Nacho threatened the lives of the SIX panelist, that if they go over, then (well I wont say). He then said something in Spanish, I assume, if you want to listen to the session in Spanish, go get a headset. See, I know Spanish. He said this may have been the hardest panel for him to put together.
Barbara Coll, WebMama is first up. Who is involved in SEM in general? The team, she lists out a bunch of titles. SEMs can't be performed or planned in a vacuum. Integration with other online marketing teams is critical for SEM program success. Education; come to a common terminology, decide what languages and domains will be focused on and used, provide case studies and suggestions as to how and why to integrate (sources for info; sempo, clickz, searchenginewatch (blog), attend conferences). Overlapping budgets; tighten relationship with other agencies, talk about who owns what budget, decide whether corporate or country budgets are to be used. Measurement; offline marketing effects online traffic volume, online marketing effects offline sales, attempt to merge multiple tracking systems and backend CRMs (you have to decide on success metrics). Creatives; Consistency but not the same when it comes to text vs. images, keywords versus page location, ppc versus cpm, searchers versus eyeballs and language issues (translation issues), shared branding experiences and responsibility for trademark disputes. We need to convince the management there is opportunity to target Latin America (how do we do this?)
Dave Williams from 360i. He says look back at 1999, and you will see a lot of similarities there, now in the Hispanic market. Build organization knowledge, you need to educate the people from CEOs to the bottom-levels. , develop 101s and 201s. Develop an integrated search strategy; the SEO investments you make today will have long term rewards and PPC is more like day trading (quick results). Looks at the important keyword buckets (english, spanish), what does your promotional calendar look like? What are your competitors running and how do you differentiate yourself from them? You need to test these creatives. It is important that when you run campaigns, you need to group them properly. Assign each product a bucket and then break down those buckets by high volume and low volume and then based on ROI. Use sophisticated data optimization can help. Statistical modeling, algorithmic optimization, predictive capabilities, understand the value of "assists." This data can be huge for you. Portfolio Approach Optimizes Results: Data indicates that rank has significant impact on clicks and conversions. Through non-bran portfolio optimization can maximize performance. Conversion rates are nearly identical for consumers rating the search process with either a brand or non- brand term provided the last click is brand term. Consumers that click on an ad ten times, are three times as likely to convert than users with one click. Focus on education, strategy, and data.
Eduardo Valades from iHispanic. Latin America; amount of PCs available and the cost to buy them, Internet access is not always available, broadband is expensive, limited content in Spanish and majority of Web sites in Flash (SEO issues). US Hispanics; demographics, psychographics and topologies are unique, us hispanics are forced to blend in, lack of commitment from ad firms and owners, both marketing and content is in English and non-related imagery. You need to commit on long-run, small time and monetary commitments wont do. Challeneges for Web and search engines are growth trends are high, the amount of search queries are few markets, markeitng budgets are small, users homepages may force users to begin with a poor search experience, loyalty with search engines is not high, lack of vision of market opps, SEM firms focusing too much in general marketing and not growing into multuilingual marketing strategies. Balance your online marketing tactics from pull marketing, permission marketing to push marketing. Establish a multilingual strategy, start with english then spanish then Portuguese. ROI Challenges; define goals, gain SEO traffic is lost to poor funnel navigation, PPC may be fractions of the cost (track offline conversions), not accessing web analytics reports. Establishing a road map for results; get educated on the market opp, research and validate research, balance your online marketing tactics, be committed, demonstrate to yourself that this works.
Matt Williams from Prominent Placement. Case study for Abacus Solutions. First dedicated international effort for either organization, no previous experience with developing non-English programs and funding was an issue. Limited program to high-end IBM dedicated servers. What "Translates?" Can a successful US focused, English language program be "translated" to SPanish and Portuguese? Not fully. Results for "IBM AS/400 servidores usados," they got great rankings right away. Spanish language visitors increased +1400%, Portuguese language visitors increase +700%, no degradation among other languages, the pie grew. Opportunity assessment; your ability to be seen in the search engines depends on your competition, or lack there of. Knowledge of the search landscape is critical. Intent, build awareness via search engine visibility, drive traffic that converts. Site page optimization, content creation, keyword selection , relevant, unique compelling, on and off page factors worked similar to US SEO. Linking, authority site, anchor text, branding opps, and additional research via RSS feeds, PR Web, additional SERPs through press releases. Things that are different; level of sophistication; competitors, tools very little. Project management, additional complexity and additional costs (time/money). Additional credibility required, international shipping, currency conversion, etc. Seasonality and world events; business cycles, elections, sporting, events, festivals, holidays, etc. PPC differences, Language issues, brand terms, acronyms, etc. misspellings and "spanglish." Tips: search is search focus on relevancy and content; latin american SEM requires time, money and doing it right and the opportunity it large, less competitive and huge potential with huge bottom-line effect.
Matias Perel from LatinThre3. Latino Challenges; language and cultural diversity, trademark terms, target locally, tracking conversions, how to track my offline sales and search engine of 3rd party tracking. He said the Brazilian market is more developed then the Mexico market. He will be focusing on trademark terms in this presentation. There is no policy in Latin America on trademarks, he puts up a slide on the definition of a trademark. In Latin America there is no law on this yet. He shows the purchase funnel: hotel in miami -> miami hotel reviews -> cheap hotel miami -> intercontinental hotel miami. The last keyword is a trademark, and there is a risk in targeting those keywords. He discusses the Google lawsuit and GEICO. He puts up a slide on Yahoo and Google, Yahoo allows you to use a trademark if you are a reseller or you are an information site (not competitive) and Google allows you to bid on trademarks unless the trademark has been filed with Google and approved by Google not to be used in AdWords.
Massimo Burgio representing SEMPO to present a SEMPO paper. He tells folks what SEMPO is, check them out at SEMPO.org. A SEMPO collaborative project to map the experience of being a SEM to target Latino. Results will be published on the SEMPO web site. 33 SEMPO members out of 417 replied. Do you Latino? 26% US Hispanic only, 20% US Hispanic and Latin America, 18% Latin America SEMs targeting US Hispanics and Latin America, 15% worldwide targeting both and 13% Latin America SEMs targeting only Latin America, and 8% Spanish SEMs targeting. What were your biggest challenges and hod did you overcome it? Content localization was one of the biggest list. The solution was to deploy different web sites with different products and different goals. "Flat targeting" is not the exception here, but the mainstream rule. Other problems include cultural and language diversities... To solve this issue, you create landing pages,or testing a mix-mode content page, they also hired Latinos in your field. Also there is a lack of reliable data on user behavior (browsing versus searching), the solution is to research. More problems is e-commerce issues, have patience with this or come up with alternatives. An other issue is client education, solution is to create case histories or free testing. What is your Latino search mix? SEO+PPC, design multiple landing pages for Latinos. Which general issues do you think should be addressed? tools, vendors, ad networks, and US clients need to be convinced. Then they ask for folks to tell them a fun story about their experience; Hispanics are being targeted in Spanish but searching in English and also a funny language issue story. Would you be interested in joining Latino SEMPO? Most said yes, so there is a SEMPO Latino starting.
Disclaimer: I type as fast as I can, there are grammar errors, typos and more issues with this. I do my best to be as accurate as possible. But due to the nature of "real time" coverage, there will be issues.
