stjorthotic Chapter 115 The Dilemma of "Watering Sandy Land"
Chapter 115 The Dilemma of "Watering Sandy Land"
Since participating in Baidu's paid search advertising, Li Ying has encountered new problems in the online promotion she is in charge of.
The influx of search traffic into the forum has brought new discussions, but it has also attracted some discordant voices.
Some people on the forum questioned: "Is the information on this local life website true? I called and they said the house was rented out a long time ago!" There were also suspected competitors using fake accounts to stir up trouble in various related posts, smearing the website for providing false information and slow updates.
"We can't just respond passively," Lin Feng emphasized to Li Ying. "We need to take the initiative to guide them."
First, as an official website staff member or a concerned user, respond to the doubts with facts in the comments section of important posts. For example, if someone complains that the information is outdated, check the backend; if it has indeed been rented out, announce that you have contacted the landlord to update the information, and thank the user for their oversight, demonstrating your attitude and actions.
Second, we will mobilize users who have actually found rental housing or jobs through our website and encourage them to share their real experiences.
Third, for obvious malicious attacks, contact the moderators for handling. At the same time, we must remain calm and use more real information and success stories to drown out the noise.
The integration of online and offline channels was forced to accelerate under pressure.
When expanding their business to new merchants, Wei Zejun's sales team began to consciously emphasize: "Our information is manually verified, and many people can see us every day when they search for 'Shenzhen rentals' on Baidu. If you post your listings with us, your exposure is guaranteed."
This has become a new and powerful tool for persuasion.
Li Ying then compiled a list of the frequent information needs she collected from forums and QQ groups that were lacking on websites, and gave it back to Lin Xiaoqiang and Wei Zejun.
"Many people ask, 'Where can I find a place to rent for a month?' or 'Where can I find weekend part-time jobs?' Our website currently has very little information on these needs. Could we expand our search to include these specific questions?"
One month later, the first cycle of Baidu's bidding ended.
Zhou Bin walked into Lin Feng's office with a data report in his hand.
"Mr. Lin, these are the detailed data from our first month participating in Baidu's paid search advertising." Zhou Bin handed the report to Lin Feng. "There were results, but they fell short of our expectations."
Lin Feng opened the report.
Total investment: 31500 yuan (slightly exceeding the budget).
Total clicks: Approximately 42,000.
Average cost per click: 0.75 yuan, significantly higher than the expected 0.5 yuan.
"Why are costs rising so fast?" Lin Feng pointed to the numbers.
"The competition is fiercer than we expected," Zhou Bin explained.
"For core keywords like 'Shenzhen rentals,' the cost per click quickly rose to over one yuan to rank high on the first page. To control our overall budget, we had to lower our bids, which caused our ranking to drop and our click volume to decrease."
He paused, then added, "Baidu's backend only shows the clicks they've tallied. The unique IP visit growth we see in our own website logs is significantly less than that. There might be invalid clicks, or... the data itself might be inflated."
In 2004, search engine marketing was just starting out, and opaque rules and rough performance evaluations were common phenomena.
Let's look at the actual effects:
The website's daily unique visitors have increased from around 200 before the promotion to the range of 500-600, with peak weekend numbers approaching 800.
This is already a good growth.
Approximately 800 new registered users (individuals and businesses) were added.
Approximately 3000 new valid messages (published + sent on behalf of others) were added, averaging 100 messages per day.
The number of user phone clicks has increased significantly, from a few hundred times per month to about 2000 times.
Lin Feng thought to himself, "In other words, we spent more than 30,000 to buy an average of three to four hundred new visitors per day, of which about one-tenth became registered users, and the rest posted information."
"On average, the cost of acquiring a registered user is close to 40 yuan. The cost of acquiring a single piece of valid information is over 10 yuan."
This number wasn't low in 2004. These users who came through search were highly targeted, but also more discerning.
New troubles followed one after another.
According to Wei Zejun's feedback, more merchants are indeed willing to try it because they "saw it online", but problems have also been exposed.
Some merchants posted information but found that they didn't receive as many inquiries as expected, and their enthusiasm quickly faded, so they stopped updating the information.
After the initial novelty wore off, Mr. Liu, the owner of "Honest Home Appliance Repair," gradually became too lazy to proactively send text messages to update his status.
"I forget about it when I get busy. Anyway, I did my business just fine before I had a website," he told Wei Zejun during a follow-up visit.
Keeping information fresh has become a major problem.
Lin Xiaoqiang's team is exhausted. Acquiring new users is already difficult, and they also have to urge existing landlords to update their accounts. They are short-handed.
"Zombie information" began appearing on the website.
When you call, the apartment has already been rented out, or the landlord has changed their number. This directly impacts user experience and website reputation.
Li Ying's "enthusiastic" replies in the forum also began to arouse the vigilance and resentment of some moderators.
On the "Shenzhen City Under the Eaves" rental forum, one of her frequently used accounts was warned by the moderator for frequently mentioning "Tongcheng Life Network" and was almost banned.
The appropriate level of soft implantation is becoming increasingly difficult to control.
