DeFoy stated to Canada’s Globe and Mail, “Don’t do one general campaign in English, all over the world. It’s easy, but the bidding and the keywords are very different from one country to the other.”

The advice to global marketers is to pick the right platform – the one familiar to and in popular use by the residents of the country and market you are targeting. For example, Friendster is popular in the Philippines; Yandex is popular in Russia; OnYoMo.com is second to Google in India but still very big; and Baidu controls the search market in China above Google!

DeFoy advises to separate your campaigns by countries. This allows you to select the right platform, target your audience by using the language they use to search for what you offer (remember that comprehensive keyword research and development I am always talking about in posts!), target according to cultural customs, which are often very different from that of the US, and finally to track results by country and campaign. DeFoy pointed out the French-Canadian French does not play well in Paris, for example. If you expect to see good results, ads and keyword lists have to be targeted for the customs and language, including dialects, of the country or foreign region you are targeting. That will take some testing, modifying, and good old fashioned trial and error along the way.

Once DeFoy was able to support the different languages he was targeting, he established landing pages and full websites using a domain within the targeted country. For example, use www.yourcompany.uk, if you are targeting customers in Great Britain. The strongest approach, if you have the foreign speaking staff to support it, is to present a landing page and/or website in the native language of each of your targeted groups. If you cannot, DeFoy suggests you keep the English very simple, with the understanding that you are addressing respondents for whom English is a second language.

The goals for search advertising are always the same, regardless of which foreign or domestic regions you target:

• Satisfy the expectations of your targeted respondents
• Satisfy the needs of the search platform by generating response from which they make money so you rank well
• Convert respondents and generate revenue

Get to know the behaviors and needs of your target foreign audience and reach out to them in a way that builds trust and gives them the feeling that you are nearby and able to take care of them.

As a helpful addendum, check out Skype and Google Voice for local calling numbers for the regions you are targeting. If you are new to Global Advertising Online you may wish to get your feet wet using the Google Global Advertiser. Also check out the Google Global Market Finder.

Identifying and Setting Goals
The dictionary.com definition of a goal is the “result or achievement toward which effort is directed.” From this meaning alone we can see why it is important to set, evaluate, and manage goals effectively. When clients are asked about their goals they typically answer with “make money.” We then go through the process of identifying what needs to happen for that result to occur. Through this process of discovery we learn there are many goals that have to be set and reached for that larger result to occur.

If the principle objective is to make money then goals can be regarded as the milestones that have to be set and reached for that ultimate objective to be achieved. Let’s take a look at some of the things that need to happen.

Branding:
Branding is about raising awareness among your targeted audience groups about the solutions you offer. As major brands like GE, Johnson & Johnson, and Cisco have demonstrated, branding is an ongoing goal where different levels of success are achieved but the effort never ceases. Whether it’s online video commercials, communications via social networking sites, print communications, events, or local television and radio spots, branding is a critical component of small business development. Your first goal is to establish awareness and your subsequent goals are to build the strength of that awareness by sharing successes, case studies, white papers, customer satisfaction stories and reviews, innovations, free help, and so forth. On-going efforts in the areas mentioned work to help you achieve an upward and onward progression of brand awareness year over year.

Lead Generation:
The goal here is to establish initiatives that attract your targeted audience groups on an on-going basis so that you always have leads in the pipeline. Many small businesses get so tied up with existing clients that they have a tough time focusing efforts on lead generation. Way too many small businesses rely exclusively on referrals. This tactic puts the fate of your business in the hands of others and is ill-advised. Although many of you cringe at the word, marketing is necessary. Typically around 15% of your budget needs to be set aside for initiatives designed to reach out to your potential clients. Having a website is good but it is not enough. Customers do not magically appear because you have a website. You have to “direct efforts” toward attracting each of your unique targeted audience groups by communicating to each one that you a) understand what they need b) have what they need and c) offer them benefits that make doing business with you their best choice. Lead generation is an on-going goal that achieves results through effective marketing communications and initiatives.

Analysis:
I bet you thought Sales was going to be the next topic. Nope. Analysis is. Whether you regard this as an “effort” or a “goal,” analysis needs to become a business habit if you are truly to understand customer behavior and the effectiveness of your branding and lead generation initiatives. Analysis helps you to set goals and manage them. It provides you with verifiable statistics that offer insight about each one of your goals that make up your overall strategy geared toward your objective to “make money.” Web analytics and consistent off-line tracking and measuring procedures have to be in place to ensure the information you are relying on is as complete as possible, painting for you the most accurate picture of what is happening so that you know what has to happen next, or perhaps better stated, ‘where to direct your efforts.’

