Demerzel’s Blog - Intellectual Analysis on China, SEO, Analytics, and the Web
Independent and intellectual thoughts ranging from China, SEO, and other international topics
Basic Online International Marketing Blunders
Author: Demerzel20 Jul
You would be surprised how often basic online international marketing blunders occurs. My favorite I have heard about so far comes from China SEO Blog:
One of the tings mostly overlooked by advertisers, especially those not based in China and trying to promote their websites in China through pay per click (Google Adwords) is the fact that the Chinese visitors actually might just not be able to visit their websites!
One example should help. Everyone knows about Homestead.com , the popular all-in-one DIY sitebuilder + hosting platform that was quite hot in the early 2000, maybe not that much now as people become more knowledgeable in web design or for selecting a web hosting solution that better suits their needs. Homestead advertise heavily through Adwords and China is one of the markets where their ads are shown. They appear mostly for their own name and many search terms related to web hosting, wed design etc. However, Homestead.com has been blocked in China for the last two or three years at least! This means that they have been spending tens of dollars (or even more, considering that their industry has rather high CPC values) every day for years now, while those who click on the ad could not access their sites and would shut down the browser in a second. Talking about wasting resources.
International marketing requires more than just a copy-and-paste strategy from the domestic environment to the international environment. I am often surprised at how often people believe that even in the online world it is a simple process to take all the same tactics and strategies and apply them abroad without thinking about how local situations can affect your marketing campaign.
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2 Responses for "Basic Online International Marketing Blunders"
It’s a valid point to localize, check whether the website is accessible from China etc. if you market to Chinese customers.
I’m not so sure though whether this specific case can be called a marketing blunder per se although they could have saved themselves some dollars maybe.
I imagine the PPC guys at Homestead decided they wanted their ad to be seen worldwide for each exact query of the word Homestead plus some other combi’s like “homestead web” etc as also mentioned.
I doubt if they are, in this case targeting Chinese consumers. If they would specifically target the Chinese Market I agree it would be a bit foolish but like I said I don’t think they intend to and they probably also don’t want to waste resources to check for each country if their site works (and in most places of the world it will work)
Search volume is also rather low in China for the keyword “Homestead” so the few clicks they get won’t make a big dent in their budget.
Gemme,
I can definitely see your point about them setting their ad to be seen worldwide for an exact query, but at 4,400 on average a month is not exactly a low number for searches (not high either) for the English version of “Homestead” (on broad match) in China, I would not consider this a low volume.
To me it is a blunder as they should have been able to see the high traffic/CTR with no conversions, but not something majorly awful since this is for their brand name; and I have seen a fair share of marketing blunders as no campaign is perfect with humans at the helm.
My point was that if you are marketing internationally, then it’s a basic international marketing blunder to not double check your landing pages. Then again, this was a campaign on Google and not Baidu.
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