In partnership with Export Box, (the new online exporting incentive, for which Search Laboratory is the official search partner) Google has released a fantastic new tool that enables you to review the potential to advertise online in foreign language markets.
This tool is called Google Export Adviser and highlights the potential of advertising anywhere in the world for your chosen product or service sector.
First of all you need to type in a keyword that best describes the product or service and select the region you want to review data for.
The tool then produces a map that uses a colour scale to emphasise where the greatest opportunity is. The snippet below shows the opportunity for ‘log cabins’ in Spain is great.
You can also change the view to display in a chart. I find that the chart view is much more helpful in highlighting which areas are going to be the ones with the greatest opportunity.
The key points we are looking for is a low click cost with a large search volume. If you already undertake PPC in English, you can estimate if it is worth undertaking an Adwords campaign by using the information in the table view. You will also see that click volumes for Great Britain were off the scale on the chart view, are highlighted here.
Profitability Calculator
Step 3 of the export adviser provides an excellent profitability calculator. This lets you see whether or not you would be able to make money from entering a foreign market before even trying it.
What this profitability calculator does not take into account is absolute profitability – a figure that takes search volume into account. Using the example above, Google says Spain is the best opportunity – making £125 per unit.
But with just 320 clicks per month and a conversion rate of 1%, you may only sell on average 3.2 units, netting you £400 per month.
It would be better if it took the upper limit of the click cost, take the lower limit of click volume and multiplied. This will be a rough estimate of how much it will cost per month to advertise on that particular keyword.
If you use your average conversion rate from your English PPC campaign you can see how much you could get in return.
The Netherlands is more expensive to advertise but there are also higher search volumes. A unit will only make £114 in the Netherlands but with 649 clicks you would sell 6.49 units, bringing in £739.
Obviously there are many other variables which can influence this such as exchange rates, the search landscape etc. The main use for this tool is to help you to make an informed decision about whether or not a particular foreign market will be cost effective opportunity for your business.
Together Export Box and Google Export Adviser have taken the risk and guess work out of opening your business up to foreign markets.
Insights
