11+2 Google tools that will help you with your exports

Over the last few years, Google has demonstrated a growing interest in international trade and exports. In some countries, such as Canada, they are developing campaigns to encourage internationalization that include, for example, the ability to receive a personalized global marketing plan simply by making a telephone call.

And it’s in this way, with this desire to expand global trade, why Google has developed a series of tools that could be of great use to you if you’re thinking of exporting. This is especially so if you are in an initial phase in which you are unsure about fundamentals such as the best country of destination or perhaps whether your product is suitable for that market.

If your products are in demand in various countries, internet marketing strategies could accelerate your international growth in a way that is faster and easier than ever, but these tools are particularly useful for that key moment in which the fundamental thing is to determine precisely how valuable it would be to invest in those countries.

Google knows a lot, but it knows about two things above all: its users, and digital marketing. And both are important to exporting.

And what’s certain is that there is a strong relationship between digital marketing and the likelihood of exporting with success in any business. This relationship is, according to the Boston Consulting Group, 50 percent higher for businesses that have websites and that have embraced digital strategies fully. Keeping your eyes open for what Google does and says on exporting is thus a great idea.

Let’s see how each one of these tools might help you:

1. Google Trends: the greatest “cool hunter” in the world

This will allow you to discover trends and search volumes by country. In case you’re still not convinced of Google’s power to predict what will and will not be bought in a given market, an amazing study jointly conducted by the business schools of Boston University and University College of London has confirmed that the behaviour of the stock market may be predicted with certain keywords in the Google search engine. Using Google Trends, the shares in a hypothetical portfolio increased by 326 percent.

The tool is easy to use and allows for comparison of various terms and their evolution over time, and can also be very useful if you’re hesitating about what name to use for something.

Imagine that you want to export cabinets to Peru; your partners have told you that before starting a marketing strategy, it’s important to clarify whether you’ll sell them under the name of armoires, wardrobes, or closets, because in that country, people use these three terms. Google Trends will tell you which is the most-used term, and its evolution, which could help you make your decision.

Google says “Call it Closet”| iContainers

2. Google Analytics: your data, your treasure

Google Analytics is a very powerful tool for analyzing data from your website, and you can produce fairly complex analyses and reports with it, but one of the simplest benefits that it offers is showing you from which countries, regions, or even cities your visits are coming – or, what is almost the same, where they are interested in your products.

If you are not already doing this, we’ll explain how super-simple it is: simply go to Audience>Demographics, and choose Location and Language Report. You’ll see the number of visits that you’ve received from different countries and how much time is spent on each page. If you have many pages featuring different products, you can also get an idea in this way of which products generate the most interest in a given country.

3. Google Global Market Finder: new markets await you

This tells you which countries you should focus on to find audiences that are most interested in hearing your message and receiving your products or services. This time it’s not based on your website activity, like Analytics, but on data regarding the behaviour of millions of users all over the world.

Again, this works very simply: you enter your keywords, select a region, and the Market Finder will find the best opportunities in the market for you, organized by location and automatically translated into the local language.

Imagine that you sell soccer jerseys; a simple search could give you some great ideas: Germany? Brazil? Play with it – it won’t even take you two minutes, and could turn up some surprises. | iContainers Technology

4. Consumer Barometer: Do you speak omnichannel?

This interactive tool helps you understand user behavior in the context of global, multichannel, and interconnected consumption. How users search, both online as well as offline, to come to their final purchase decision is inside information for triumphing in foreign markets.

Navigate and explore your potential markets in 50 countries and 20 categories and begin to get to know your future users.

5. Data Board for research Insights: Infographic yourself

Data Board will impress you if you have a presentation and want to add attractive visual data.

It allows you to explore data and reports that Google has gathered over the years and create your own infographic with them.

Like the Consumer Barometer, this provides interesting data with which to understand how your new clients think, decide, and buy.

In the next post we will write about some other tools which will allow you to adapt to the language of your future clients in a simple way, and test the market rapidly before landing with all your products in another country. This is all very useful at the beginning of any expansion strategy!

