In this presentation, featured at the Digital Summit Boston, our Head of International gave her top five tips to successfully enter a new market. Takeaways include how to: Identify which markets present the biggest opportunity Fully localize a site for users to increase ROI Understand how to implement technical onsite considerations Satisfy cultural differences (habits, behavior, buying patterns, trust signals) How to promote your websites (which channels to use in which market)

1. Nicola Winters
Going Global: Five International Marketing Fails

3. SEO
Audience
Localization
Five key areas
Strategy
Promotion

4. Strategy

5. Fail #1: Spreading
budget too thinly

7. Fail #1: Spreading budget too thinly
Why aren’t we dominating every market?
Why are we converting from Germany
and France on our .com?
Why am I being served US pages in
English?
Why can I only pay in dollars?

8. Identify entry markets
Online
population
Competitor
analysis
Online
spend
Search
trends

9. Identify entry markets

10. Case study
252
pieces of
coverage
107%
of European
organic
revenue
target
Page 1
for “post-it
notes”
171
links

11. Case study
Google UK
(position 4
from 8)
No budget
spent in
Spain or
Austria
Overall
visibility
increased in
DE and IT
Google NL
(position 6
from 44)
Post it notes

12. Strategy
top tip

13. Start with existing website analytics
Which countries are
converting and what’s
the conversion rate and
revenue?
Which search engines
are driving relevant traffic
that converts?
Revenue
Traffic

14. Identify markets to test
Sales from India are
driving significant
revenue, and the
conversion rate is
second to the US
Baidu is bringing traffic,
despite no promotional
efforts – if we could match
the conversion rate of
Russia, that could be a
huge opportunity!

15. Build landing pages – test with paid

16. Localization

17. Fail #2: Using auto-
translation tools

19. Fail #2: Using auto-translation tools
Sterben means
“to die” 
High end products
searched for in
English
Intelleigent Uberwachung
Herz translates to
“intelligent monitoring
heart” 

20. Use native speakers
Keyword
research
CategorizationMeta
descriptions
On-page
optimization
Could get to
10k
combined

21. Use native speakers
Could get to
10k
combined

22. Resource:
Tech
Acronyms
Tech acronyms
have different or
multiple meanings
across markets –
resulting in
irrelevant website
traffic

23. Localization
top tip

24. Put budget into SEO before translation
Localization
Let’s make sure we are
using the right
terminology, phrases and
head terms to start with
Let’s make sure the
right people are seeing
this content
Keyword research
Website translation
Technical SEO
Website launch

25. Apply keyword research at page level
Localization

26. Build out a glossary for translators
Localization
Save money in the long
run by making the site
SEO ready at launch

27. SEO

28. Fail #3: Incorrect
geo-targeting

30. Fail #3: Incorrect geo-targeting
https://www.tissotwatches.com/it-it/homepage
I’m not having a good
experience with this
brand
This doesn’t fill me
with much trust
Why is traffic to the
homepage so low?

31. Site structure
ccTLD
Sub-domain
Sub-folder
www.coca-cola.co.uk
www.coca-colaitalia.it
www.cocacola.es
www.apple.com/au/
www.apple.com/fr/
www.apple.com/de/
https://en.wikipedia.org
https://de.wikipedia.org
https://pt.wikipedia.org

32. International tech SEO
Widgets Widgets
Widgets Widgets

33. International tech SEO

34. Case study
50%
increase in
visibility after
hreflang was
implemented

35. SEO
top tip

36. Duplicate content with small language
variations (GB, IE, US, AU)
SEO
<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.example.com/gb" hreflang="en-gb" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.example.com/ie" hreflang="en-ie" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.example.com/au" hreflang="en-au" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.example.com/us" hreflang="en-us" />
Ah! These are for users
in different countries!
There are
alternative versions
of this content
This is where
they’re located
This is the language
of the content
Specifically for
users in this
country

37. Fully translated content in multiple
languages
SEO
<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.example.com/en" hreflang="en" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.example.com/fr" hreflang="fr" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.example.com/es" hreflang="es" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.example.com/it" hreflang="it" />
That’s better. Now I know which
content is for which query
language
English users in UK
French users in France
Spanish users in Spain
Italian users in Italy

38. Remember this?
SEO
Hreflang referencing
incorrect URLs for the
homepage
“en-en” is incorrect –
needs to be language
code followed by country
https://www.tissotwatches.com/it-it/homepage

39. Audience

40. Fail #4: Ignoring
cultural differences

42. User behavior
Legal
requirements
Delivery
and returns
Payment
methods
Trust
signals

43. Case study
Imagery
PromotionsMessaging
Calls to
action

44. Case study
Market-
ready sites
Custom
promotion
plans

45. Audience
top tip

46. Accounts for 60% of all online spend in China
Research consumer behavior
Audiences
Recognized European seals of approval
90% of Dutch customers are familiar
with this trust mark
65,000 sites on Yandex (Russia) use
this payment option

47. Split test pages in new markets
50% pages always
Option A
50% pages always
Option B
Web server
CDN servers
J
A
V
A
S
C
R
I
P
T
Audiences

48. Why is this useful?
The changes
appear to
Google as
normal pages
You can try out
larger changes
on a subset of
pages before
requesting dev
work
You can
implement small
changes without
dev resource
Audiences

49. Promotion

50. Fail #5: One-size
fits all approach

52. Fail #5: One-size fits all approach

53. Start at bottom of funnel
Search
engine
functionality
CompetitionMarketplaces
and resellers
Seasonality
and sales
events
Action
Desire
Interest
Awareness
Organic
Paid
social
PPC

54. Case study
7
languages
38%
more
conversions
28%
drop in
cost-per-
conversion
Account
more than
doubled
in size

55. Resource:
International
sales events
Without the knowledge of
key sales events, companies
put themselves at risk of
missing huge opportunities
that impact revenue.

56. Promotion
top tip

57. Research search engine algorithms
Promotion

58. Analyze the SERPs
80% of the SERP
is dominated by
ads
Click-through rate
for organic listings
low in comparison
to other search
engines
Promotion

59. Know where your customers are
WePay feature on
social media app is
used by 80% of the
Chinese population for
online purchases
Promotion

60. SEO
Audience
Localization
Five key areas
Strategy
Promotion

61. Strategy
Build out test landing pages and use paid
ads to test markets before investing

62. Localization
Conduct thorough keyword research by
native speakers at page level before
spending on translation

63. SEO
Implement hreflang HTML tag in the <head> section of a
page’s source code to help Google serve the correct content
to users based on their language or location

64. Audience
Perform A/B testing on landing pages for
new markets, assessing colors, call to
actions, messaging, fonts and imagery

65. Promotion
Research search engine functionality and
understand the algorithm to inform
promotion plans

66. Contact us
New York | London | Leeds
(347) 763-6933
inquiries@searchlaboratory.com
www.searchlaboratory.com/us/
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