Getting Attention For Your Business Around The World

If you’re a global sales or marketing professional responsible for growing the sales of a business around the world, your biggest Global Marketing challenge is gaining the attention and interest of new international customers when most (if not all) of them probably don’t even know your company exists. So the questions becomes, how can you easily and cost effectively raise the visibility and discoverability of your business in other markets?

For example, will prospective customers in other countries find your company’s website, or your product promotional campaigns, when they search online using the most popular search engines in their country? Search engines such as Baidu.com which has a 78% market share in China, or Yandex.com with its 59% market share in Russia, or Naver.com which controls over 65% of the search engine market in South Korea.

If you answered no to the last question that could be OK. That is if you have no desire to market your products and services in any country other than your home country. However, if you plan to expand your business beyond your home country, the first thing you’ll need to do is recognize the fact that you’ll need to promote your business in the native language of your target market.

The good news is, it’s not necessary to translate your entire website and marketing collateral in order to be discovered in the world’s other big search engines (i.e. other than Google, Yahoo and Bing.)

Multilingual SEO to the Rescue

To gain more global online visibility and discoverability many small businesses today are employing what’s known as a Multilingual Search Engine Optimization (MSEO) strategy where a single web page (called a Doorway Page) is created for each of the target markets/languages you want to reach. Essentially this Doorway Page is a quick overview of your company with an invitation for your website visitor to “click on over” to your English language website to continue their research or purchase objective. And from a lead qualification perspective, if that visitor is not willing to continue their research/purchase in English, then they probably aren’t really a good sales prospect for your business anyway.

Getting Started

Implementing a simple Doorway Page strategy is quick and low cost because it doesn’t require you to translate your entire website in order to submit it to the non-English search engines. What your website does need to have, however, is at least one Doorway Page in your targeted local language and it must be optimized with keywords and meta tags in that local language in order for it to be found by the non-English search engines.

For example, if you want to market to the global Hispanic community, your website needs to have a Doorway Page optimized with Spanish keywords and enough Spanish content to describe what your company does. To achieve this, the most common form of MSEO Doorway Page typically describes (briefly in the non-English language) what your company does and then offers your website visitor an invitation to “click on over” to your main website where all further interactions and communications with them will be conducted in English.

According to the MSEO specialist at MSEO.com, 99% of all searches on the Web are first done in the searcher’s primary language. When a non-English searcher comes across your Doorway Page, about 10%-15% of them will choose not to visit your English website. The good news is, that means 85% to 90% of these non-English searchers will choose to continue on to your English language website. In actuality, this is a great way to separate the simply curious searchers from the potentially serious sales prospects.

So why does using a MSEO Global Marketing strategy work for so well for so many small businesses?

Well the simple fact that someone in France will enter keywords related to your product or service in French on the French version of Google or on the French Yahoo site doesn’t mean that the person doesn’t speak English.

The reality is, there are, literally, millions of people in other countries who do speak English but conduct their initial online searches on local search engines using keywords in their native language. These are the global customers you are looking for: English speaking individuals who search for products and services in their own native language but who can, and will, do business with you in English! In fact, if a visitor is unwilling to do business with you in English, then that visitor is probably not a very good prospect for your business to begin with.

What it all boils down to is this: it’s not about translating your entire website and doing business in another language but, rather, it’s about encouraging your visitors to do business with you in English. Your task is to get them to your English website by giving them an “invitation” in their own native language.

So with that said, let me show you a few examples of small businesses that are successfully using this simple MSEO Doorway Page strategy.

Travel Industry Example

Tanzania - Voted the #1 best African tourist destination in 2012 by the New York Times, Tanzania’s Tourist Board is a government organization which is responsible with promotion and development of all the aspects of the tourism industry in Tanzania. Being an English language country (along with Swahili), Tanzania’s Tourist Board also wanted to reach potential visitors from many other countries so they developed MSEO Doorway Pages for various targeted markets. For example, take a look at their Portuguese language Doorway Page at the following link: http://www.tanzaniatouristboard.com/intl/portuguese.html

Manufacturing Industry Example

Custom Mold Making China Limited (CMMC) is a 200 employee manufacturer in Dongguan City, China (a city I’ve visited by the way) that specialized in making complex components and precision moulds for plastic injection, die casting, aluminum extrusion, and other complex products. Take a look at their Italian language Doorway Page at the following link:  http://www.cmmcltd.com/intl/italian.html

Real Estate Industry Example

NoFeeRentals.com is owned by Jakobson Properties, LLC, a family-run New York real estate company that owns more than 2000 rental apartments throughout Manhattan and Queens. In order to attract more tenants from other countries NoFeeRentals.com implemented a MSEO Doorway Page strategy for multiple target markets. Take a look at their Korean language Doorway Page at the following link: http://www.nofeerentals.com/intl/korean.html

Software Industry Example

TimeWriter is a time billing software program that helps its Users track all the hours spent on various tasks. TimeWriter software gives you everything you need for invoicing and managing your time billing information. Based in the Netherlands, TimeWriter has developed multiple Doorway Pages for other nearby countries. You can see their Danish language Doorway Page at the following link: http://www.timewriter.com/intl/danish.html

Simple MSEO Doorway Pages like the ones I just described can typically be outsource to a MSEO specialist like MSEO.com who will write the local language copy and submit your site to the various local search engines all for around $500 per language. As an alternative, you could write your own MSEO Doorway Page copy and then use the services of someone from Fiverr.com or eLance.com to do the localized translation and submission to the non-English search engines which could save you some money.

Either way, the bottom line is, if you haven’t considered using MSEO as a Global Marketing strategy, this is the year to pick another country/market (or two) and give it a try.