More than just translation
Making sure your marketing content is translated is a bit of a no brainer these days if you’re trading internationally. When it comes to online performance though, translation alone is not enough if you want to make sure your company is as visible as possible to customers in your overseas markets.
Here at ALM, we advise taking a local approach to digital marketing. Getting the best results from your international budget means first working out which markets will deliver the best return, setting goals for each market, and then allocating spend to the best channels to deliver it.
Marketplace or website – which is best?
If you’re an e-commerce business, then going down the marketplace route can be a good way to test out new markets, especially with the bigger marketplaces such as Amazon. It means you can take advantage of services such as fulfilment to avoid having to set up your own distribution networks or logistics infrastructure before you know whether or not a market will be right for you.
Amazon aside, many markets also have their own marketplaces that are worth investigating, especially since in many cases, consumers prefer to go with a local marketplace rather than Amazon. In France, you have FNAC, CDiscount or Price Minister. In Germany, Real.de, Zalando and Otto are also very popular.
Before investing, investigate which marketplaces will work best for you. They all have different fee or commission structures, so make sure you look into this before you commit. As well as making sure your product listings are in the right language, you’ll achieve a better ROI if you also optimise your product listings. Each marketplace will have different ways of optimising visibility and conversions for your products, so it’s worth talking to an expert as optimisation will give you more sales compared to product listings that are simply translated.
A market-optimised website
A big benefit of having a professionally localised and optimised website is that you will be selling your products directly to your customers. This allows you to gather data directly from your own customers on market-specific buying trends and preferences. It also has the benefit of enabling you to establish a brand identity in your markets, thus building greater brand awareness and brand loyalty than with a marketplace presence.
As with marketplaces, make sure you invest in international SEO to optimise your website, as this will give you much greater online visibility over translation alone.
The key to making sure your international website performs for you is to make it look as local as possible for each of your target markets. This means not just translating your UK content, but in some cases rewriting and adapting some of your content to be more appealing for your international consumers, in turn giving increased engagement with the content on your site.
Maximum visibility for your website
International online visibility for your products and services means making sure your products and services can be found when potential customers are searching online. Companies are often great at doing this for their home market, but many don’t realise you can boost your visibility in your overseas markets too.
- English Localisation – If you’re trading across multiple English-speaking territories, it’s worthwhile adapting your content to the local market. This means not just adapting the spelling and grammar but also the content itself. Making sure your delivery and payment methods are the most popular ones in each of your markets will also give you a conversion boost.
- Link Building –This is the practice of obtaining links back to your site from other websites. Having good quality localised content on your site will increase your chances of gaining links. Make sure you include link building in your international strategy for each of your markets, as this will boost your site ranking in local search engines.
- International PPC – This is an excellent way to drive traffic to your international sites. Researching keywords in your target market, creating localised ad copy and building great landing pages all help to promote your products in new markets.
- International Social Media – Advertising on social media is one of the best ways to get your name out there. Localising your social pages for your market and focusing on the most popular social media channels in your target market ensures you reach your potential customers in the most natural way. Make sure you also consider a paid strategy, especially if you’re new to the market, as this will help you build new audiences to target.
- Voiceover and Subtitling – Video marketing is on the rise so take advantage of the effectiveness of this channel by also localising and optimising your videos. Subtitling works best for some markets, whereas voiceover works better for others.
If you’d like to find out more about how ALM can help you get better results from your marketing budget, contact us here!