After two decades in internet services, we have a deep feeling: finding customers has never been as complex as it is today, nor has it ever been as full of opportunities. The complexity lies in the fragmentation of traffic channels—Baidu, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, WeChat, AI search—customers can appear anywhere. The opportunity lies in the fact that as long as you solidify the reception and conversion process, even a small budget can generate steady inquiries.
Yunxuan Network Technology serves SMEs and physical businesses across all industries nationwide. From website development, SEO optimization to GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), Baidu promotion, feed ads, and AI agent development, we have seen too many companies stuck at the same point: they spend a lot on front-end promotion but fail to capture leads on the back end, and ultimately complain that online marketing doesn't work. In this article, we want to start with industry changes, connect smart customer service, local lead generation, and online marketing, and explain what we, as a service provider, can actually solve for our clients.
1. Traffic Channels Have Changed, and Lead Generation Logic Must Follow
Let's look at a few ongoing changes.
Search is no longer just Baidu. In the past, online marketing was straightforward: open Baidu bidding, rank keywords, wait for calls. Now customers might see your video on Douyin, then ask Doubao or DeepSeek "How is this company?", and then search for reviews on Xiaohongshu. The decision path has changed from a straight line to a network. This means that if a company only speaks on a single channel, it can easily disappear during the customer's comparison stage.
AI search is eating into traditional search traffic. AI platforms like Doubao, Qwen, and DeepSeek are increasingly used by users for initial screening. When customers ask "Which engineering companies in Zhanjiang are reliable?" or "Recommend injection molding manufacturers in Foshan," whether you appear in the AI's answer directly determines whether you enter the customer's candidate list. This is why we promote GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)—optimizing content for AI platforms. It's not about following trends; it's because the way customers ask questions has changed, and the rules of content distribution must change accordingly.
Customer patience is shrinking. Whether they see a feed ad or click into your website, customers may give you only a few seconds. If no one responds to inquiries, the page loads slowly, or the form is cumbersome to fill out, any bottleneck wastes traffic. We often tell clients: promotion is spending money to buy attention, and reception is the key to determining whether that money is worth it.
Local attributes are being re-emphasized. For many physical stores, engineering companies, and trading firms, customers are actually within a few to tens of kilometers. Platforms like Douyin Local, Baidu Local, Meituan, and Amap have made local lead generation entrances increasingly refined. But many companies only do "display" and not "reception." Customers see you but can't find you, or find you but no one responds promptly.
These four changes combined lead to a clear conclusion: companies no longer need a single promotion method, but a complete chain from exposure to reception to conversion. This is why Yunxuan Network Technology has expanded its services from website building and SEO to GEO optimization, AI agents, and full-case management over the years.
2. Smart Customer Service Is Not a Gimmick, but a Necessity for Traffic Reception
Let's start with a common phenomenon we've observed: a large number of companies lose inquiries during non-working hours. At 9 PM, a customer sees your Douyin promotion video, clicks into your homepage, browses for a bit, wants to inquire, but finds only a message box or an auto-reply saying "Customer service hours: 9:00-18:00." The next day, the customer has likely gone to ask another company.
The traditional approach is to add staff shifts, but SMEs cannot afford a three-shift customer service team. This is where the value of smart customer service comes in. The AI agents we build for clients mainly solve three things:
First, 24/7 reception. Whether the customer inquires at midnight or on weekends, the AI can respond instantly, capture the customer's questions, and record basic information. It won't leave the customer with a cold "We will contact you as soon as possible after leaving a message," but can engage in multi-turn dialogues to clarify needs, budget, region, and contact information.
Second, professional and consistent answers. Many companies lack standard scripts, and different customer service reps give inconsistent answers to the same question. AI agents are trained on the company's own product materials, service processes, and case library, so when customers ask "Do you do national promotion?" "How long does website development take?" "How much do feed ads cost?" the answers are stable and accurate.
Third, automatic screening and lead capture. Smart customer service is not just about answering questions; more importantly, it identifies valid leads and pushes them to sales for follow-up. We've done comparisons: companies that launched smart customer service saw a significant increase in lead capture rate for nighttime inquiries because customers received a response at the moment, rather than waiting until the next day when enthusiasm cooled.
