The digital world has removed borders and has made companies focus on adopting a more unified marketing strategy. For marketers looking to expand their reach to new audiences, this makes a great case for looking at a unified global marketing strategy to ensure your message is identified with in countries outside of your headquarters. Here are 4 helpful tips to begin developing your comprehensive global marketing strategy.
Know the Market
When you first decide you want to expand your marketing to a global level, you need to understand the environment with which you will be working. Each region of the world has different norms and behaviors when it comes to marketing messages, what is appropriate in that country, how people prefer to be contacted, and more. Be sure to do research on how that market will respond to your marketing strategy so you get the most traction from your new audience.
Develop a Marketing Plan
Succeeding in a global environment does not mean simply changing the language of your marketing assets. You need your global marketing plan to be consistent with your domestic efforts, but it will need to be customized based on the needs of the region you are marketing to at that time. After you have some insight into the global landscape, you can craft a plan to outline your course of action. First, you will ask yourself what your goals and objectives are for the marketing program. Consider the following questions:
- Why are you expanding your efforts?
- What are you looking to achieve?
- How will you measure success?
Once your goals are established, you can craft a plan covering the overarching strategy and the tactics to achieve those goals.
Customize Your Marketing Approach
You will most likely decide to start your global marketing efforts online to reach a global audience and centralize your efforts there. But remember that what worked for reaching your domestic audience may not translate well overseas. Be sure to adapt your initiatives to fit the audience you are trying to reach to build a customized experience for them. What works well in one country or one region, will likely not yield the same results in other markets. Speak to the needs of that particular region to market your product or service, and customize your approach for that environment. You will need to do research on the markets you are targeting to ensure your messaging comes across the way you intended, and you are utilizing the best methods to connect with people in that region. A good example is WhatsApp. While it is used with people globally, it is an app heavily used in South America. For clients we have in South America, having a WhatsApp strategy is critical, whereas is is not as important in the United States. Consider that level of detail when customizing your marketing approach to a new region.
Localize Your Message
Just because you are taking your efforts to a global audience does not mean you cannot still localize your message. Actually it is almost necessary to be “glocal” (global + local) with your message when targeting a global audience. It is not only important to understand the cultural and language barriers and adjust your message for each market, but it is also crucial to understand all cultural references, and significant events and holidays. Platforms and tactics need to be tailored to the specific targeted region to create a personalized marketing program and really connect with the audience on a deeper level.
The brands that execute global marketing successfully have a local identity to their campaigns, but remain consistent with their messaging across borders.
