SA start-up goes international with Google

Tag : Hard Start


Streicher, MD of BulkSMS.com, explains: "South African businessesrapidly embraced the concept of using SMS to communicate withcustomers and colleagues. Now, even the major banks use SMSregularly. We were confident that businesses in other countrieswould soon follow suit."

Before Streicher and Simpson could make their business trulyglobal, they needed to establish the company's brand credibility.According to Dr Streicher: "South Africa has a low profile in theinternational business arena, so our first goal was to gain greatervisibility."

In June 2001, the entrepreneurs approached Google. "Our objectiveswere to enhance awareness of the brand and acquire moreinternational customers. Google AdWords offered us a low-cost,low-risk strategy to penetrate regional markets from our base inSouth Africa," says Streicher.



Establishing an international presence quickly

Despite the fact that BulkSMS.com had only US$500 per month tospend on advertising in the first stage of its expansion strategy,it was enough for the company to immediately establish an onlinepresence. The company's pay-per-impression English text-based adsappeared alongside relevant Google search results, capturing theattention of people from all over the world searching for SMSservices online. Simpson, a director, says: "Customers in differentcountries could see the BulkSMS.com brand name and website address,which helped establish our business credibility straight away."

"The whole process of setting up an ad campaign took just threehours," says Simpson. "Within days, we attracted customers to ourEnglish language website from the United Kingdom, Australia, theMiddle East, India and Malaysia."



Accelerating business growth, internationally

50% of BulkSMS.com customers are now based outside South Africa -the split being 40% from the United Kingdom and 10% from Europe,the Middle East and Asia. Simpson attributes this largeinternational customer base to its Google advertising strategy. "Wewould not have acquired them in any other way," he says.

BulkSMS.com is now aiming to increase sales in Europe, particularlyamong non-English speaking customers from countries it views aspotentially strong markets for its services. For example, thecompany has created a German language version of its South Africanwebsite, which makes it possible for the country's non-Englishspeaking customers to view BulkSMS.com products and services.

AdWords target business customers in their local language, and thetext ads appear alongside relevant Google search content. This isencouraging local customers to click on the ad to find out more.From the website, they can use a credit card to pay for thecompany's services.

Simpson explains: "Google AdWords removes the costs involved insetting up a local office, or the hassle of setting up a local bankaccount, outside of South Africa."

Based on its AdWords strategy, the company has already gained asteady foothold in the German market and is reinforcing brandrecognition through a mixture of print advertising in magazine andbillboard advertising.



Creating consistent return on investment

Within two years of starting advertising on Google AdWords,BulkSMS.com had grown by 37%. Since 2003, it has continued to growat the same rate year-on-year. With 60% of all new customers comingthrough Google, it is not surprising that the company now allocates70% of its advertising budget to Google AdWords, and spends aroundUS$600 per day on this advertising programme. "We have establishedan acquisition cost per client through our own research and usingGoogle Analytics. It is clear that AdWords is a very cost effectiveway of gaining online sales, and this return on investment ensuresit remains at the heart of our advertising strategy," saidStreicher.