After 20 years in digital marketing services, we have worked with a large number of SME clients. The question we hear most often is not "Should we invest in promotion?" but "We've put the money in—where are the inquiries?" Especially over the past two years, traffic entry points have become increasingly fragmented—Baidu, Douyin, WeChat, Xiaohongshu, plus the emerging AI search platforms—and customer attention has been sliced into pieces. Many business owners tell us the same thing: it's not that we haven't spent money; it's that we don't feel confident about where it's going.
In this article, we want to draw on our hands-on experience as a service provider to break down the topic of SME customer acquisition clearly. We'll focus on three key terms: Generative Engine Optimization, full-channel marketing, and how they combine to solve lead-generation problems. No beating around the bush—just what to do and what to watch out for.
1. First, Get Clear: Where Are Your Customers Searching for You Now?
In the past, online promotion followed a relatively simple logic—do Baidu SEO well, hold your paid search rankings, and your traffic base was secure. But things are different now. We did a rough internal analysis, and the channel distribution of client inquiry sources has changed noticeably over the past three years. Search engines are still the biggest share, but the proportion coming from short-video platforms and AI Q&A tools is rising fast. Especially among younger procurement decision-makers, asking AI first when they encounter a problem has become a habit.
What does this mean? It means that if a company only focuses on traditional search engines, it will miss a significant portion of potential customers. AI platforms like Doubao, Tongyi Qianwen, and DeepSeek are becoming new "search entry points." When users ask inside them "Which engineering company is reliable?" or "Recommend a supplier for a certain type of equipment," the AI's answer directly influences their next move. If your company's information is not in the AI's corpus, or the corpus quality is poor, then that opportunity has nothing to do with you.
So when we diagnose a client, the first step is not to rush into opening ad accounts, but to sort out: In which scenarios will your target customers search for you? Are they searching keywords on Baidu, scrolling past a video on Douyin, or asking a question in an AI chat box? These three scenarios require different optimization approaches, but they must be laid out simultaneously. This is the underlying logic of what we call full-channel marketing—not doing every channel once, but building solid information at key touchpoints along the customer decision path.
2. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): A Must-Learn in the AI Search Era
Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO, is a concept that has only been formally introduced by the industry in the past two years. Simply put, it means making your company's information accurately and positively cited and recommended when AI generates answers. It shares similarities with traditional SEO—both involve content and authority—but the underlying logic is very different.
Traditional SEO competes on keyword rankings; users see a list of links and decide whether to click. GEO competes on "being trusted by AI." When organizing answers, AI extracts material from content sources it considers authoritative, clearly structured, and complete in information. If your official website content is scattered, lacks structure, and is missing key information, AI will have a hard time recommending you.
When we do Generative Engine Optimization for clients, we usually start from three levels:
1. Structural Transformation of Official Website Content
Many company websites look good, but the content is organized with a "brochure mindset"—big images paired with slogans, product specs buried in PDFs, service processes glossed over. Pages like this are fine for people to look at, but very difficult for AI to read. When we build websites, we deliberately mark up modules such as company introduction, service scope, product parameters, FAQs, and case descriptions with clear heading hierarchies and structured data. For example, using h2 and h3 to separate "Service Process," "Applicable Scenarios," and "After-Sales Support," and using lists to lay out parameters clearly. These details may seem insignificant, but they directly affect the efficiency of AI crawling and understanding.
In addition, we adapt the website's underlying architecture to ensure pages can be accessed normally by mainstream AI crawlers. Some company websites use a large amount of JS dynamic loading, making content unfriendly to both search engines and AI. This kind of technical debt gets amplified in the GEO era. So our custom website development services build "being retrievable and indexable by AI" into the plan from the very beginning as a baseline requirement, rather than patching it up afterward.
2. Continuous Production of Authoritative Content
To judge whether a company is worth recommending, AI looks at the depth of its content across the web. The official website is the main battleground, but the website alone is not enough. Industry media coverage, encyclopedia entries, professional answers on Q&A platforms, in-depth articles on WeChat official accounts—together these form a "chain of informational evidence." One manufacturing factory we served previously had almost no effective information findable online. Later, we helped it organize a product knowledge base, writing technical parameters, application scenarios, and selection advice into a series of articles distributed on the official website and industry platforms. Six months later, when related product recommendations were asked on AI platforms, this factory's name began appearing in the answers. This is not mysticism—it is the result of content structuring and sustained accumulation.
