Are you working for a business that is involved in exporting a product or service? Then you certainly have experience in creating emails and newsletters, setting up landing pages to approach potential customers in foreign countries and running Google Ad campaigns in multiple languages. In this article, I’ll take you through the most common challenges digital marketers face when running campaigns across borders and how to overcome them.
Accurate translations
Of course, there’s going to be a cost involved in translating and proofreading so that the content you create makes sense to the foreign audience. And beyond that basic requirement, it should make an impact so that you are able to achieve your objective; a direct conversion or moving a lead down the funnel.
Whether it’s about translating your newsletters, translating your website or translating your Google Ads, always make sure that your basic messaging is translated perfectly and without any errors.
Imagine when you receive a newsletter with spelling mistakes or if you read a website with typos, you will draw your own conclusions very quickly. So make sure that your translations are rock solid. If you want to check how your translated Google Search Ads appear to your audience, you can use my free Google Ads Preview Tool.
The amount of effort during the initial phase
As a digital marketer, you know the amount of effort that goes into a standard e-mail marketing campaign. The initiative to market abroad may bring new opportunities in terms of prospects, but you should not forget that the amount of effort that’s required is also a minimum of x2.
Imagine you get a response from a prospect in a foreign language and it’s not in your already translated set of FAQ’s or responses. So you need to properly plan through, create the content for all possible scenarios and have it translated. The other solution is to have translation support readily available for answering those new questions – but it’s expensive.
Another common task that takes extra effort would be in optimizing your Google Search Ad campaigns with better performing foreign keywords. Use the search terms report, keyword matching options and changes on your ad copy to improve campaign performance regularly.
Not separating your campaigns properly
A common challenge many digital marketers face is when their campaign data needs to be segmented and analysed during an ongoing campaign. This takes more time if not properly planned and can impact reporting accuracy. Identifying landing pages with high conversion is very straight forward. But in an export sector business, you need to analyse and compare the different language landing pages and their funnel visualization more frequently.
So you need to segment your funnels, workflows and campaigns to make it easier for you to get insights – before running the campaign. For example, make sure that you create various properties, views and their relevant goals within your Google Analytics in advance. This would help you to accurately measure the campaign results and get insights even during an ongoing campaign.
Grow exports through digital marketing
These are some of the most common challenges digital marketers face in export sector businesses and my recommendation on how to overcome them. Further to this, you are well aware that not all countries use Google for online searches. Yandex is the market leader in Russia and Baidu in China. So as a digital marketer you need to ensure that your export business becomes visible to your foreign audience through the channels that they widely use. To achieve the best results, you must also take into account the cultural differences between your target foreign audiences and have a thorough understanding of their local market characteristics. All of these steps will help you to improve your export business and internationalisation strategy.
Which of these challenges have you faced in your export business and how did you overcome them?
Got any questions? Leave a comment below.