Google's global market finder to help SMBs tap overseas markets

MUMBAI: Imagine if you owned an Ayurveda resort in Kerala and want to advertise your resort to attract customers from abroad what would be the easiest thing to do? Instead of hiring an ad agency to promote your resort overseas all you need to do now to locate potential foreign customers with just a click of your mouse on Google's new website, the Global Market Finder. It's a free online tool launched today by Google India for advertisers to find new markets overseas.

Targeted at all Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs), the businesses simply go to the website and select key words to get a mapping of the parts of the world with demand for their product or service. "It is a tool for Indian SMBs (small and medium businesses), to get connected to overseas markets to export services," says Sridhar Seshadri, Head Online Sales, Google India.

Globally this offering has been available for less than an year and was piloted in India for the past two months. "We found a lot of real estate players, traditional retialers like jewellers and travel and tourism companies using this tool to reach outside markets," says Sheshadri. Businesses enter keywords that describe their product or service and select the region they’d like to explore. The Global Market Finder automatically translates those keywords into any one of 56 languages used in the selected region. It then ranks each location by opportunity based on factors like local search volume, suggested bid price, and competition for each translated keyword.

For Kerala based Abad Group a real estate, hotels and tourism player, turning to the google platform has helped them cut costs upto 50% compared to conventional marketing like newspaper advertisements and hiring private agents. "I was spending Rs. 5 lakh earlier now I can bring the cost down to Rs 2 lakh with better results," says Prince Varghese, GM Marketing and Strategy at Abad Group. His enquiries for tourism business has significantly increased compared to traditional promotion.

Google has already helped a few hundred SMBs in India to enter new geographies. Google Ads for Global Advertisers translates the company's website and ad text using a translation software to reach new customers with relevant online ads using services like Google AdWords. It also helps understand options for international payment, shipping, and customer service.