One misconception to clarify: smart customer service is not meant to replace humans, but to free people from repetitive basic questions. Complex, negotiation-required, or custom-solution inquiries are still transferred to humans. When building AI agents for clients, we set clear transfer rules to ensure a smooth experience.
The relationship with online marketing is also direct. Traffic from Baidu promotion, feed ads, and Douyin promotion—if the reception process fails, the promotion budget is wasted. Smart customer service is the lowest-cost and fastest-responding part of the reception system. We recommend clients补齐 their reception capabilities before increasing promotion investment; otherwise, the more traffic, the more waste.
3. Local Lead Generation: A Lesson National Companies Cannot Avoid
Yunxuan Network Technology serves clients nationwide, from Zhanjiang to the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, and inland cities. We encounter a wide variety of businesses. But whether it's a factory doing national business or a physical store serving nearby customers, local lead generation is unavoidable.
Why? Because customer decisions often carry geographical attributes. A company needing engineering services will prioritize local or nearby suppliers; a homeowner wanting renovation will search for "local renovation companies"; a procurement manager looking for a processing factory will ask "Is there one nearby?"
Local lead generation channels have changed a lot in recent years. The combinations we help clients with roughly fall into several areas:
- Local search optimization. Baidu Local, Amap, WeChat Search—these platforms have different local result display logic than traditional SEO and require separate optimization. Company name, address, phone, business hours, service scope—this information must be accurate and consistent.
- Short video local traffic. Douyin's local recommendations are especially friendly to physical stores. When we create short video lead generation plans for retail stores, the focus is not on how beautifully shot it is, but whether the content has local tags and hooks to drive store visits. A video like "A wholesale market locals don't know about" may bring more foot traffic than a corporate promo video.
- Local life platforms. Meituan, Dianping, Douyin Group Buying—these platforms are suitable for merchants with in-store services. The key is to operate the page like an official website, with careful attention to images, reviews, and package design.
- Local word-of-mouth content. Positive information deposited in local forums, WeChat public accounts, and communities. When customers search for you, they can see real reviews, and the conversion rate will be much higher.
We served an engineering company in Zhanjiang. Their customers are mainly in western Guangdong, but their business capabilities actually cover the whole country. Our plan for them: the official website highlights national service capabilities, while SEO optimization targets local keywords, combined with Baidu promotion to cover local search demand. The result was a significant increase in inquiries, and the quality of leads was more precise because they had already confirmed geographical match during the search stage.
One point to emphasize: local lead generation does not mean only doing local. For companies serving the whole country, local optimization is part of the national layout. For example, a manufacturing factory doing national business can lay out localized content in multiple target cities, so that customers searching in any city can find you. This is the fine-grained implementation of national promotion.
4. The Complete Chain of Online Marketing: From Website Building to AI Tools, No Link Can Be Missing
Many clients come to us with specific problems: "Help me do Baidu promotion," "Help me build a website," "Help me do Douyin." But after talking, we find that the real problem is often not a single point, but a broken chain.
Yunxuan Network Technology's service logic is to break down lead generation into several stages, each corresponding to specific capabilities:
1. Reception Carrier: Corporate Website Development
The official website is the first stop for customers to learn about you and the landing point for all promotion traffic. We do custom website development, not template-based, but designed according to the company's brand image, industry characteristics, and customer decision-making habits. Both PC and mobile must be adapted, as most traffic now comes from mobile. More importantly, the underlying architecture must be conducive to search engine indexing and AI retrieval—if the website content cannot be crawled or searched by AI, GEO optimization is impossible.
We've seen too many corporate websites that load slowly, have outdated content, are misaligned on mobile, and lack inquiry entrances. Promoting such a website is like directing customers to a leaking bucket.
2. Traffic Entrances: SEO, GEO, Paid Promotion
SEO optimization is a basic skill, involving keyword layout, content optimization, and backlink building for Baidu and other search engines. We've done this for twenty years and have solid experience. But now SEO cannot only focus on Baidu; it must also consider AI search. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is about optimizing content for AI platforms like Doubao, Qwen, and DeepSeek, so that companies are mentioned and recommended in AI answers.
