International SEO & SEM – How To Find The Market
Internet brings unlimited opportunities to the businesses. You are no longer limited by the physical presence. You can conduct the business internationally, while taking care of the business locally. Expanding the target market is one of the ways to grow the business. With good SEO and PPC campaigns, even a small company can run successful businesses globally. However, not all countries would perform well for everyone. So, how do you know, which country to target?
[Identifying Existing Audience]
If your company has been conducting businesses overseas, you may already know of your tier 1 or tier 2 markets. If so, it is likely that you have branch offices, or partners in those countries. It makes sense for you to target those countries first via website.
Check The Analytics Data:
Your website analytic data may give you some new ideas. Check the country report for the visitor profile. You may find people visiting your website from some unexpected countries.
Check The Forms And Customer Service Reports:
Online and offline contact forms, and customer service reports could also give you the idea of where people may be already contacting your company. Check the types of inquiries that the customer services are receiving to see if it would be a new market for you.
Check Your Competitors:
While you are looking for the new business opportunities, your competitors may have identified some new markets already. Go to some of your competitor’s websites and see which languages and countries they are targeting.
Read Industry Market Reports:
The market trends can change rather quickly with the advanced technologies, and how the economy changes globally. The industry market reports published by online and offline medias could give you some insights to where your target audiences may be.
[Test The Market]
If you are encouraged by the data to go after a new country, but still having some hesitations, you can test the market with the paid search campaigns. With the PPC campaigns, you don’t need to localize the entire website right away. Just create a landing page in their language, and do a quick test run of the campaign. If the results are great, you know that’s your new market. Next step is to localize and optimize the website for that country.