It has been recently reported that only 22% of local businesses say they have actually used Facebook’s Advertising network, nearly two-thirds of those who have used Facebook Ads (64.9%) say they would definitely use the service again. Meanwhile, 65.7% of local businesses say they only use Facebook for general marketing and not for ad’s.

Below is additional research from MerchantCircle’s quarterly Merchant Confidence Index and is based on a survey of 4,942 small, local businesses.

When asked why they would use Facebook Ads again, surveyed local businesses pronounced ease of use (66.5%), followed closely by the flexibility to pause and restart campaigns at will (64.8%).

More than one-half of the surveyed local businesses (53.7%) chose Facebook’s targeted display ad function as a reason for continuing with Facebook Ads and 49.3% said it was good for finding new business customers.

But not every business has found success with Facebook Ads. Among the 35% of local businesses who say they would no longer advertise with Facebook, 69.0% claimed Facebook Ads didn’t help them to find new customers or clients and 34.5% say the ad network was far too expensive to operate.

Digital Marketing Channels

Facebook is the preferred digital channel among local businesses (65.7%), followed by Google (53.3%), LinkedIn (45.7%), Google Places (38.8%), and Twitter (32.1%).

Meanwhile, location-based marketing dropped in the previous quarter: 22% of local businesses say they are now

using Facebook Places to market their business, compared with the 32% who said so in MerchantCircle’s 1Q11 report; similarly, 7.3% are now using Foursquare, compared with 9% in 1Q11.

Local businesses have also been cautious about using top group-buying sites such as Groupon (4.3%) and Living Social (3.6%) for marketing their business through discounted promos.

Group-Buying Marketing Low, but Favorability High

1 in 10 local businesses (9.4%) say they have used a groupon style site within their marketing strategy; of them, 77% admit that they would definately offer a 1 day promotional deal again :

And 8.4% of local businesses plan to use group-buying sites in the next six months.

Among the local businesses who said they would not use group-buying sites again, 42% say that their deals didd not bring them any new customers, 25% stated that the costs where way too high, and 24% say that groupon style sites is are a no win strategy.

Evolution of The Group-Buying Market

Within the rapidly evolving group-buying community, familiarity with well-known brands Facebook and Google may give those brands a long-term advantage over current market leaders Groupon and LivingSocial: 52% of local businesses say such familiarity would lead them to choose Facebook Deals or Google Offers over other competitive offers like Groupon.

Other reasons for choosing Facebook Deals are a bigger audience size (26%) and better local targeting (21%). Those more likely to use Google Offers stated Google’s bigger audience (42%) and Google’s brand reputation (34%).

Mobile Marketing?

Very few local businesses are experimenting with mobile: only 18% of local business owners reported doing any sort of mobile marketing or advertising.

We believe this is down to a lack of understanding as a barrier to mobile marketing strategies: a massive 71% of business owners say they don’t have a clue of how to reach new consumers using mobile marketing.

Not surprisingly, most local businesses say they neither have the funds or time for marketing:

• 61% are spending less than $2,500 a year on their marketing campaign.
• 73% have amde no plans to increase their marketing budgets this year.
• 37% stated lack of time and resources as their main marketing challenge.

About the data: Findings are based on the sixth Merchant Confidence Index survey, fielded online from April 30 to June 6, 2011 among 4,942 local business owners ; 78% of respondents employ fewer than five people.

The world of digital media branding has rushed up on businesses like a speeding bullet train. As well as many businesses not understanding how to utilise it, the heavy weight corporate companies are now using their financial muscle to hire the best people to develop this new age of communication. It’s not just businesses that have been taken aback by the rise in social media. Just recently Saatchi and Saatchi, the biggest marketing company in the noughties, announced the creation of a digital marketing company. They realise the importance of this fast moving new age of marketing and the need to offer this service!