If you’ve found this article interesting, share it on social media! And if you have questions, comments, or suggestions, please add them to this conversation. Here at iContainers, we love to write and talk about international trade and transport and about how technology is changing everything. Unite your voice with ours.

6. Google Translator Kit: only Google can speak 80 languages

This tool couldn’t be simpler or more intuitive: use it to translate into the local language specific parts or pieces of your website, your marketing content, AdWords advertisements, or any other written material you need.

You can choose from among 80 languages. We know how difficult sometimes is to pick one, but once you know, Google makes the language easy.

This is especially recommended for initial stages when you want to launch yourself quickly in the market, bootstrapping, and test things. When you see your business starting to take off, we recommend that you get professionals to help with your translations and adapt your content to the particularities of each new country or culture.

7. Website Translator: your website, accessible to the whole world

“Use Website Translator to make your site international instantly.” This promise of Google’s may be a bit exaggerated, but what’s certain is that this tool allows you to win a lot of points in an easy way: it detects the browser language of the user visiting your site, and if it’s not the same as your language, translates everything automatically.

Activating Google’s Translator Kit could drastically reduce your bounce rate – the proportion of people who go to your site and quickly leave it because they can’t find what they’re looking for, or they don’t understand the language.

8. Real-time translator: you shouldn’t give up your Chinese classes, but Google gives you a breather

If you are going to do business with China, Japan, India…and you’re not sure how you’ll be understood by partners and clients, Gmail provides an option that not everyone is aware of and that will certainly be very helpful to translate your emails automatically.

You just need to configure the original language and that of the destination for those specific contacts with whom you communicate in other languages.

9. Google AdWords: find your ideal click and it will guide you

All the tools that we have seen up to now provide you with valuable information to help you get to know your future markets and clients better and make better decisions. AdWords goes a step farther and allows you truly to test a market, as a first step toward your products landing on the other side of the planet.

If you’re not aware of how it works, Google AdWords lets you conduct advertising campaigns segmented by location according to keywords. When a user conducts a search with these words, your ad will appear, and when he or she clicks on it, you pay. The price of each click is established at auction and varies according to how many searches for your keywords there are per month, and how many competitors have launched paid campaigns for the same keywords

Imagine that you conduct an AdWords campaign as a first step toward exporting Iberian ham to Mexico. You receive many ad clicks and pay a low price for those clicks; you’ve found your ideal click – low cost, high performance. This could indicate that in Mexico there is a great deal of interest in this ham, and few people offer it. You had a hunch about this, but now you’ve just gotten credible proof.

10. YouTube Dashboard: Do you know what the people in your new markets see and share, and what they’re passionate about?

The YouTube dashboard lets you find out just that: the things people in different countries of the world are passionate about. This info can give you very valuable insights into what type of products will work better in a given country, or how you could modify or present them in a way that would connect with the needs of the people who live there.

In order to discover trends, you can segment by country, age, and gender and compare this with two different targets to see how they differ and what they have in common.

How does a man from Baltimore between the ages of 35 and 44 differ from one from North Carolina and another from Atlanta? Find the answer in the videos that we all share.

11. Our Mobile Planet + 2: the purchase journey and the full value of the Mobile Calculator

We already know that the mobile phenomenon has changed the rules of the world’s consumption game, and those of trade as well. Because of this, Google created not one tool that illustrates this, but three – so that you won’t lose sight for a second.

Our mobile planet, the customer journey to online purchase and the full value of the mobile calculator are distinct interactive tools that help you to understand the mobile’s contribution to users’ search processes and how that influences their purchasing decisions.

To finish this block of tools, we leave you with a final Google resource, which is not interactive, but can give you a quick idea of the situation in 48 countries with basic data, demographics, and consumer trends. Download the global business map and begin to mark on your own map your next export destination.

11+2 great #Google tools to help with your exportation https://t.co/OqUpHGWBj1 #shipping pic.twitter.com/PlziPjSqmz

— iContainers (@icontainers) October 16, 2016