Information Engineer

I was recently doing a world wide internet marketing campaign for a client who wanted to invest different amounts depending on continents. It was a great exercise for me to flex my international arm again, and boy was I in for a surprise.

Last time I was truly doing an international website, with multi-language capability back in 2006 at the height of the mortgage bubble. The market was fairly competitive, but I thought all markets were at the time.

Now two years later, IÂ’m finding out it was only the real estate and mortgage industry that had been saturated. There is a lack of competition on large continents for several big fields.

For example, in South America, Australia, Asia, and Africa, there arenÂ’t many websites that have search engine optimization, or have properly optimized PPC campaigns.

I feel like a kid at the candy store. My client canÂ’t be happier with the amount of leads coming in. For a site in the financial industry, getting 100 to 150 leads a day and to have only been operating for 2 months is unheard of.

ItÂ’s like the Wild West again Â…The good old days when ranking in search engines was as easy as putting up a site. One thing that I noticed that makes a huge difference is having a site professionally translated for the people in the country you are targeting.

Wherever you are, and whoever your target audience is, you have to get in their mindset, and look like a native. The only way to do that is to get a native to give you advice and help you design your site. Even something as simple as getting a URL, the difference is very significant.

An example; my client wanted to target South America, so they chose to have ‘Latinamerica’ in the URL, well after getting advice from a Hispanic, we found that using the word Latino makes a better presence when targeting the continent. I don’t speak Spanish, so having someone on the ground is crucial; and if they know internet marketing, it’s gold.