The biggest and most confusing area in digital marketing is social media and the social networks. So why should you be involved with social media. Well, let’s look at the bigger picture of how to create a brand. Branding is what differentiates a corporate company from a small company and the number one reason many of the corporate companies such as Nike, Apple and Google etc. spend money on marketing. Creating a brand builds trust; many small and medium businesses do not focus on this part of their business and are usually price driven in value. Let’s use the current pound store trend as an example. Soon they became 99p stores, what will be next 97p, then 59p? how about 49p? How long do you think it will be before there is a better Primark?

The point I am trying to make, is if you are a price driven small or medium business with no aspiration to become a brand, sooner or later someone will undercut you and steal your business. Social media is a great way to build brand awareness and communicate your U.S.P (Unique Selling Point). The problem is that its free, so many S.M.E (Small and Medium Enterprises) do not value it. If you haven’t yet started using social media, ask yourself why the big brands are now spending millions to ensure they are connecting to their consumers. Do they know something you don’t?

So what should you do to make sure you are positioned to take part in this digital branding age? Firstly think of it as just another form of marketing. It’s not so scary then! At the least; you should be on Facebook and Twitter.

1. Add this to your yearly marketing calendar (Use Hoot suite to print off your stats and analyse them quarterly to see what is working)
2. If you have staff? Allow them 5 hours a week to manage your social media. (Content is King…Emotional content is golden)
3. Tracking your statistics is vital, many SME’s that I talk to have no idea how many people visit their website and from where. Social media if done correctly will increase this by 10% on average. But if you don’t know your website stats you will quickly say social media doesn’t work!

Free Social Branding Tools

· Twuffer: Store Your Tweets
· Twittwall: If you don’t have a blog this is great.
· Bitly: Another Tool For Tracking

When you attend a creative web solutions workshop, you will be shown how to create strategic content for your social media based around your product, using the chart below. It’s too much for this article but we would be happy to share this with you at one of our branding workshops.

Consider these stats: Google sites handle about 88 billion queries a month but did you know, twitter is approaching 20 billion?

Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year and Hitwise has reported that Facebook tops Google in weekly web traffic.

Social media is hot, but is by no means mutually exclusive of search. Search has expanded beyond Google and marketers must now consider other search channels such as internal Facebook search and online marketing mobile search as channels where customers are looking.

The intersection of search engine and social media innovations are in flux with dynamics of changing consumer preferences for information discovery, consumption and sharing.  The blur of all this change is an opportunity for brands and marketers to engage an active online marketing strategy that converges the disciplines of search, social media, content and online public relations.

I believe the future of marketing brings the best of these disciplines together. To meet consumer needs, whether it’s B2B or B2C, it’s inevitable that PR will know SEO and Social Media Marketers with be versed in media relations.

Because there are so many information sources online, sales cycles are getting longer. Customers expect more than being presented with features and benefits followed by a call to action.

For marketers, it’s not better to just give more. “Better” is better. Better content, better visibility in all the places customers might looking or influenced by. It also means a better experience in brand / consumer interactions.

For example, searchers expect not only to find what they’re looking for on a search engine, but to interact with the results through commenting, rating, joining as well as buying. A purchase is just the start of social engagement with customers and customer marketing with social media continues to be a growth area.

Active online marketing pays attention to those customer needs and creates a dynamic cycle of social and search interaction. Creating customer experiences that are easily discovered through search or social and continuously evaluating what works and what doesn’t will inform marketer’s subsequent editorial, optimization and social media marketing efforts.

There are so many changes and much to look forward to in 2011. Here are three areas in particular (of many) that I think marketers should pay attention to in the coming year:

Online Marketing Content – This area has been popularized in the past year by people like Joe Pulizzi of Content Marketing Institute and brands are indeed adopting a publisher model of marketing through content. Content extends beyond the browser and includes mobile, social and any other kind of search.  This will only continue and get increasingly competitive for those that can afford to scale original content creation.

