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Bobbi Leach is Director of Business Development at RevenueWire. She brings over 20 years of experience in sales and marketing to the RevenueWire team.

Bobbi has extensive experience with launching and growing new software and e-business ventures on a global basis. Most recently, she was VP of Network Development for an e commerce company, which provided hosted business
solutions and content portals for small business clients.

Prior to that she was Executive VP for an online publishing company providing world-wide lead generation services for academic clients.

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Affiliate Marketing as Passport

Written on
Feb 26, 2010 
Author
Bobbi Leach  |
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Affiliate Marketing as Passport

passport_smallADOTAS – Expanding your product’s audience is a touchy process. American markets offer a venue that all of us can understand, offering typically consistent consumer behavior that is simple for us to learn and analyze. But when you look to expand internationally, sudden roadblocks can stop your expansion in its tracks.

You might ask questions like “How do I get around language barriers? How does consumer behavior differ from American markets? More specifically, how is my target audience’s behavior different and how do I analyze and interpret that information?”

Lucky for you, affiliate marketing platforms are making it simpler for you to reach new markets. You’ll have to do a lot of your own prep-work, but choosing the right affiliate network can help you bypass some of the more costly and difficult barriers hindering your global reach.

Prep for Affiliate Success

Like all good strategies, let’s start at the beginning. Your first step is to choose where and to whom you want to market internationally. Europe, South America (especially Brazil) and Asia are all growing online markets — but they all have their own nuances, and you’ll need to get familiar with them before you move onto the next steps.

For example, if you want to market to your audience in Brazil, it’s important to know that Brazilian internet usage patterns primarily leverage dial-up connections. In contrast, Europe and the UK offer much broader online access patterns.

Don’t jump in right away. Do serious market research on how your international customer will differ from your domestic one. Just like with any marketing campaign, extensive background on your audience will help you speak to them effectively.

Tailor Your Products for International Consumers

The next step in preparing your international strategy is to apply what you’ve learned to your product. The campaign isn’t the only action item on your list; take measures to create products and services in the languages native to your expansion region.

Part of your research should revolve around figuring out what features your product offers that might be less or more popular with an international crowd. Once you do, you can add or remove features according to how they’re received in other countries.

In terms of internationalization, it’s unrealistic to think you can start from scratch with your product, so consider having a professional translate marketing materials as well as the product itself.

Finally, you want to have full control over how your product is marketed, so it’s important to build marketing collateral to support the affiliates selling your product. Optimized landing pages are a good example of this. By providing these materials for affiliates, you gain a greater degree of control over messaging and brand equity.

Finding the Right Affiliate Network

When you choose your affiliate network, you can automatically rule out networks that don’t have the tools, services and affiliate marketers with global reach. Some of the resources you’ll need to go international are present in almost every affiliate network, but you’ll need to give weight to some basic must-have features.

For instance, you’ll want to choose an online shopping cart with support for multiple languages and currencies. The cart should also have the right payment options for your specific target region; while a credit card transaction is standard fare in the U.S., bank transfers are far more popular in Germany.

Just because a network has the right capabilities doesn’t mean your affiliates have the right experience. Make sure the network you use employs affiliates that are already active in marketing to consumers in different markets around the world.

You’ll want to provide your affiliates with the right tools to get the job done, too. Create a one-pager unique to the desired international market. Include the product’s top features, translated keywords, localized messaging and a consumer profile/persona. Some affiliate networks take their service a step further and will even create this document for you.

In the end, marketing a product to a new region is less about translations than it is about understanding your customer. Know the shopping culture of your target audience and you’ll be on your way to expanding your brand’s presence into new international frontiers.





Reader Comments.

Sometimes its a good idea to put the offer or merchant in a country specific network or in a big European network for instance if you are trying to launch in that area, but yes it can be difficult to find the international distribution you are looking for you go and expand like that..

Posted by Evan | 11:13 am on February 27, 2010.

totally agree with you. It will be challenging and a lot of effort need to be done when targeting overseas market.

Posted by Carol | 8:57 am on March 9, 2010.

France will be happy to help you old americans friends !
Come on our Network, we looking forward work with you.

Posted by Loic | 8:09 am on March 11, 2010.

Hi, It’s great and useful stuff for affiliate marketing here, thanks for sharing. I also write about affiliate marketing, please visit http://affiliate-marketing.cz.cc/ to check it out.

Posted by Abby | 12:46 am on March 22, 2010.

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