3. Accuracy and Consistency of Brand Information
AI cares a lot about information consistency. If a company's name, address, and main business descriptions are inconsistent across different platforms, AI will lower its trust in it. We have seen clients whose address on Baidu Maps differs from what is written on their official website, or whose company profile on recruitment sites is still the version from three years ago. These details did not matter much in the traditional search era, but in the GEO context, they hold you back. So when we provide full-channel marketing managed services, we help clients do a round of "information calibration" to unify company information across platforms. This is foundational work, but many companies simply don't have the energy to do it themselves.
One reminder: Generative Engine Optimization is not a one-time deal. AI platform algorithms are iterating, corpora are updating, and companies need to maintain a rhythm of content output. We generally recommend clients plan content quarterly, combining industry hot topics and common customer questions for continuous production. Expecting to dominate AI answers long-term by publishing a few articles is unrealistic.
3. Full-Channel Marketing: Don't Put All Eggs in One Basket, but Don't Put Them in Every Basket Either
The term "full-channel marketing" has been talked to death, but few companies truly get it right. There are two common extremes: one is clinging to a single channel, such as only doing Baidu paid search and nothing else; the other is doing whatever is trendy—opening Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Video Accounts all at once, but with copied content and half-dead accounts.
Our approach is "deep cultivation of main channels + positioning in auxiliary channels." First, based on the client's industry attributes, average order value, and decision cycle, we identify one or two core acquisition channels and concentrate budget and effort to penetrate them, then select one or two auxiliary channels for brand exposure and trust endorsement.
For example. We served an engineering company with a high average order value and a long decision cycle; customers compare repeatedly when looking for suppliers. In this industry, Baidu search advertising remains core—customers actively search when they have a clear need. But search alone is not enough; customers also check whether the company has an official website, whether it has cases, and whether there is negative news. So we simultaneously did custom website development and brand content deployment, thoroughly covering qualifications, cases, construction processes, and after-sales support. Later, the client reported that when sales went to discuss projects, the other party often said, "I looked at your website—very professional." Trust was established much faster. This is the synergy of full-channel marketing—search ads bring in new leads, while the website and content handle reception and conversion.
For local-life physical stores, the logic is different again. Customers' decision radius is small; if they see an interesting store while scrolling short videos, they might go there the same day. For these customers, short-video content and local-life platform operations have higher priority. We help stores with Douyin account positioning, content scripts, and group-buy package design, combined with local traffic promotion to sweep potential customers within a three-to-five-kilometer radius. At the same time, the official website or landing page is equipped with appointment and lead-capture functions so customers can place orders or inquire directly. One commercial store we served used this combination and saw a noticeable increase in foot traffic within three months, and the ratio of online leads to in-store redemption was also validated.
The key to full-channel marketing is not "full" but "connected." Information across channels must be linked, traffic must be able to accumulate, and data must be trackable. For example, after a customer brought in by short video adds WeChat, there needs to be a reception mechanism for follow-up scripts, Moments content, and campaign pushes. Many companies do a lively job of driving traffic upfront but fail to catch it afterward, and the money is wasted.
4. Three Practical Levers for SME Customer Acquisition
Having covered methodology, let's bring it down to execution. We recommend SMEs focus on three things.
Lever 1: Make the Official Website a "Lead-Generation Hub," Not a "Digital Business Card"
The value of the official website has been re-amplified in the GEO era. It is both the main source of information for AI crawling and the landing page for ad traffic, as well as the final anchor of brand trust. But many SME websites are still stuck at the level of "company profile + product images + contact information," with no conversion design.
When we build company websites, we focus on several metrics: Can visitors tell what you do within three seconds on the first screen? Do core service pages have clear call-to-action buttons? Are cases and qualifications placed prominently? Are mobile loading speed and form-filling experience good? These details directly affect inquiry conversion rates. We have run comparative tests: with the same ad traffic, after conversion optimization of the landing page, the form submission rate can increase by more than 30%. This is not thanks to any secret technology—it is simply about straightening out the information hierarchy and operation path.
In addition, the website's underlying architecture must be adapted for AI retrieval. During development, we handle structured data markup, sitemap submission, and page loading optimization to ensure content can be crawled normally by search engines and AI platforms. Users don't see this work, but it determines whether your website can be cited in AI answers.
