Promote Your Business Internationally (3 of 4) - Overcoming Market-Specific Challenges

Yesterday we talked about creating optimized in-language content for our client's site, as well as the in-language PPC campaigns and online press releases. As a teaser, we also mentioned the phenomenal results. But before we get to that, learn from the challenges we faced and overcame.

• Spanish words tend to be longer than their English counterparts - it simply takes about 30% more characters, on average, to say the same thing in Spanish as it does in English. Compare "Cotizaciones immediatas. Garantia de 30 dias." to "Immediate quotes. 30 day warranty." This is a challenge when Google's pay-per-click system allows very few characters to get your message across.
• Along those lines, given that no one on our staff speaks Spanish or Portuguese, we partnered with @International Services, a professional translation firm, to ensure our messages were grammatically correct and rang true to the target audience.
• Advertisers need to be aware of what's happening in the international culture that may affect results. We had a mysterious drop in website traffic midway through the campaign...which miraculously corrected itself country by country as Mexico, Brazil, etc., were eliminated from the World Cup playoffs and soccer fans went back to work.
• Purchasers in other countries are understandably nervous about buying a high ticket item sight unseen. We beefed up messaging on the translated pages designed to build credibility and spoke about our client's international experience, their product warranties, and how they'd handle currency exchange, shipping and customs.

Despite these challenges, the program has produced significant results for the client that we'll talk about tomorrow.