27 Digital Marketing Tips For Export Business Owners
As an exporter, you make full use of the technology available to enable instant, real-time communication with business contacts around the world.
But with all this technology at your disposal, are you formulating your digital strategy correctly?
We have devised some tips, specifically created to help export business owners compete on the international stage, and to reach a global market of potential customers – increasing their business exponentially.
Read the first 9 of our 27 Digital Marketing Tips for Export Business Owners below.
- Optimise: Optimise your website for international sales and make sure it is customised to suit your target market(s). Translate your home/summary page for foreign language searches, as well as your order pages and catalogues.
- Domain: If you operate in a range of different countries, it’s worth considering acquiring domains in each country and publishing a professionally translated website on each. This will have a powerful positive effect on your search results and the extent of your reach.
- Location: If you choose to publish a website in each of the countries in which you operate hire a native-speaker professional translator to write high-quality website copy for your business. Invest in the services of a professional translator – nothing screams “amateur” as much as a poorly translated website.
- Language: Do NOT use online translation tools for this – they are designed to offer guidance on short pieces of text, not website copy, which needs to be accurate and of high quality in whichever language it’s been written. We’ve all seen badly translated website copy in English – it’s unprofessional, off-putting and does nothing to build trust – after all, if you haven’t invested in getting your copywritten professionally and accurately, you’re unlikely to invest in offering customers a great service.
- Contact: Your website is the cornerstone of all of your marketing strategies, so make sure your contact information appears on each page. Consider adding a contact form to your website too, as this offers potential customers a quick and easy way to get in touch.
- Think Local: Other ways of customising your website to suit an overseas target market include publishing local content and country-specific references (with legal content, for example) to make it easier for your customers and to increase their confidence in you.
- Visuals: Make sure you include plenty of high-quality images on all pages of your website. Visuals will tell your story much more powerfully than words. It’s a fact that website visitors when faced with large chunks of text, without any images to break it up, are more likely to click away to find what they’re looking for on a website that’s easier on the eye.
- SEO: Tailor your SEO strategy to suit the region you are targeting and make it easier for potential customers to find you. Use insights gleaned from keyword research to understand your current website rankings in key regions, track any changes against local and global competitors and deploy the vital search factors that Google, Bing and other search engines look for.
- Region: List your business in online regional directories – just search Google for a list of online local directories in a specific region and add your business (this is usually free of charge).
