European Companies Can Grow Using Effective SEO & Marketing
We are all in an “economic tar pit” in Europe. Growth is so slow it is almost horizontal. Where is future growth going to come from? Governments argue about the need to either borrow more, or cut more from spending, or both. Businesses despair at the lack of demand for their products and services. In many parts of the world things are looking very gloomy. Here though is the key to possible solutions. Many, not ALL parts of the world are suffering from stagnant economies and poor growth. Some actually are doing very well indeed.
China, Singapore, India and Malaysia, as well as many other parts of Asia are growing at tremendous rates, Africa and South America too. With the exception of China whose Internet users use Baidu, these economies have huge growing online E-commerce that relies on Google as a search engine, the same as European and American online consumers do.
If we can gain traffic and promote ourselves successfully in the west using tried, tested and successful SEO and internet marketing strategies, why are we not using them to grow our brands and business opportunities in these emerging economies?
Pay Per Click.
Go onto Google analytics now if you are a business struggling to grow within Europe or the USA, I beg of you. Check out the costs for PPC for search terms competitive in your native country, within a country like India, for example. See how many are no longer competitive there, and work out a lot cheaper to bid on per click too. I did an average over 100 keywords and found that 30% of competitive keywords within the UK were low or medium competition in India. The cost was between 30 – 40 % cheaper per click too.
If I were selling goods online and looking to gain new consumers, what is stopping me advertising on Google PPC within India? Nearly 300 million online users there by the end of 2013, and this number will grow dramatically over the next 5 years as it did in China. Do the same for Singapore and Malaysia too. Surely you don’t have to be genius to work out that there is a great deal of business available to your company in these emerging markets. It’s growth that can be achieved from where you are currently trading at the moment, with small amounts of structural change to accommodate your new clients and customers.
Surely It’s Not That Easy?
Nothing is necessarily easy, as it depends on what your definition of easy is. You will have to make sure new customers and clients have after sales care and support that suits their language and time zones. You will also need to check you have all necessary paper work to deal with that country legally and above board.
This can be organized through trade bodies like the UKTI in the UK, or through communication with the embassies or consulates of the countries you are looking to trade with. Purchasing PPC services on Google is easy and can be done to advertise on Google anywhere in the world. Even if a campaign doesn’t work out you will have not had to invest a fortune, and can experiment with different countries and economies.
Low risk for high reward, surely is worth the gamble isn’t it? Websites can be optimized to suit customers of countries where strong growth has been seen to be available, and you can then even utilize various SEO strategies as you would do in any western country to try and maximize organic search traffic.
What Should I Do Now?
It is definitely worth contacting an online marketing agency that has experience of international internet marketing, to gain advice as to how to maximize your PPC strategy, and possibly plan ahead for any Search Engine Optimization requirements your website may need to target organic searches. Keyword research will also be an absolute necessity. After that you want to start investing some “feeler Money” into you PPC account and seeing what terms bring what traffic to your business as you would in any western economies search engine. As traffic grows, so will your infrastructure to deliver quality service to it.
Your investment in PPC and also alternative internet marketing strategies can also grow as your customer or client’s volumes increase. The way I see it, you can control every aspect of your spend as you investigate the potential of a foreign and growing economy. Why are you not doing it right now?
