How to structure an international SEM strategy for B2B businesses

Two of the main challenges faced by B2B companies with international businesses are undoubtedly the capture of quality leads and the creation of strategies that allow the conversion of prospects into active customers. In this case, a good international SEM strategy can become your best ally, helping you to solve both problems.

In this article, we'll explain why SEM can become your winning weapon when it comes to expanding your business internationally and how you can design a highly effective SEM strategy.

What is International SEM and why is it so important to expand your business?

International SEM is a digital marketing strategy that seeks promote your brand in the countries and markets you want to impact, through a series of structured ads, improving the visibility of your website in search engine results. It is a practice that adapts to any type of company that wants to internationalize its business.

This practice, also known as “PPC lead generation” is achieved thanks to the creation of well-defined campaigns, which are presented in search engines such as Google or Bing, on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn and on marketplaces such as Amazon.

The world of PPC (Pay Per Click) then plays a fundamental role in generating business profit. But for these actions to provide the desired return you have to analyze available resources and know where to focus both efforts and investment. This is even more important if your business is also developing in other countries.

An effective and detailed international SEM strategy will allow you achieve an ideal collection volume to nourish your databases, thus helping your business area meet its objectives.

How to design an effective international SEM strategy?

Designing a solid international SEM strategy requires concrete actions that will be the key to its effectiveness and good performance. Below, we explain step by step everything you need to consider.

Understanding your website traffic

The first important step will be to understand your website traffic. This way you can identify the markets with the greatest potential. The main metrics to consider are:

• Number of visits
• Interactions
• Bounce rate
• Conversions

You must collect information about the main search engines in the countries and markets to be impacted, including recognize other channels that allow you to generate a lead capture strategy with a global vision of target objective. This will help you make decisions about the best platforms to invest in and thus better impact your audience at different times.

Thanks to this exercise, you can even feed a 360º marketing strategy to accompany the journey of your users in the different phases of the funnel, according to the characteristics of your company, strengths and weaknesses, in each chosen market.

Analyze the market

The second step will be to do an in-depth analysis of the target market, of your main competitors, of the keywords linked to the search for your potential customers and to understand the difficulty you might encounter in terms of costs to achieve optimal positioning.

To know a certain country from a socio-economic point of view, understand their level of digital maturity and their level of competence, will help you, not only to make strategic decisions, but to build a solid structure of keywords on which to bet to make your search campaigns effective and give you the expected results.

In addition, in an international SEM strategy for the B2B sector, it is very important to provide users with quality and useful content that motivates them to contact or leave their data. If you have quality content, you will easily become the solution that the user is looking for to meet their needs.

It should be noted that, being an international PPC strategy, this exercise must be carried out. in the native language of each market, since the ability to know perfectly the culture and customs of users will allow you to understand the needs of the market, in addition to achieving effective writing and communication, as well as identifying the right keywords to achieve better results.

Define the right budget

As a third step, once the strategy has been outlined, it will be important to establish the ideal budget for each campaign, taking into account web traffic, acquisition objectives, and estimated costs per click through a Keyword research very detailed and the expected investment.

It is also necessary to keep in mind that, once the campaigns are launched, you will have to optimize the investment between each market or country, according to the performance results that are obtained. Take the time to understand the behavior of each campaign to make the right investment and, consider seasonality and search trends.

Constant optimization

The strategy doesn't end once you've launched your campaigns internationally. For your International SEM strategy to work, you'll need to optimize them daily, understanding their behavior.  

Perform an analysis of the search terms for which your users are finding your website or of the searches by device, so you can refine your bid strategies, communication, value proposition and redistribute investment based on results.

Bet on a strategy of International SEM for lead generation is a continuous learning cycle; you can change and adapt your campaigns based on the results and the analysis of the behavior of your potential customers in certain countries.

An international SEM strategy opens the door to a world of possibilities, but best of all, lead capture is in the short term and if you configure each campaign well, understanding the behavior of each market, you will obtain the expected results both in quality and quantity.

Do you need help with your international SEM strategy?

Contact us, our PPC experts will be happy to help you and answer all your questions.