Venturing across borders with your affiliate business can be a lucrative source of additional visitors and income. If you have already taken the first step and experimented with targeting international traffic, this article will take your international activities a step further. Through following these tips, you will professionalize your presence in foreign markets and avoid common pitfalls associated with international virtual trade.
1. Don’t Skimp on Your Market Research
This is classic advice, even a cliché for any marketer. But it is all the more vital for internationally active affiliates who venture into a foreign territory.
Your very first step after deciding to go international should be to turn to your favorite search engine and spend at least a few days just gathering information on your target market. Even if you have been promoting the same products online for 10 years, targeting a new market will present new opportunities and new, unfamiliar challenges.
International trade organizations, your country’s foreign trade office, and independent research and trade organizations frequently publish reports on various markets in a specific country. These reports, while they are made for manufacturers and exporters of local products, can provide vital statistics and information on the characteristics of your new market.
Trade associations that deal with your niche in your target countries are another good source for firsthand information on local markets.
2. Be Serious, and Let It Show
In an online environment, the written word is the means of communication with your potential buyer. Therefore, make sure your words present the right professional image about your business, your website, and the products you promote.
Never rely on automatic translation software to translate consumer copy or any content on your site. There is probably no bigger turnoff for a visitor than the random and grammatically incorrect text generated by a piece of software.
If you are serious about marketing internationally, invest in hiring a human translator, who not only can – correctly – translate, but can localize your web copy to make it work with local visitors. You can find quality translators in online freelance marketplaces.
When creating your local content, use phrases commonly used in that location (think “trousers” vs. “pants” or “wardrobe” vs. “closet”). Not only will this present a professional image to local visitors, but it can make or break your local SEO efforts.
3. Save Your Energy for Real International Merchants
Even though many websites mention in their FAQs that they ship internationally, the foreign customer frequently encounters a U.S.-only order form on their way through checkout on the same website. Before promoting a merchant internationally, do a test, and make sure they process international orders online. If international buyers need to phone in their orders, or call for a shipping quote, you risk not being paid for a referred sale, so that merchant may not be worth your efforts.
Also make sure that you are actually paid for international sales! Many merchants do not pay commissions on international orders for legal or marketing reasons, even if those are legitimate orders. This should be indicated within their affiliate information pages, but if you are unsure, it’s better to ask beforehand than to be sorry after you have invested time and money into promoting a nonpaying merchant.
4. Talk to Your Merchant Partners
Before starting any promotion, talk to your affiliate manager about your international plans. Ask for any specific rules regulating promotion of their products and brands internationally.
See if they already do any marketing in your target market. If they do, you can try to piggyback on their efforts. If they don’t, the entire market is virgin territory, ready for you to conquer.
5. Display Currencies
If you are targeting international shoppers, always indicate the currency when displaying prices. (And the dollar sign doesn’t cut it, as there are more than 20 countries, from Australia to Zimbabwe, who use “dollar” as their currency, but with different values.)
6. Take Payment Issues Seriously
Research which payment methods are used most frequently by your target country’s shoppers and make sure the merchants you promote accept at least one (ideally, all) of those methods. With international credit card companies and the now-widely available online payment systems such as PayPal, this is less of an issue than it was a few years ago. However, there are still huge differences in familiarity or trust in specific payment methods among consumers worldwide.
The classic example of this is the prevalence of debit cards in Europe that carry the Visa or Mastercard logo. While these are accepted everywhere their credit card versions are accepted, they are often perceived to be more risky to use online. This continues to be a major obstacle to the adoption of online shopping in some countries.
7. Research Shipping Issues
It’s not enough to know that your merchant partner ships internationally. Take a look at the actual list of countries to which they ship, and display this list on your website. If you don’t, you risk alienating visitors when they are ready to purchase but discover that they live in a country not serviced by that merchant.
It is best to indicate available shipping methods to international shoppers, because shipping a package via surface mail (meaning trucks, trains, and ships) and priority air mail or even courier service can make a world of difference, quite literally! It is not uncommon for surface mail packages to travel months from one corner of the world to another, while simple air mail crosses the globe in about a week – not to mention time-guaranteed courier services.
8. Read Up on Sales Tax and VAT Issues
In many countries (including those in the European Union), displayed consumer prices already contain the local sales tax equivalent. Read a primer on VAT (Value Added Tax) and familiarize yourself with the basics of how VAT works within international trade.
You may be able to promote sales tax or VAT exemptions, discounts, or refunds (and therefore, lower consumer prices). But before you do so, it is absolutely necessary to research and know what you are doing. (For example, within a simple European transaction, the applicable VAT rates vary by product, location of the buyer and of the seller, and whether a registered business entity or a consumer is placing the order.) Check your merchant’s buyer FAQ for basic information on how they handle sales tax or VAT, and ask them about VAT issues specific to their business practices.
9. Localize Your Offers and Content
Be prepared to adjust your calendars. Research local holidays and seasons, and promote products and offers specific to that country’s calendar. For example, Mother’s Day is celebrated worldwide, but on entirely different days.
The good news is, if you create Mother’s Day content for one of your sites, you can adjust it and use it on your different local sites throughout spring and early summer, or even later. Localize the offers with local phrases and images to show visitors that the holiday you are promoting is the one they are about to celebrate.
10. Promote Only Products That Your Customers Can Use
It may sound like common sense, but in the age of globalized trade with varying standards, it doesn’t hurt to remind yourself every once in a while to sell only the things that people can use in their location.
In the case of electronics, pay attention to different electricity standards with DVDs, region coding, etc. As a courtesy to buyers, provide compatibility information, such as clothing size conversion charts and measurement conversions. This may mean extra work for you if your merchant doesn’t provide such information, but you will reap the returns on your efforts when international buyers buy more confidently through your affiliate site.