Content Curation – The sheer volume of online marketing content out there now is overwhelming with social publishing platforms online and mobile making it incredibly easy to create and share. Original content creation is expensive to scale and creatively challenging in the long term. Content curation serves as an efficient model for marketers to engage consumers as a source of signal amongst the noise. Note: our client HiveFire offers a very good content curation tool for enabling this.

Social Commerce – Companies like Minneapolis based Alvenda are empowering ecommerce on Facebook with brands like Brooks Brothers, Delta Airlines and Best Buy. It’s still early days for social commerce but if companies can make it part of the social experience, I think it will serve as true channel for Social Media ROI.

I think the future of online marketing is dynamic, challenging and full of promise for companies that can commit themselves to a process of testing, engagement, coordinating cross channel efforts and refinement.

What would your sixty second tip on the future of online marketing be?

Many online business owners overlook local search marketing. This potentially risks losing share in their largest market. As with all search engine marketing, time, skill and patience is involved; however the rewards justify the commitments. Local search marketing involves the targeting of a specific geographical audience in a sites’ search marketing campaign.

To successfully market a website to a local audience, there are several critical steps every website owner must take:

1. Add Your Site to Local Search Map Directories:

This is a simple step that can achieve quick results. The most popular is Google Maps. Google Maps simply requires a website owner to fill out a form. Required information includes location, contact information and business hours. Google Maps can also incorporate videos and pictures. You will be required to have a Google account, but both are free anyway. Registering with Google Maps will increase your search engine rankings for local searchers utilizing Google Maps. Website owners should also register with Yahoo! Local and Bing Local. Search marketing is still required here, however, so don’t overlook the search marketing basics of keyword research and regularly enriching the site with quality content targeting your most relevant keywords. If one adds business information to these map directories then the local search marketing campaign has more substance attached to it, as, for example, Google Maps, will recognise the fact that the site is registered and will hence take the site into account for certain search terms, for example ‘search marketing Ulverston’.

2. Implement Local Search Geo Tags:

Geo tagging allows website owners to add geographical information in the form of metatags, which will help their local search marketing campaign. These tags can be attached to websites, videos, photographs, RSS feeds and more. Most commonly submitted in the form of coordinates, they assist spiders with locating your business on maps. When local searchers enter geocentric keywords, Google will know you are relevant and the searcher will see you. This is becoming more and more popular for optimising local search, as Google maps and other map directories use the same co-ordinates.

3. Google Webmaster Tools:

Google is well known for the many webmaster tools they offer, so it should come as no surprise they can assist you with local search marketing as well. In the settings portion, there is a section called “Geographic target.” Filling this information out will assist search engines with locating your business geographically. Geographic search marketing, in the future, will be a huge industry, as the majority of people will search for plumbers, builders etc using the search engines.

4. Local Search Directories:

Be sure to take the time to submit your website to any local web directories. This will improve your SERP rankings for local searches and indirectly for the short-tail phrase, minus the location optimised towards. As an added benefit, it will provide you with some backlinks, which will also improve your rankings. Directories like Business.com and Yahoo Local are also essential. The search engines are considering their stance for local search marketing campaigns, as the sheer quantity of competition in the future will be significantly increased.

After these steps are performed, website owners can take things up a notch by employing mainstream search marketing techniques to focus on the local market. Article marketing, keyword research and blogging can all be used to market your business locally. Utilize keywords that include your geographical information in your articles and blogs. Develop your keyword list not only for uniqueness and relevancy, but for geo targeting as well. This will typically mean a little more effort on your part, but can help improve your local rankings. For example, if local search marketing is utilised efficiently for their geographical market, then a company in Cambridge could optimise for ‘Cambridge’, ‘East Anglia’, Cambridgeshire’ and other relevant locations. These places can be placed with the relevant shot and long-tail phrases associated with the business.

