September 4, 2003 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- There are many commonalities between marketing your Web hosting business in Europe and North America. Each, for example, share similar demands, service offerings and sales channels. But while the Internet can bring you closer to new markets, a unique approach is required for every market in which you intend to promote your Web hosting business - particularly in Europe, which is an extremely diverse region.
Possibly the most important thing to remember about promoting your hosting services in Europe is that no two markets are the same. The differences between certain European nations are like night and day, and it is virtually impossible to market to your services using a blanket methodology for the entire continent.
In order to reach specific audiences, one of the first places a Web hosting company should turn to is Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, where the sales potential is high and the barriers to entry are low.. Many hosts use Overture (overture.com), the Internet's most popular PPC engines, to reach North American consumers. However, the company now also offers European advertisements, and can even translate your ads in to other languages. What's more, all ads can be managed from one account. To date, the company promotes its advertisers in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Korea and Japan.
Another PPC search engine that is popular among European searchers and is quickly gaining steam in North America is espotting.com (espotting.com), which recently merged with North American PPC engine FindWhat.com (findwhat.com). Espotting services 10 European regions, including France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Switzerland and Sweden.
Google Adwords, which seems to gain in popularity by the minute, can also be used as a powerful international sales and marketing channel. The program now offers ads in virtually all markets and languages that the search engine serves, which currently amounts to 14 languages and approximately 250 countries.
Of course, although PPC advertising is certainly popular among Web hosts, it is not the only way to promote your hosting company. Most major Web hosting directories now offer international sites or spotlights that cater to regional hosting firms.
Under certain circumstances, you may also be able to garner multiple international listings for your business with the Internet's major search engines and directories, provided you have several international sites with varying domain extensions, rates and content. If you own an American Web hosting company that has a separate site geared toward German consumers with a .de domain, for example, you could logically obtain multiple search engine listings without being penalized in your rankings, and allow your message to potentially reach a larger customer base.
Regional resource sites such as local programming/user groups and ISP forums also work well, offering Web hosts diverse audiences and low entry rates - not to mention advertising outlets many competitors will never consider. Hiring a translation service to help you market in foreign languages may be required, and many firms that offer services like these can be found through a simple search in Google, which yields dozens of results. Trying to create multi-lingual campaigns on your own, or through low-end translation products offered by search engines, simply won't do the job (legend has it that an Italian campaign for UK-based Schweppes Tonic Water once wrongly translated the name to Schweppes Toilet Water).
If you have a slightly larger budget, you may want to consider recruiting a public relations firm with inroads to local markets you wish to penetrate. Such firms take most of the legwork out of getting your company known, allowing you to focus on your core business. The International Public Relations Association (ipra.org) provides directions to all sorts of regional PR associations.
The potential for miscommunication only reinforces the fact that marketing to countries other than your own requires close attention to detail and may require external help should you decide to move beyond PPC marketing. But given the potential customer base that lays beyond North American borders, it's hard to dispute that it's worth the effort.