To Summarize:
Making money is a pretty big objective. Break it down into manageable goals for branding, lead generation, and analysis, so that you can effectively direct your efforts toward that on-going achievement. Use what you have learned from your web analytics and off-line tracking to make necessary adjustments or develop new initiatives that ensure more than sustainability – your on-going business growth and development.

Chances are you are not the only company out there that sells the types of products and services you offer. And you may not be the only company that sells products from a specific manufacturer. Or you may be competing with companies who sell comparable products and solutions from other manufacturers. In short, you have competitors. And the only collateral you have to convince your targeted online audience groups to choose you and your solution over your competitors is your online web content, particularly that which appears on your website.

So the first step is to add content development to your website design/re-design budget. How much you need to add to your budget depends on a few factors:

• Do you have existing content that can be cost effectively re-worked? I say ‘cost-effectively’ because sometimes existing content is so poor that it would be faster to start from scratch than to try to fix badly written copy or digital images and document attachments of poor quality.
• Are you completely lacking in content and in need of everything including compelling, search engine optimized sales and marketing copy, case studies or white papers, digital images, and/or digital attachments?
• Does our branding need to be updated to a 21^st century look and feel?
• How much research will be required to develop your content? Is it easy for you to assemble the source materials and present them in a usable format to your content development team? Can the content writer get what she needs from you during a conference call with you and your team?
• Do you need to purchase digital images or have digital images taken by a professional photographer?
• Would you benefit from video development? Or do you have videos that require editing or accompanying text?
• Are you willing to invest in the long term benefits of search engine optimization? Content that is easily and accurately indexed and delivered in organic search results by the search engines, particularly Google, opens up all kinds of opportunities for business development like expanding your brand reach and recognition, lead generation, and sales.

There is a lot to consider because web content includes:

• Copy (sales and marketing text, all informational text, strategic calls to action, online forms)
• Images (photos, illustrations, graphical designs, CAD drawings, etc.)
• Branding (logos, graphical design)
• Document Attachments (case studies, white papers, downloadable brochures, sell sheets, pricing, MSDS, etc.)
• Videos
• Audio
• Hyperlinks (clickable links that provide access to your web content)

The important thing to remember is that your targeted site visitors are there to interact with your web content because they have an expectation to fulfill: to find and generally acquire what they are looking for. The relevance and quality of your web content impacts what they will do next – click away or engage further. If you fear or loath the thought of web content development speak with a professional – not your shrink but a web content development specialist!

I invite you to read a great blog post by Ron Jones for ClickZ on Web Content Development 101 for some ideas to get you thinking accurately about your web content.

If you’re ready to speak with a professional, give Industrial Web Solutions a call at (800) 399-9859.

Although 14 manufacturing industries reported growth in February, including Apparel, Leather & Allied Products; Petroleum & Coal Products; Transportation Equipment; Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components; Machinery; Chemical Products; Fabricated Metal Products; Computer & Electronic Products; Textile Mills; Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products; Printing & Related Support Activities; Paper Products; Wood Products; and Miscellaneous Manufacturing, the continued weak dollar is being blamed for the high cost of components and raw materials, particularly those obtained overseas. Representatives from Transportation Equipment stated “It is going to force us to increase our selling prices to our customers.” A similar statement was made by representatives from Chemical Products: “We continue to see significant inflation across nearly every type of chemical raw material we purchase.”  Nonmetallic Mineral Products, which is one of the 4 industries to experience contraction last month, along with Plastics & Rubber Products; Primary Metals; and Furniture & Related Products, stated, “Prices continue to rise, while business limps along at last year’s pace.” Plastics and Rubber reported, “Overall demand is off 10 percent.”