Local search marketing is really just a just a subset of search marketing or SEO. Like any field of optimisation, it does take time. If you do not feel you have the skills or time to fully implement an SEO program for local searches, consider outsourcing to an Internet Marketing Company. Local Search is a great and essential piece of any successful Internet Marketing Strategy.

Do this and you may just find a sea of opportunity waiting for your brand, company or event.

The biggest challenge with Facebook advertising is maximizing the efficiency of your ads. In short, this means getting as many Likes for as little money as possible. To help you win this challenge sooner rather than later, here are seven important facts you should know about Facebook advertising that will help you get moving in the right direction.

#1: There are two primary destinations that can be advertised through Facebook Advertising

A destination within Facebook is a page, group, event or application. A destination outside of Facebook is a URL such as http://creative-websolutions.com.

When creating a new ad campaign from scratch, the Facebook Design Your Ad screen defaults to advertising a destination outside of Facebook. To change this setting, just click the option, “I want to advertise something I have on Facebook.”

A primary distinction between these two types of ads is that with an outside URL, users are only able to Like the ad. For destinations on Facebook, users have the opportunity to Like the page (or RSVP to the event) from within the ad.

The two major benefits of the latter are that (1) users can become connected to your page (or event) without ever clicking on the ad itself (which is a huge benefit for CPC advertisers) and (2) you’re keeping people on Facebook.

Select the “I want to advertise something I have on Facebook” option if your goal is to drive fan page Likes.

As a final thought on this subject, one of the inherent benefits of Facebook is that you can bring individuals into your network and engage with them on an ongoing basis. By driving people away from Facebook, you’re missing out on this opportunity, and consequently defeating one of the primary purposes of advertising on Facebook in the first place.

On the surface, there is only a subtle difference between advertising something on Facebook and advertising an outside URL. But there are actually major differences between the two. Make sure you’re selecting the right type of facebook advertising for your goal.

#2: Ad costs and impressions are heavily influenced by click-through rate

Click-through rate (CTR) is an incredibly important measurement for Facebook advertising. Even if your singular goal is to grow fans, regardless of how many people click through, you’ll still need to keep a close eye on CTR. Essentially, Facebook judges the success of your ad on the ad’s ability to get a relatively high percentage of people to click. Facebook rewards successful ads with a lower cost per click or cost per impression and more visibility.

Unfortunately, if your ad drops below a certain CTR threshold it will be nearly impossible to bring it back up. In that case, it’s better to start a new ad than to tweak the one you have. From my experience, having below a 0.1 CTR will almost always result in an underperforming ad. But the criteria for establishing a threshold will depend on the goals you establish.

#3: Targeting friends of connections increases the relevance of your facebook advertising.

Have you ever seen an ad pop up on Facebook that shows that one of your friends is already connected to that page? Did you feel more drawn to the ad than you would have been if no connections were shown? Fact is, Facebook is really great at peer pressure, and when users see that one of their friends is connected to a page, it increases the chance that they too might want to check it out.

Targeting users whose friends are already connected to your fan page can be a powerful tool for increasing the relevance of an ad.

The downside of the Friends of Connections targeting selection is that it narrows the field of potential ad impressions down by a significant percentage. But, because the cost of the ad is a result of the CTR, having a narrow field of relevant individuals may in fact be more important than having a large field of irrelevant individuals.

Try testing ads with and without the Friends of Connections option selected. You may find that some ads work so well that having that narrowed field may actually hurt the full potential of a given ad.

#4: Facebook advertising takes time

If you intend to get great results from your Facebook advertising, be prepared to dedicate the right resources to supporting the effort.

Facebook advertising requires a lot of trial and error. Every brand, product and company will have a different message and a different audience, and knowing how a given audience will respond is impossible before getting in there and actually trying it.

Create ads, create lots of ads and create new ads every day. Even when you find an ad that works, it will have a limited run. I’ve seen ads that perform well for a few days and some that perform well for a few months. The smaller your potential audience, the quicker your ad will fizzle out.

