Marcelo Sant'Iago, General Manager, MidiaClick Performance Marketing is speaking on the Search Around the World: Europe/Asia/Pacific & Latin Americapanel at SES Chicago. Here is a short Q&A with him.
Q. What is your background and what do you do for MidiaClick Performance Marketing?
I’m working in advertising since 1989 and started with interactive in 1995. I have given presentations in Argentina, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Mexico, Middle East countries and USA, including the 2 editions of SES Latino, in Miami.
I was the President of IAB Brazil (Interactive Advertising Bureau) for 2 consecutive terms (2002-2006), now I’m member of the Advisory Board. I’m also member of SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization), where I recently co-chaired the Latino working group.
I blog about interactive media at www.poucas-e-boas.com , I’m also one of the regional editors at Multilingual Search blog, I write for Meio Digital magazine, Webinsider.com.br and have articles and interviews published in Brazil and abroad.
Currently I’m the General Manager at MídiaClick Performance Marketing, from São Paulo, Brazil, where my team deliver search engine marketing strategies for Motorola, Reader’s Digest, Wal-Mart, FIAT, SKY, Natura, plus 15 other companies.
Q. International SEM and SEO have become more important in the last few years - what areas should people focus on?
Well, I think paid search is the fastest way to enter an international market. Just set-up a good keyword list and prepare a landing page on the local language and you are ready to go. If you are considering SEO, remember that will take longer and you’ll have to decide to translate or not your website.
If you are targeting Latin America you should pay attention on what’s going in into de social network arena. Twitter, Orkut, Sonico, Hi 5, blogs, Windows Live Messenger are very popular destinations/tools down here.
If you choose PR, Yahoo News and Google News are not very popular sources yet, you’ll have to get in touch with local services. Q. What are some resources US search marketers can use to get up to speed on International SEM?
You won’t find many tools available for latin America. There are always the search engine key word tools, of course, but you must know the language, because you’ll find many useless key word combinations there.
And don’t forget that the Spanish spoken in Mexico is different from Argentina and Chile. And Brazil, the most developed market in the region, speaks Portuguese, which is different from the Portuguese spoken in Portugal. By the way: do you know that are 3 words to name a tangerine in Portuguese, depending where you live in Brazil?
Internet statistics are not easy to find as well, you must know where to look for it and good numbers are in local language, so hire someone who speaks Portuguese or Spanish before coming south. Q. What are some campaign successes or failures you can share recently involving a campaign both inside and outside the US?
Well, we manage Motorola paid search and SEO initiatives in all Latin America for a year now. They won’t let me disclosure anything but I can tell you this: the average CPC is incredible low when compare to previous years. So I guess we are doing a good job.
And I wouldn’t call it a failure, but few years ago we’ve worked hard for a company involved in the tourism business to promote its properties. It took us a while to reach the expected ROI, but they decided to discontinue the investments when a new manager took over the marketing department. Not sure if they were disappointed with search, with us or it was just a new marketing strategy. Q. What are some tips for optimizing your site for multilingual compatability?
Please do not trust in automated translation tools. You should localize your website, not only translate it. Consider having “local domains” such as .com.br for Brazil or .com.mx for Mexico. That will help your indexation on local engines.
Find a local partner to help you enter the marketplace; there are very good folks in LatAm and you’ll find that prices are very competitive when compared to major SEM agencies in US. Q. What are the latest flash in the pan "memes" or trends in International SEM and SEO?
Well, trends are universal these days, since news travels fast. But I have one advice: Latin America is full of savvy online marketing professionals and internet users are very sophisticated (Brazil accounts for the highest online time spent in the world). Do not underestimate your efforts when you decide to expand your business into this region.
Q. Where can people find you and get in touch?
MídiaClick is a Google Qualified Company and was the first one certified as Google Analytics Authorized Consultant in Latin America. Our website www.midiaclick.com.br has an English and Spanish version. Or shoot an email to contato@midiaclick.com.br and our business development team will help you.
