Selling specialized products to consumers these days requires a fantastic website and regular postings of quality social media across multiple media platforms. Shire Post Mint from Arkansas do this well. Their US home website allows customers to browse and purchase easily while their blogs and regular social media postings include great visuals and engaging content. Now how best to grow internationally? Management chose to leverage their digital presence through localized websites and international online marketing for their key export markets. IBT Online is delighted to help: the first step was to build German and Spanish localized websites.
Shire Post Mint is a family-owned and managed company that designs and produces licensed fantasy coinage. Quite a niche! But when you realise that they have the worldwide licenses for The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, The Hobbit…. the global appeal is clear. The company already has some international sales from enthusiasts scouring the worldwide internet. Localized websites make the company’s products visible, accessible, understandable and engaging to their international customers.
Shire Post Mint benefited from the ExporTech Program run by the Arkansas Economic Development Commission. This helped management define their international objectives and routes to market. Management identified several key export markets as priorities. Europe has enjoyed consistently good demand which management felt could become a significant recurrent revenue stream if they had localized websites: Germany and Spain looked especially promising.
An additional objective for the localized websites is to attract, identify and engage with possible resellers/local partners. An upcoming trade fair in Germany – the largest annual global event for their industry – provides a great opportunity to meet prospective partners as well as generate sales leads. A local website is the perfect tool to optimize the trade fair, engage with potential in-market partners as well as showcasing their unique products.
IBT Online was tasked with building a local German website in time for the German trade fair; optimized for German keywords, fully understandable and visible to the German market. A dedicated fully localized Spanish website followed as the next priority. Maria Petrus, Web Project Manager at IBT Online says really enjoyed working on the Shire Post Mint websites. She worked closely with the company management, particularly on the choice of text and images. This collaboration certainly helped ensure the websites were launched successfully on time and on budget.