Many people assume that, because they share history & language, that Ireland is the same as the UK. But if you're planning to target the Irish market, there are certain things you need to consider.
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Let’s look at things that international marketers, particularly from the UK, need to think about when targeting Ireland. Whilst there are many similarities making assumptions that things are the same could be dangerous.
Topics to be covered.
One of the most popular debit cards in Ireland is Laser – similar to Switch/Maestro. 3 million cards in circulation, billions of Euros spent on these every year.
But you can’t use them on Amazon.
Or on Paypal. If you want to sell to the Irish, you need to allow Laser.
Postcodes allow lots of clever targeting, and make delivery easy.
But they don’t exist in Ireland, so if your site has them as a compulsory field, as many do, people based in Ireland won’t be able to use it.
Facebook is massive in Ireland, bigger than many traditional media channels.
So you can easily reach 1.5 million people through their ad platform.
But if you start to make your targeting too niche, or even a little niche, you soon have numbers that just don’t scale – it’s often better to go for a broadcast approach, and then refine afterwards.
In the UK it’s easy to find sites where you can talk to sizeable minorities – special interest sites with traffic that makes them worth using for display.
Due to Ireland’s size, this isn’t the case. The head is very short, the tail very long. You’ll probably need to use a more concentrated media mix.
Infrastructure has a huge effect on how you can market to people – if they don’t have the bandwidth, they can’t handle large rich media files, stream video, etc…
Due to the fact that Ireland, outside of the 4 or 5 main cities, still has a very rural population, this is something to consider – for many of these people mobile dongles will be their primary connection to the web as the fixed line infrastructure simply doesn’t exist.
And this impacts speed – much faster in the UK..
Than it is in Ireland – make sure you think about this when developing online creative.
The web is built on data, and whether it’s driving strategy or convincing a client to invest, data helps.
The IAB UK has lots of data & research, as do bodies like OFCOM….
Ireland doesn’t – this means people often use UK data, and we’ve already seen the problems with assuming that they’re the same.
If you need data, it’s better to get it yourself – Mindshare Ireland carrid out exclusive research into smart phone usage in the local market (contact us if you’d like access to this.)
Really, it all boils down to this.
Well, do you?
The Irish Free State was born, which meant that Ireland was no longer a part of the UK…
So don’t just recycle UK collateral and sites – not only do people click more on localised (.ie) addresses, if you use a UK site, prices will be in £ not €.