There are a lot of different variables that can be tested. Test them all – copy, image, demographics, friend connections, interest groups. They’re all important variables that can dramatically change the results of a given ad.

Finally, look at daily analytics. CTRs and CPCs/CPMs change from day to day. An ad can start out with a great CTR, but gradually decrease over time. This means that what was once a $0.05 CPC ad may eventually be $0.50.

#5: An “Action” is an in-ad Like

If you’re advertising a fan page, “Actions” refer to in-ad Likes. In other words, an Action is when someone clicks Like on your ad, but doesn’t click through to your page.

Facebook Advertising doesn’t show Actions from the Campaign Overview screen, so you’ll have to click into an ad to see Actions. This may be an extra step, but if at the end of the day your goal is more fans, you need to be keeping track of Actions.

Clicking on a specific ad will give you a more in-depth look into the performance of your ad over time, including number of Actions.

Unfortunately, measuring the actual cost per fan (CPF) of a given ad is not as easy as it should be. And, perhaps at some point in the near future, Facebook will make this a standard measurement tool. But until that point comes, you’ll either need a custom software tool or you can use Actions as a base level estimate for fan acquisition. Just keep in mind that Actions only tell half of the story. The other half is the percentage of people who did click through to your page and Liked your page at that point.

“Facebook does provide a few additional reports that can help you gain a better understanding of the costs and conversion analytics related to acquiring fans. These reports, including the “Advertising Performance” report, can be found in the reports section of the Facebook Ad Manager.”

#6: Daily budget and daily spend limit are not the same

Daily budget is the maximum you would spend in a given day for a single campaign. Daily spend limit is the cap set on your account by Facebook. Your daily ad spend limit is automatically set to $50 per day. So, if you have a daily budget of $500 for campaign ‘A,’ and you continuously max out your spend at $50, this is the reason. To change your daily spend limit, you must contact Facebook directly.

#7: You’re not the only person who can access and edit your Facebook advertising dashboard

As discussed, Facebook advertising takes a lot of time and resources. Depending on your organizational structure, it may be beneficial to have multiple people working on Facebook advertising. Under Settings, there is a Permissions section that will let you add other users to your facebook advertising account. If multiple people are working on ads at your company, it’s beneficial to have them all tied to one account for a number of reasons.

First, it helps overall measurement and analysis because data between accounts cannot be automatically combined. Second, the more money you spend on Facebook ads, the better access you will have to Facebook Ad staff, which comes in rather handy when you’re looking to get answers and run official promotions on your page.

Allowing multiple people to use and access the same Facebook advertising account can help organize resources and data.

Once you’ve passed the beginning stages of Facebook advertising, you may find these other articles helpful. Both dig deeper into specific tactics around creating successful ads, including landing pages, maximizing for CPM and creating a call to action with your copy.

There’s a reason why Facebook advertising revenue is projected to be over $1.2 billion in 2010. It’s because when businesses manage them correctly, Facebook advertising can be an incredibly successful and cost-effective means of tapping into Facebook’s 500 million users. Out of all the reasons why you may consider advertising on Facebook, driving fan page Likes should be at the top of your list. Just make sure that when you do decide to start the process, you understand the factors and resources involved.

Have you found other tricks and tips for helping beginners maximize their spend with Facebook advertising? Tell us about them in the comments box below.

Though several businesses look at social media as an innovative means for advertising, not all advertising agencies are flocking to social media for their next killer campaign. A recent study by RSW/US took a look at the business-to-business social media habits of a variety of ad agencies and reports that nearly 54% of the agencies polled said they never or rarely use social media when prospecting for new clients.

Is there a culture clash between social media and the advertising world? Or are they partners made for each other? Let’s do a reality check.

RSW/US Social Media Study Findings

Amongst the advertisers which use social media, LinkedIn is the most preferred social network getting nearly 51% of the votes primarily because it’s beneficial on the front and back-end of prospecting. Advertising agencies are joining the LinkedIn bandwagon to research and reach out to prospects as well as building strong pre-pitch relationships.

