Digital Knowledge Management platform Yext has teamed up with Baidu Map, Fliggy, CK Map, and PIRT to offer brands ways of reaching Chinese tourists in a region where Google fails to reach.
Chinese tourists rank first worldwide in overseas travel spending, according to the United Nations. However, marketers and advertisers planning to capitalise on this burgeoning market with a targeted ad campaign on Google Adwords are destined to fail. Inside or outside China, many Chinese citizens either don’t use, or may have never even heard of Google.
As part of its Spring ’19 Product Release, Yext is giving western advertisers the ability to scale the “Great Firewall”, maintaining control of their brand information, ensuring it is correct, up to date and – crucially – easily accessible to the Chinese tourist.
Further features include:
Google Q&A: Businesses can now monitor and answer questions that consumers ask about them on Google in Google’s Q&A search results, directly in the Yext dashboard.
AI-Ready Pages: Yext’s self-serve Pages option is now available for general access. With the Spring ’19 Release, Yext has enhanced AI-Ready Pages with new customization options.
AI-Ready Pages let businesses create a smart landing page on their website for any entity stored in Yext.
“The Chinese digital landscape is made up of an entirely different set of services from those in the West. When Chinese travelers who use services like Baidu and Fliggy at home travel overseas, they use these same services to find businesses in the cities they are visiting,” said Howard Lerman, Founder and CEO of Yext. “If a business’s information isn’t in these services, it is invisible to these potential customers. We’re integrating with some of the largest Chinese services so businesses using Yext can provide perfect answers to Chinese travelers.”
Travelers from Mainland China are still subject to the “Great Firewall” when they travel overseas, and so they do not use sites like Google to find places to eat, stay, or shop, overseas. Instead, they use services like Baidu Map (Overseas), Fliggy, CK Map, and PIRT while traveling. A survey by Coresight Research indicates that 72% of Chinese tourists use online resources to plan their trips and 98% rely on their mobile phones while abroad to keep in touch and do research on the go.
“Chinese tourists spent a world-leading $261 billion in 2016, and the economic impact of tourism from China is expected to grow in the coming years. Many businesses aren’t structuring their information and making it available to the digital services this critical customer base is using, and so they are unable to reach these customers,” said Marc Ferrentino, Chief Strategy Officer of Yext. “Yext’s integrations with leading Chinese services make it possible for businesses in the West to provide verified answers to consumers using these services, increasing visibility and providing a better customer experience.”
For more information on the Spring ’19 Product Release, visit the Release Notes.
