RetailTune sets its sights on China with Baidu Maps

Pambianconews.com
Engage.it

Important news for Italy’s leading Drive to Store platform. RetailTune now offers integration with Baidu Maps, the store listings in China of the country’s most important search engine.

Also on the roadmap is the addition of other strategic directories in the Chinese market, to give companies a single tool for managing their stores and local marketing.

The Chinese market is one of the largest in the world, but it is also very complex. Communication and touchpoints between brand and user differ from those used in the West. Developing an omnichannel strategy that works in this country therefore means moving away from the Google world and shifting perspective, focusing on other channels.

The most popular and most widely used search engine in China, with nearly 700 million active users and billions of searches per month, is Baidu, which is the go-to touchpoint for Chinese users searching online for local information on stores, products, and services. Including it in one’s strategy is therefore essential to reach the majority of the Chinese population.

Thanks to its partnership with Plush.Consulting, a fashion and lifestyle marketing and communications agency founded by Lucrezia Seu and based in Shanghai, RetailTune adds Baidu Maps among its managed directories, enabling companies to develop a solid Local Digital Marketing and Drive to Store strategy in China as well.

Baidu Maps is integrated into the platform, along with the creation and management of store cards featuring address, directions, opening hours, contacts, images, reviews, and much more.

In this way, foreign retailers and wholesalers will be able to establish a presence in the Chinese market, making it easier for potential customers to find them and increasing brand awareness. How? By managing the online presence of their stores in China through the RetailTune platform, which allows unified management of all the touchpoints users consult most before visiting a store.

And it’s not just for China: Baidu is extremely important for Chinese travelers too, who use it to look up information on products, services, and stores even outside the country.

The RetailTune platform ensures a presence on the search engine for stores outside China as well.

“Offering more and more services to companies by giving consumers the right answers, wherever they are, has always been our mission. Today, thanks also to the partnership with Plush.Consulting, we have taken a further step forward in this direction. China is a very important market for Italian and European retailers across all sectors; not being present on Baidu means being invisible to all those Chinese consumers, both inside and outside China. This integration also opens up new prospects for the platform,” says Claudio Agazzi, CEO and Founder of RetailTune.

“We are pleased to be able to open the doors to China for RetailTune and its clients through our partnership. Plush.Consulting’s goal is to support companies and brands entering and expanding into China, and vice versa for Chinese businesses wishing to launch abroad. This bridge also means helping our clients provide a consistent experience to consumers; a presence on Baidu is a fundamental foundation for omnichannel integration,” says Lucrezia Seu, Founder & CEO of Plush.Consulting.