The popular belief that anything goes on the Internet is changing. Many people have rushed into setting up an online store without prior programming or marketing knowledge and, much worse, without a realistic or competitive business plan.
When the numbers don’t add up, most online store owners face the same question:
What if I sell “abroad”?
Five years ago, Google created one of the platforms that can help us better understand whether our market exists online and in which countries we could sell our products or services: Global Market Finder. Despite being a Google tool, it’s not as well known as other keyword research apps. Google Trends and, of course, Keyword Planner are better known, but today we want to highlight the benefits this tool can bring to your business.
To begin with, Global Market Finder is a free app that shows the search volume for the keywords we’re interested in across selected countries.
How does Global Market Finder work?
The tool itself is simple. The hard part is drawing an objective analysis and applying it to our business model to see how profitable it could be to take our eCommerce a step further.
First, in the Company section, we select the country we want to target and choose a language. For example, if we want to sell Iberian ham in the European Union, we’d run the following search:
So first we select the country of origin, the language of the search, and the region or continent we want to query: Americas, Asia, Africa, Europe, G20, emerging markets, Oceania, Middle East, European Union and Africa.
Once we click “Find Opportunity”, we get these results:
As we can see, the tool shows monthly local searches, the Google Adwords bid for each country and the level of competition. But what really defines this app is its automatic translation into the keyword with the most searches.
In the example, we see that “jamon iberico” is a highly searched keyword in Spain in Spanish, followed by English. The United Kingdom stands out as the second option with the most searches for the keyword “iberico ham”, with 600 more searches than “jamon iberico” and a lower CPC than the Spanish keyword. This lets us gauge the quality and profitability of that keyword for the country in question.
According to the chart, in Denmark there’s an audience searching for “sortfodsskinke”. Interestingly, this keyword doesn’t literally mean “Iberian ham” but “black-foot ham”. Thanks to the app’s suggestions, we can target keywords we might not have known existed.
With this tool we can assess and become aware of several aspects:
- Whether or not a foreign market exists for the business. This way, you can assess whether it’s worth internationalizing or exporting your products and which countries or groups of countries to target. Thanks to search volume we get objective data (taken from Google Adwords’ Keyword Planner) and can set guidelines to begin internationalizing the eCommerce. Competitor prices in the selected countries. nationalization of the product, which must include:
- Competitor prices in the selected countries.
- Product logistics and distribution processes. What will the packaging be like? How will it be shipped? With whom?
- Shipping costs up to order delivery. You should also consider the returns policy for goods from other countries (delivery times, order tracking, etc.).
- Staff with language skills to provide quality service and good customer support.
- We can also set an online marketing budget based on keyword CPCs and competition in each country. The tool helps us estimate a budget should we decide on a Google Adwords campaign, as well as keyword searches for the store’s SEO.
So now you know: if you’re thinking about taking your business international, here are a few guidelines to give you an initial idea. And if you need more information or advice, get in touch with us.