Lever 2: Use AI Agents to Handle Nighttime and Fragmented Inquiries
For SMEs doing customer acquisition, a very real pain point is: inquiries come in, but no one responds in time. Especially after work hours and on weekends—a customer asks "Are you there?" and gets a reply the next day, by which time they have long since gone to another company. After we launched AI agent customer service for clients, this problem was alleviated considerably. The agent can receive visitors 24/7, answer common questions, guide lead capture, and even directly book store visits. It is not meant to replace human staff, but to catch traffic during non-working hours first and retain the leads.
For one service-oriented company we served, in the first month after launching intelligent customer service, nighttime lead capture accounted for nearly 40% of total leads. These leads were basically lost before. The barrier to building an AI agent is not as high as imagined; the key is to organize the company knowledge base well—product parameters, service processes, price ranges, common objections—feed this content to the AI, and it can respond fairly accurately. We provide AI agent development services, from knowledge base organization to dialogue flow design to backend data dashboards, helping clients build this capability.
Lever 3: Paid Search Management Should Focus on "Valid Inquiries," Not "Clicks"
Baidu promotion and feed ads remain the main acquisition method for many SMEs. But we have seen too many accounts where a lot of money is spent and the results are unclear. The problem often lies in the KPIs—only looking at clicks and impressions, not at inquiry quality and conversion cost.
When we manage paid search, the first thing we do is align with the client on "what counts as a valid inquiry." Does leaving a phone number count, or must certain conditions be met (such as region, budget, need match)? Once defined, we work backward to keyword strategy, landing page design, and customer service scripts. For example, in some industries, users searching for "price" have far higher intent than those searching for "what is," so budget should tilt toward high-intent terms. Another example: for feed ad landing pages, more form fields is not better—each additional field raises the drop-off rate. These details require continuous testing and optimization.
We recommend SME owners review the search term report at least once a week, negate clearly irrelevant terms, and raise bids on terms that convert. This is not difficult, but it requires persistence. If your own team lacks the bandwidth, and you hand it to a managed service provider, make sure they regularly sync optimization actions and data.
5. Several Common Pitfalls to Avoid in Advance
After so many years of service, we see companies repeatedly step into certain pitfalls. Let's focus on them here.
- Building a website without operating it. Launching the site is only the beginning; content updates, SEO optimization, and data monitoring are the long-term work. We have seen many clients whose websites have not been updated for two or three years. Such sites gradually lose weight in the eyes of search engines and AI.
- Treating GEO as press release distribution. Generative Engine Optimization is not about sending soft articles everywhere. Content quality, structure, and authority are the core. No matter how much low-quality content you publish, AI will not cite it.
- Equating full-channel marketing with opening stores on every platform. Channel selection depends on where customers are and what the team can operate. For teams without content capabilities, opening ten accounts is worse than doing one well.
- Ignoring data tracking. From ad click to final sale, which steps are involved and where the biggest drop-off occurs must be recorded in data. Without data, optimization is impossible. For clients under full-service management, we build tracking links from traffic to lead capture to closing, and review regularly.
- Expecting one move to work. Digital marketing is a combination punch—SEO, GEO, advertising, content, and customer service reception must work together to succeed. A single-point breakthrough is possible, but sustainability is poor.
6. Final Thoughts
At the end of the day, SME customer acquisition is a systematic project. Generative Engine Optimization solves the problem of "how to be found in the AI era," full-channel marketing solves the problem of "how multiple channels work together," and website development and AI agents solve the problem of "how to catch the traffic when it arrives." Only when these three are connected do they form a sustainable customer acquisition loop.
Yunxuan Network Technology serves SMEs across industries nationwide. From website development, SEO optimization, and GEO generative engine optimization to Baidu promotion, feed ads, short-video traffic, and AI agent development and full-service management, what we do is essentially help clients build this loop and make it run smoothly. After 20 years, our biggest takeaway is: there is no one-and-done channel, only methods that keep iterating. The market is changing, search habits are changing, AI is changing, and companies' acquisition strategies must change with them. Rather than chasing trends, it is better to lay a solid foundation, produce solid content, and understand the data clearly. Leave the rest to time.
If you are worrying about customer acquisition, you might start by reviewing your own website and search performance. See what can be found about your company on Baidu, whether it gets recommended when questions are asked on AI platforms, and whether the inquiry entry points on your website are easy to use. These self-check actions cost nothing but can help you find plenty of room for optimization.