Two Months, $2 Million in Revenue Potential: How International Search Marketing Pays Off
Search engine marketing is so much more complex and challenging than it used to be...do you ever wish you had started back in 1998 so you could get a jump on your competitors? Even those of us who DID start in 1998 can relive the past all over again (and no, we're not talking about the fashions).
Simply put, many countries outside the U.S. are facing far less competition within the search engines than we do here. It's just about as easy to attain high rankings internationally - which, of course, lead to increased website visitors, leads and sales - as it was here in the states seven or eight years ago.
We recently tested a small, international search marketing campaign that surpassed all expectations. Our client Abacus Solutions is a business-to-business provider of new and used enterprise-level servers globally. We've managed their search marketing efforts in the U.S. for years, and wanted to explore doing the same in Latin America. The test campaign ran for two months and required a very minimal investment from the client.
Traffic from Latin America Countries Increased Over 1000% in Just One Month
Working hand-in-hand with Barry Mirkin, Director of Marketing for Abacus Solutions, we leveraged internal intelligence of the marketplace dynamics and refined the campaign strategy to ensure that we not only developed a solid structure for the search marketing campaign, but also established internal processes to service the leads. Abacus had sales professionals already on staff who spoke both Spanish and Portuguese.
We created four new optimized pages on the site for Abacus' top two product lines, two pages in Spanish and two pages in Portuguese (targeting Brazil). We placed a small pay-per-click campaign on Google targeting Latin American countries, with the ad copy and landing pages in Spanish. Finally, we distributed a handful of optimized Spanish press releases across Internet wire services targeting the same countries. These press releases showed up in the search engine results along with our optimized pages and pay-per-click ads, and helped us take up more than our fair share of real estate on the results pages. Our visibility extended to all major search properties used in Latin America, including UOL and Terra.
Results were nothing short of astounding. But before we get to that, learn from the challenges we 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 a professional translation firm to ensure our messages were 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 Abacus' international experience, their product warranties, and how they'd handle currency exchange, shipping and customs.
Search Filled the International Sales Pipeline, Driving More Than $2 Million of Revenue Potential
The beauty of doing search marketing in an emerging market is that results can be seen very quickly. In terms of website traffic, visitors that spoke Spanish or Portuguese increased from less than 3% of total traffic to 34% within one month's time (an increase of over 1000%). We didn't lose any ground with English speaking visitors, either - the entire pie grew.
More importantly, leads from Latin America went through the roof. As of today, Abacus can trace over $2 million worth of opportunities in their sales pipeline directly to our Latin American test search marketing campaign, with a gross margin of nearly $500,000 that'll fall directly to their bottom line. And that doesn't even include the lifetime incremental value of the new business relationships forged. When you factor in that repeat and follow-up business represents a huge percentage of Abacus sales, the ultimate ROI of the test campaign is monumental.
Is this client happy? What do you think? Needless to say, we're exploring entering China next. Stay tuned!
About Us
Prominent Placement, Inc., is a full-service, award-winning Atlanta search engine optimization company founded in 2001. Nationally recognized as a leader in its field, Prominent Placement consistently demonstrates its foresight to rapidly adapt and stay ahead of an ever-evolving search marketing industry. Prominent Placement provides comprehensive programs incorporating the strategic use of organic search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, local search marketing, Internet Yellow Pages, press release optimization, linking, online reputation management and SEM en Español.
The company's selective client roster spans multiple industries with numerous mid-size, growth-oriented businesses located in the Southeastern United States that value high impact results, and are well-focused, niche-oriented concerns. Prominent Placement distinguishes itself from the competition by its extensive marketing background and the ability to provide superior service through client collaboration and education.
For more information contact us at 888.SEM.MKTR (888.736.6587). For a look at our comprehensive approach, please see our Search Engine Marketing Services page. And to discuss your company's individual search marketing needs, please use ourcontact us form.
