Cross-cultural marketing with non-Caribbean country-coded domains

Cross-cultural marketing of your brand or product is easier and cheaper today thanks to growing Internet access around the world. Moving between .jm, .nz or .jp is easy, but buyers usually start searching within their country-coded domains before they search abroad. A country-coded domain (other than your own) can help improve your search engine results in foreign markets and improve your conversion rates.

Here are three steps to consider as you take your brand or product international:

1. Where to go: Analytics
If you are not sure what other country-code domain to invest in, find out where your international visitors are coming from and what are they looking for. Your analytics will have the answer – just check your Website statistical reports. If your goal is to extend your brand into 2 or 3 international markets, check to see which of those countries send the most traffic to your site – and note the languages your visitors speak. Identify your domain marketing median and go from there.

2. How to speak the language: Translate
Sometimes acquiring your English based domain in another country-code is not enough to gain traction in that linguistic or geographic market. Selecting domains that mean something in the language of your target audience is a great tactic to execute. For example, if your domain is based on a product… let’s say ‘soursap.com’, and you are trying to break into the Mexican market (yes, they love sour sap juice there), it is worth it to acquire ‘guanabana.mx instead of soursap.mx! The same applies to marketing Caribbean products in Japan or Germany etc.

2. Wave yuh hand: Update your Web presence
So you’ve done the research and have acquired a few international country-codes. What’s next? The easiest thing to do is to point your new domain to your current site through domain forwards; the better thing to do is to invest in developing a site that caters to the culture and language of your growing audience. Strapped for cash? Don’t worry, approach the project in phases – start small and develop a strategy for growth as you learn more about your new territory.
suzette gardner is a guest blogger

on SiliconCaribe.com, pragmatic Jamaican new media marketing and e-business consultant at marooninteractive.com.

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