Furthermore, Zhou Bin also mentioned a technical bottleneck:
As traffic increased, the website's simple architecture began to show signs of strain. Page loading speeds slowed down during peak hours, and occasional stutters occurred.
This further impacts the experience of users who clicked through Baidu's paid search results, as they may close the page directly due to slow loading times.
"Mr. Lin, this is the situation." Zhou Bin pushed up his glasses. "The money has been spent, the traffic has come, but it's like watering sandy soil—it seeps in quickly and doesn't stay. Moreover, costs are rising, and problems are increasing."
Lin Feng leaned back in his chair and didn't speak immediately.
He anticipated difficulties, but reality is often more challenging than expected.
Baidu bidding is not a magic key; it only opens a door, but the path behind that door still needs to be paved step by step by yourself.
"Do you think we should continue investing next month?" Lin Feng asked.
Zhou Bin thought for a moment and cautiously replied, "We will invest, but we need to adjust our strategy."
First, reduce the budget for popular keywords and shift the focus to cheaper and more precise long-tail keywords, such as "shared apartment in the science park" and "single room in Nantou". Although the traffic of an individual keyword is small, the combined cost may be more cost-effective, and the target audience is more precise.
Second, the landing page must be optimized, speeded up, and highlight the latest and most reliable information.
Third, we need to establish our own performance evaluation system and not rely entirely on Baidu's data.
Lin Feng nodded; Zhou Bin's approach was pragmatic.
"We'll make the adjustments as you suggested. We'll see how the optimization goes next month. Also, the technical bottlenecks must be resolved as soon as possible; the website needing to load quickly is the bare minimum."
"clear."
Faced with the dilemma of "watering sandy land", Lin Feng pondered for a long time.
For Wei Zejun, who is in charge of merchant operations and promotion, he was required to shift his focus from simply "attracting referrals" to a balance between "promoting activity" and "attracting referrals".
Lin Feng called Wei Zejun to his office and showed him the data report on Baidu's bidding process.
"Zejun, a significant portion of the traffic from search engines comes from people looking for local services. Your merchants are key to retaining this traffic. But the problem now is that they send out messages and then ignore them, turning them into 'dead messages'."
Wei Zejun nodded, deeply agreeing: "That's a problem, Mr. Lin. Many small business owners feel that sending a message once is enough, and if they don't get a call, they think it's useless. They also find it troublesome for our sales staff to follow up."
"It's not enough to just say 'updating information is useful'; we need to show them that 'not updating is harmful, and updating regularly is beneficial.'"
Lin Feng assigned Wei Zejun to carry out two tasks.
First, establish an "information freshness" label. Technically, Zhou Bin added the last update time to each merchant's information. Items that haven't been updated for more than 7 days were either downplayed in the display or marked with a "information may be outdated" tag.
Tell the sales staff to show this to the businesses on their next visit.
Tell them the information is outdated; people won't click on it if they find it online, and even if they do, they might not be able to get through, causing business to go elsewhere. Make the merchants feel a sense of urgency.
Second, establish "premium recommendation slots".
On the homepage or at the top of each category, a few fixed positions are used to specifically recommend merchants with "recent updates" and "many positive reviews".
Transparent rules: Want to be featured in this section?
Yes, but the information must be updated at least once a week and reviewed by the ground sales team.
This can be used as a reward and traffic boost for merchants who cooperate highly. This will allow merchants to directly see that cooperating with website updates will lead to more business opportunities.
In addition, Lin Feng adjusted the performance evaluation criteria for the ground sales team, not only looking at the number of new customers developed, but also including the maintenance of existing customers and the supervision of information updates.
Lin Feng demanded that Lin Xiaoqiang, who was in charge of individual housing information, shift from "massive collection" to "quality assurance and quantity control".
When Lin Feng found Lin Xiaoqiang, he was troubled by the messy landlord information.
"Boss, we can't get through on the phone, more and more houses have been rented out, the guys are exhausted from running around, and there are more complaints."
"Brother Qiang, we need to change our approach. Before, we focused on disseminating as much information as possible. Now that we have traffic, the 'quality' of information is more critical than the 'quantity.' One piece of incorrect information could drive away ten potential users."
"Then what should we do? Stop expanding?" Lin Xiaoqiang asked.
"Continue to expand, but with a focus."
Lin Feng's method and the management mechanism for merchant information are similar in principle.
First, establish an "information shelf life" system.
When signing the authorization agreement with the landlord, it should be clearly stated that the website will provide exposure, but the information will be valid for a maximum of one month.
We will call you back before the expiration date to confirm whether you wish to renew. If you do not renew or cannot be contacted, your information will be automatically removed from the service.
Second, we will focus on securing "high-quality housing resources".
We will focus on maintaining properties that are well-located, reasonably priced, and easy to communicate with the landlord.
And try to give these landlords small incentives, such as always displaying their listings prominently or helping them write more attractive content. Develop them into website models and a stable source of information.
Third, technological assistance.
Lin Feng asked Zhou Bin to develop a simple backend function. When the sales staff are out and about, they can use SMS codes. For example, sending "Remove Listing #Property Number" to a specified number will quickly remove a rented property from the listing, and the backend can process it quickly.
Reduce communication costs and improve update efficiency.