Your Payment Processor Can Make or Break Your Global Ad Campaign

Almost 40 percent of the world now has access to the internet. Taking your brand global opens up access to potentially limitless sales. But blundering into new markets without doing your due diligence first is not the way to go. Coordinating a seamless and successful global ad campaign is about paying attention to details. Research, targeting, content localization, user experience—all these things need to be taken into consideration. And when you’re ready to hit the ground running and roll your ads out to a wider audience, make sure you’ve taken care of the back end. Your choice of payment processor can make or break your global ad campaign. Before you launch your brand in a new market, you’ll need to know what the potential demand for your product or service is. For example, you’re probably not going to get many takers for your winter wardrobe in the year-round climes of the Caribbean. If you’re marketing an app that commands a premium price, countries with a penchant for Android may not be on your list; iOS users have been shown to spend more money on apps and in-app purchases. In the U.S., we’ve become accustomed to entering our credit card information or paying with services like PayPal, Google Wallet or Skrill. But in Germany, there’s a tendency to use cash over plastic, with 79 percent of all financial transactions still being settled the old-fashioned way. The rise of ecommerce and online payments is starting to change these preferences, but make sure you’re using a name that consumers recognize and trust. Many American companies make the mistake of assuming that a single, U.S.-based payments processor will work for global clients. But paying with an EC debit card in Germany is preferred, as is entrusting purchases with one of the two major payment processors in Europe, WorldPay or Wirecard. CEO of Wirecard Dr. Markus Braun explains, "Payment processing is a key part of any company's progress toward digitization. It can be a show-stopper, or it can be an enabler. And here, most businesses are very early stage in this use of digitization to increase their sales and customer experience, but Wirecard has the technology to help them." Some 87 percent of people who can’t read English won’t buy from English websites. So, if you haven’t localized your website yet, hold off on your global ad campaign. You can craft your ads in a language your audience understands, using local vocabulary and appealing content. But one of the biggest reasons for bounce rates is misleading content. So, if your ads are in perfect French and go through to your website in English, you’ll lose your customers before they get to your shopping cart. Content localization goes beyond translation, though. You’ll need to take into account color schemes, the appropriateness of images, and local date and time formats. If you’re selling products that use measurements, they’ll need to be converted to metric, and prices must be displayed in local currency. When your website is correctly localized to your audience, they’ll feel as if they’re using a site that was designed for them, not a translated version of the mothership that barely caters to their needs. Forty percent of users will abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. The speed of your website is vital in getting customers to convert. According to the Baynard Institute, up to 27 percent of cart abandonments are caused by a checkout process that is too long or complicated. If your site speed is slow and your shopping cart glitchy, consumers will jump ship. This is true both in the States and around the globe. Broken firms, error messages, inadequate checkout experiences, or complicated payments will all provoke distrust. The same report found that close to one in five users will not trust your site with their credit card information if these things occur. Once you’ve paid attention to all these details and your site is running fast and efficiently and looks local, don’t fall at the last hurdle. Choosing the wrong payment processor for your ecommerce or social media ad campaigns could cost you almost a third of your sales. So, if you’re targeting in Europe and assuming that your U.S. payment processor will work, you may be shooting yourself in the foot.