu Jimuyu (which can help make quick-loading but simple landing pages), 
  • a quick-loading landing page on your website, or
  • a full Chinese-language mini-site.
• Test the loading time of your website with free tools like 17CE.
• Adjust the UX of your landing page to mobile-first (80% of netizens search and connect on their phones). Add clear CTAs to your navigation and include testimonials.
• Use Baidu Tongji (Analytics) to measure visitor behavior.

With all this preparation, we can now get to the actual ad creation.

6. Keyword Research

Understanding your target audience is key to selecting the right keywords. Baidu’s audience may differ from global search engine users, with unique behaviors influenced by cultural, linguistic, and regional nuances.

Use Baidu’s Keyword Planning Tool (关键词规划师)—access via Baidu Tuiguang—to identify relevant keywords, and analyze competitors’ ads for insights into high-performing terms. You should also consider long-tail keywords for lower competition and higher ROI and incorporate localized language and phrasing specific to Chinese users.

Our Tips:

• Add keywords for your brand, products/services, and problems you solve. 
• Avoid direct English translations; hire a native speaker to craft accurate and appealing phrases.
• Use trending industry-specific keywords for seasonal or event-based promotions.

Now, on to the creative part!

7. Create Ad Copy

Ad copywriting on Baidu requires a local-first mindset. Baidu’s algorithm rewards ads that resonate with the local audience and match user intent closely.

Write compelling and concise headlines (watch out for the 30-character limit) and highlight unique selling points (USPs) tailored to Chinese preferences. Finally, focus on culturally relevant messaging, and avoid Western idioms or humor that might not translate.

Our Tips:

• Develop ad variations for A/B testing.
• Ensure your ad content adheres to Baidu’s guidelines to avoid restrictions.
• Use advanced ad formats like multi-image ads.

Next, set your bids to start the customer journey and convert prospects to clients.

8. Set Your Bidding Strategy

Baidu’s bidding system works on a pay-per-click (PPC) model but incorporates a quality score that affects ad ranking. Balancing cost and performance is key.

Based on our experience, the key KPIs to monitor include the Cost-Per-Click (CPC), Click-Through Rate (CTR), and Conversion Rate (CVR).

Our Tips:

• Start with a higher bid to establish ad visibility, then adjust based on performance data.
• Use automated bidding tools like Baidu’s AI bidding to optimize CPC.
• Monitor competitors’ activity and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Finally, let’s look at the last aspect we handle.

9. Monitoring and Iteration

We continuously monitor the results of our strategy, content, and ads. By analyzing the impact (positive and negative), we can adjust our strategy as necessary to ensure the best results for you, our valued client.

We do this to ensure maximum effectiveness for your brand in the Chinese market.

Pre-Launch Checklist: What We Need from You

If you decide to put your China success and Baidu marketing into our trusted hands, we are happy to assist you to the best of our abilities. To hit the ground running, here’s what we kindly ask from you:

• Set a budget.
• Nominate a focal point in your team for our collaboration.
• Choose who will communicate with potential customers (us or you).
• Provide a copy of your business license (for Baidu account setup).
• Share a bank statement with your company name, bank name, and list of transactions.
• Allow access to your Google Analytics.

With this information, we can jump right into Baidu marketing.

Case Study: Bar Codes Talk

Since 2011, we have run a comprehensive China marketing campaign for this international provider of certified barcodes: Bar Codes Talk. We helped them to enter the Chinese market and continue to be by their side to expand their Chinese customer base. 

For Bar Codes Talk we first developed a comprehensive “China strategy” to build a brand presence and trust among Chinese consumers.

We set up brand accounts on the popular Chinese social media platforms WeChat, Zhihu, Baidu Zhidao, Baidu Tieba, and Xiahongshu. After that, we developed, launched, and managed ads on the biggest Chinese search engines Baidu and 360.

To optimize conversion rates, we localized the Chinese website. This included adding the local currency, chat functions via QQ and WeChat, and a FAQ page, and then we optimized pages on the website for Baidu, so-called search engine optimization (SEO). Finally, we integrated a quick and easy customer support tool into the website (LiveReception).

The results (2011–2024)

• More than 60,000 inquiries (60,082)
• More than 41,000 transactions (41,592)
• More than 12,000 WeChat followers
• Up to 387% ROI

“NMG has always provided diligent and outstanding service. Taking a company internationally can be daunting but NMG takes the reins, guides you into best practices and makes sure that you have the tools required to be successful. NMG constantly provides recommendations on best practices and new avenues to explore. We would highly recommend NMG’s services!”

– Brandon Gordon, Owner of Bar Codes Talk

This brings us to the end of this comprehensive and actionable Baidu SEM checklist.

The Takeaway – Baidu SEM Checklist

Launching a successful Baidu SEM campaign in 2025 requires a combination of thorough preparation, strategic planning, and local expertise. 

Following this comprehensive Baidu SEM checklist can ensure your campaigns are well-positioned to achieve your business goals in China’s competitive market.

If you would like a helping hand, we are here to help with faster account setup and approval and—with their firsthand experience of China and its unique culture— provide insights into local audience behavior. 

Once things are up and running, we will optimize the campaign ad hoc to respond to changes in local trends and the market as a whole.