Facebook and Twitter collectively account for nearly 11% of social media activity in ad agencies polled by RSW/US.

I have to admit that I’m shocked at these statistics. Especially, I find it difficult to believe that Twitter is being sparingly used by ad agencies. The study suggests that lack of time and money are the major barriers to using social media. Both Twitter and Facebook are free so the cost argument is a complete non-starter.

Social media is critical part of overall outreach strategy

The study confirms that a large number of advertising agencies admit that social media has become an important part of the overall outreach strategy; it is by no means the be-all-end-all. Social media is gaining acceptance as part of a fully integrated marketing program.

Marketing to the marketers

It ain’t easy marketing to the marketers. Though marketers are champions at using social media to market a product to customers, they are not exactly fond of social media when it comes to marketing themselves.

Being an online marketer and social media activist myself, I can correlate to the time pressure and stretched schedules of fellow marketers. The report suggests that

“People don’t have the time to answer their phones, check out e-mail and be active in the social scene. That [fact] even more so justifies a need to make sure you’re in all those touch points.”

Though that holds true for a majority of advertising professionals, it is a case in point of the importance of social media as well. Social media for outreach can lighten a marketer’s burden assuming that the message is useful and to the point.

RSW/US conducted its poll online in August. The respondents came from a mix of holding company-owned shops like Leo Burnett, DDB, Mindshare and Initiative, and independents such as Northlich, LeapFrog Interactive and Mediasmith.

Do you use social media to reach out to prospects?
What role does a social medium play in advertising your products and services?
Please share your opinion by leaving a comment below this post.

Yet even the short space you get in paid ad needs some real attention if you’re going to get any clicks and — more importantly — the right kind of clicks.

So here are seven golden rules for great paid search copy.

1. Be Current

You should update your copy all the time — your paid search campaigns can’t be stagnant if they are going to be as effective as possible.

So, be current — use current affairs, seasons, and festivals to make your adverts stand out. Maybe it’s sweets at Halloween, boiler servicing at the start of the cold snap, winter sun holiday offers in December — whatever. The message is more effective if it’s current.

2. Tug Heart Strings

You may only have space for a few words, but don’t be afraid to pull at the heart strings if your product suits it.

So instead of “Gifts for women this Valentine’s” — try using “Make her smile this Valentine’s.” This will help you stand out from your competitors.

3. Make Your Search Target Audience Clear

The last thing you want is clicks from irrelevant people — they’ll use up your budget and likely won’t spend when they arrive on your pages.

If you’re experiencing this problem, then explain what your audience is within the ad (e.g., “Cheap van hire for businesses”).

This can also allow you to control your market, if you want to increase a certain group of customers (e.g., “Cheaper car insurance for second cars”).

4. Test, Test, Test

You never finish setting up your paid search campaign — it’s always a work in progress.

To get the most out of your campaign, you need to test different copy, campaigns, keywords, and even times of day.

Even if your campaign is working well, don’t assume it couldn’t work better. Test new copy and keywords — and constantly strive for a better result. Allow yourself to become complacent and your business will suffer.

5. Be Local

Never forget that PPC is a live auction and you’re competing for clicks. One great way to attract attention is to show you’re local to the customer.

If you’re specific to a location, then don’t be afraid to advertise the fact to searchers who’ve included a city or region. Even if your business isn’t focused on a specific location, geo-targeted ads such as “fancy dress in London” help to draw the eye of searchers and increase click-through rates (CTRs).

Obviously, you can still target national searchers. It just helps you stand out even more to one particular group.

6. Make Your Headline Arresting

OK, so you don’t have much space and your headlines need to show relevance and promise a solution to the search query — that’s a lot of pressure for such a small space.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t write a punchy headline — a hook to grab people’s attention. Come up with a few ideas and test them until you find the most successful.