For paid promotion, Baidu promotion and feed ads are the two main forces. Baidu promotion is suitable for customers with clear search needs, while feed ads are suitable for brand exposure and interest stimulation. Douyin promotion is a must in the short video era, especially for local businesses and B2C companies.
Our advice: paid promotion and organic optimization should work together. Paid buys immediate traffic; organic optimization (SEO+GEO) buys long-term assets. If you only do paid, traffic stops when you stop investing; if you only do organic, it's slow to take effect. Combining both leads to a healthy cost structure.
3. Reception and Conversion: Smart Customer Service and AI Agents
We've detailed this earlier, so we won't repeat. The core is: when traffic comes, someone must receive it, receive it well, and receive it professionally.
4. Full-Case Management: Let Companies Focus on Their Core Business
Many SMEs don't have a dedicated marketing team, and the boss personally manages promotion, which is energy-draining. We provide full-case digital marketing management, from website building to promotion to AI tools to GEO optimization, a one-stop closed loop. Clients only need to provide product materials and business goals; we handle execution, optimization, and review.
This model is especially suitable for two types of clients: first, companies just starting out that need to quickly build a lead generation system; second, busy business owners who have no energy to manage marketing details.
5. Pitfall Guide: Common Mistakes Companies Make in Online Marketing
Based on our experience serving clients nationwide, here are some high-frequency issues.
Pitfall 1: Only looking at exposure, not lead capture. Some promotion plans report good data—hundreds of thousands of impressions, click-through rates. But when asked about inquiries, there are few. The problem lies in the reception process. No matter how much exposure, if you can't capture it, it's wasted. We focus on lead cost and conversion rate from day one, not vanity metrics.
Pitfall 2: Website and promotion are disconnected. The landing page and official website have inconsistent styles and mismatched information, making customers feel unreliable. More commonly, the landing page lacks an inquiry entrance, or it's hidden deep. In our full-case management, we connect the landing page and official website to ensure customers can smoothly inquire from any entrance.
Pitfall 3: Ignoring the existence of AI search. Many companies haven't realized that customers are already using AI for decision support. If your brand is completely absent from AI answers, you're giving away some high-intent customers. GEO optimization is not optional; it's becoming mandatory.
Pitfall 4: Inconsistent local information. Companies have different addresses, phones, and business hours on different platforms, confusing customers and reducing platform trust. We recommend companies do a local information audit to ensure consistency across the web.
Pitfall 5: Greedy for too many promotion channels. Not all channels suit all companies. For B2B industrial products, Douyin may be less precise than Baidu search; for local restaurants, Baidu promotion may be less effective than Douyin Local and Meituan. When choosing channels for clients, we first analyze the customer decision path, then determine the channel mix, rather than following whatever is hot.
6. Three Certain Directions for Enterprise Lead Generation in 2025
Finally, our judgment on trends, which are also the directions we continue to invest in our service capabilities.
Direction 1: AI tools will become standard for corporate marketing. Not just smart customer service, but also AI content generation, AI data analysis, and AI customer profiling. The earlier you use them, the earlier you benefit. We are already helping clients integrate AI agents into official websites, WeChat public accounts, and Douyin private messages to automate inquiry reception.
Direction 2: GEO optimization and traditional SEO will merge. In the future, companies doing search optimization must consider not only search engine crawlers but also AI model crawling and citation. Content quality, structure, and authority will become increasingly important. When doing GEO optimization, we simultaneously optimize the website content structure so that the same content is conducive to both Baidu indexing and AI citation.
Direction 3: The boundary between local lead generation and national promotion will blur. A company may have customers in multiple cities simultaneously, and localized content layout and national brand exposure need to be coordinated. Our experience serving national clients is: refine local keywords, stabilize the national brand—the two are not contradictory.
Yunxuan Network Technology has been deeply engaged in the internet for twenty years, from website building to full-network marketing, from SEO to GEO, from manual customer service to AI agents. We have been evolving with our clients' needs. If you are struggling with lead generation, why not start by sorting out your reception chain: where does traffic come from, who receives it, and how is it converted? Once these three questions are clear, the effectiveness of online marketing will naturally improve.
We serve SMEs and physical businesses across all industries nationwide. No matter which city you are in, as long as your business needs online lead generation, you can talk to us. You don't have to cooperate immediately; clarifying your thoughts first is also a gain.