While the weak dollar has adversely affected the purchase of components and raw materials overseas it has had a positive impact on exports, which experienced a growth percentage point change of +0.5% with a PMI of 62.5%. Right alongside that of the overall economy, exports have experienced continued month-over-month growth at a faster rate of change for the past twenty months. Both Production and New Orders are up as well. Production experienced an increase of 2.8 percentage points from the January reading of 63.5%, registering a Production Index of 66.3% and continued growth for the 21^st consecutive month. Demonstrating a 20 month growth trend at a faster rate of change, New Orders were up 0.2 percentage points from January.  Thirteen industries reported growth in New Orders, including Apparel, Leather & Allied Products; Petroleum & Coal Products; Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components; Wood Products; Printing & Related Support Activities; Machinery; Transportation Equipment; Chemical Products; Paper Products; Fabricated Metal Products; Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products; Computer & Electronic Products; and Miscellaneous Manufacturing, while Primary Metals; Nonmetallic Mineral Products; Furniture & Related Products; and Plastics & Rubber Products reported decreases.

Despite a +0.5 percentage point rise in Prices, and increases for the past 20 months at a faster rate of change, manufacturing and the overall economy continue to expand. And that is good news. Companies are challenged to find cost saving ways to attract new business to offset any decreases in orders from existing customers that may occur as a result of rising Prices. To manage marketing budgets set aside for new business development, industrial marketers must consider the changing landscape of search, social media, and lead/sales generation that occurs online and offline. Content presented on blogs, websites, text ads, emails, industrial directories, map sites, search engines, relevant 3^rd party sites, Twitter, Facebook and other social media websites, as well as all direct mail letters and brochures, must be current and highly focused on the specific interests of your target audience groups. Market research may need to be done to understand those interests and to uncover the specific language used by your target audiences to search for what you offer. Through careful research, planning, and implementation budgets can be intelligently and carefully managed to nurture leads, sales, and overall business growth, particularly as you strategize to offset the impact of increased prices.

For help with your marketing research, planning, creation and implementation speak with an Industrial Web Solutions marketing expert. Call (800) 399-9859.

• Attracting buyers interested in the products and services, or information and programs, you offer

• Establishing your online authority among users and the search engines for the content related to what you offer

• Helping to keep your online content focused and highly targeted

• Managing the effectiveness of your pay per click campaigns

• Building your online audiences on your social media sites

• Attracting media to your news stories

• Enhancing the effectiveness of your online directory listings such as Google Places and any industrial directories you list with

• Disseminating information related to the new products and services, or information and programs, you are promoting

• and more.

Conducting research to uncover the best keywords and phrases for your purposes is not an easy task. The first thing you need to do is establish whom you are targeting and how they think of what you offer. This may sound simple but I am always surprised at the steps that are often overlooked. Many businesses incorrectly assume they know the language used by their existing and potential customers to refer to what they offer and they use only these assumptions. For example, your firm may have a particular way of referring to your product or service that is not yet shared by those who would benefit from it. You may refer to your product by its brand name such as the ‘MachDuster;’ however, your targeted buyers may search for it by the result it achieves for them such as: remove dust from cnc machine. (Hopefully I have just made this up and am not infringing on anyone’s copyrighted brand!)

The point is you can use your assumptions as a starting point but your list should also include such things as:

• All possible applications

• Industries served

• Similar products/services it may be mistaken for

• Competing brand names

• Geo-targeted locations

If you’re building a keyword list for use in a pay per click campaign you will also want to include words that could negatively affect your results and your budget. Make a separate list of ‘negative’ keywords that includes such things as:

• Terms that are too broad such as ‘waterproof’ (could include waterproof mattress as well as waterproof foundation)

• Acronyms like DAS (which could mean Distributed Antenna System, Dependable Auto Shippers, and even Departmento Administrativo de Seguridad – you get the picture!)

• Locales not relevant to your business such as ‘sandblasting pa’ if you only serve Connecticut

• Products/services that are spelled similarly to yours but are not relevant

The point is to be aware of keywords that can adversely affect your lead or sales generating results while eating away at your campaign’s budget. Pay per click campaigns can get expensive very quickly if the keyword list is not managed properly. For more information about keyword building for search engine marketing campaigns read Julie Batten’s ClickZ article.

Rule of thumb for building your keyword lists: start with your assumptions but do the required research that uncovers the full range of keyword and phrase possibilities that accurately and effectively identify what you are offering and whom you are targeting. Know where and how you are going to use these lists – your website, ad copy for your search engine marketing pay per click campaigns, alt text for your images, anchor text for your hyperlinks, title tags, content you create for use off-site on social media, news sites, and relevant third-party websites, etc. – then use them to strategically develop your content for maximum results.