7. Offer Something Extra Special

Do you have a special offer this week? Are you offering a discount your competitors can’t match? Then let the searcher know.

This will help you stand out from the other paid ads and will garner you clicks from people who’d normally simply move straight to the organic search results.

Having an events calendar works well, both for content creation ideas — but also for keeping ads current and giving a reason to base a new special offer around (e.g., the World Cup, Queen’s birthday, St. Patrick’s Day, Thanksgiving, etc.).

Want another example? How about “iPhone 4 deals from £25″ — you show the value of clicking on your search advert straight away – Search More Posts

In a struggling economy, it seems obvious that the best course of action for any business that wants to expand, or indeed survive, is to look at markets outside of their local website area. Not only does export open up your product to a larger number of consumers, but it also protects you from the whim of a single currency’s fluctuations.

So if we take it for granted that exporting is a sensible business strategy, and that the Internet is by far the most cost-effective method of international website marketing and trade, then all that remains is to decide how exactly to target foreign language markets online through your website.

It may seem like a sensible option prima facie to create website targeted by language, rather than individual localized sites for each country; after all, English is the official or primary language of more than 50 countries, Spanish is the official language in 15 countries, and 29 countries are Francophone — surely it makes a lot more sense to simply create one website for each language and be done with it?

Unfortunately, this isn’t the case.

Optimizing Your Website Search Engine Results

For starters, it will be a considerable boost to your website search engine rankings if your localized sites have a local top-level domain (TLD) — such as .de or .fr — and are hosted on service providers in the target country. So if a French web surfer searches for [librairie Paris] and you’re running a online bookshop with a .fr TLD hosted in France, then you’ll be much more likely to turn up in the French search results.

This isn’t always possible or financially feasible, though, so Google also provides a website geotargeting tool that allows you to set the location of your website in line with the relevance of its content. If your French online bookshop is hosted in China, you can now set your geolocation in Google Webmaster Tools as France, and your website will be more likely to appear in specifically French web searches (but not searches conducted in French-speaking Africa or Canada). This also works if you have country or language specific subdomains off your main site, as you can geotarget individual subdomains to specific countries.

Website Differences in Dialects

Perhaps more important than the domain names, though, is the fact that not all languages are the same across countries. For instance, think of the list of differences between U.K. and U.S. English — everything from whether to use an “s” or a “z,” or if there’s a “u” in color, to whether pants are worn on the outside, and whether “tabling a motion” means you’re proposing it for, or removing it from, consideration.

It’s not only English that can change dramatically between countries.

The Spanish spoken in Spain is vastly different from Latin American Spanish, and then there are the differences in dialects of Latin American Spanish between, say, Mexico, Peru, and the Dominican Republic. Not to mention that in Spain you can choose between four recognized regional languages (Aranese, Basque, Catalan/Valencian, and Galician) depending on which region of the country you’re focusing on.

And that’s not even bringing in the regional differences between Chinese dialects, or the French spoken in France and that spoken in Quebec, or in Francophone African nations.

Cultural Website Differences

Besides the differences between regional dialects of international languages, there are also the cultural differences between countries to consider, in both your manner of writing marketing copy and also your way of approaching the sales process (do your customers prefer buying items on a individual basis, or do they like value bundle packs?).

For instance, making reference to chat show philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy in your website for French Canada will likely draw a blank with your target audience. That’s still better than referencing “poutine” on your French website, though — people will likely think you’ve misspelled a curse word, which is embarrassing on more than one level.

Getting the right mix of appropriate tone and cultural reference is essential for creating a bond of trust with customers. You can’t achieve that level of specificity with a website if you’re trying to appeal to the inhabitants of more than 10 countries at once.

Therefore, your best option is to create a localized website for every country you wish to sell in. The next step after that is to optimize you website for the most popular search engine in each country, but that’s a topic for discussion next month.