Ashley D. Su 
While non-US markets present significant revenue opportunities, e-commerce and trade regulations have led to more brands expanding their businesses to an increasing number of countries.
A thriving global marketing strategy gives your team the playbook they need to generate more traffic, leads, and sales, wherever they are in the world. Whether your organization has a global marketing team or works with several smaller, local experts for your marketing efforts, here’s what you need to know to craft a global marketing strategy that works for your business.
1. KNOW YOUR GLOBAL AUDIENCE
You need to know why your products or services are important to your customers and what will affect them. Even if you are expanding into multiple international markets, you need to know who is buying from you and why you would matter to them through in-depth market research.
You need to know the demographics of your audience beyond their location, age, gender, relationship status, job title, and language, which are the essential baseline information to have when you think about your audience. Even if your audiences in different markets seem to have the same basic demographics, be sure to be aware of the different nuances between countries, regions, or localities.
2. THINK LOCAL, ACT GLOBAL
An important part of any overall marketing strategy is your localization strategy. The classic adage “Think local, act global” applies here too. It’s no news that consumers prefer to follow their buying journey in their native language.
But localization goes beyond the act of translation. Localization done right makes your content look like it was made for your local audience rather than a distant corporate office. Understanding the nuances of each market (see #1) is just the start. Global marketing may seem complicated, but it’s about rehearsing your local strategy in multiple markets while adapting along the way to their demographics, interests, and pain points.
Check out this webinar “Commerce Leaders Need to Move from Global to Multi-Local Experiences” by Contenstack and Constructor on how to move from global to multi-local experiences for future success.
3. MESSAGING THAT COUNTS
Can you explain what your organization does in one sentence? Three words? A word?
How about in multiple languages?
Building a strong brand requires clarity of purpose. Why does your business exist and who do you serve? Consolidating multiple product lines, services, and audiences into one tagline may seem impossible, but it’s essential that you expand globally to distill your value into one universal idea.
People don’t buy “what” you do, they buy “why” you do it. From your local event managers to email marketers, your entire marketing team needs to know why your business matters and the key messages that resonate with your audience.
4. DESIGN WITH TRANSLATION IN MIND
A marketing campaign often has multiple moving parts, from nurturing emails to TikTok to webinars and more. Your marketing mix can stay the same for every campaign you run while tailoring your brand assets to the local market.
As your designers work on these campaigns, consider how images and colors appear and are perceived differently in your target market. Your global brand should also include this – for example, avoiding symbols like the thumbs-up sign, which is a sign of acceptance and means “Awesome!” in the United States, but means something offensive in parts of the Middle East.
Your typical design process might also need a change – with translation, you want to get ahead of any localization challenges, such as text expansion that disrupts layout or right-to-left languages that disrupt symmetry.
Keep your global marketing team running smoothly by considering design early in the translation process through technology integrations with design tools or engaging in pseudo-translation to help you understand how your translations will change. your overall design.
5. AUTOMATE, AUTOMATE, AUTOMATE
What differentiates a good overall marketing strategy from an excellent one? Climb.
The days of manually updating spreadsheets and email exchanges are long gone. The only way to achieve this scale is through standardization and automation, especially with multiple markets with different localization requirements, personas, channels, or messaging.
Find out what kind of return on investment you will get by adapting a translation technology. One of the best benefits of automating your process is being able to use the time and resources saved on what really matters: improving your products, customer service, and overall user experience.
Here’s a perfect example of how online brand management companies like Yext have managed to reduce cost per word by 25% and continue to enter new international markets, backed by Smartling.
Build a successful global marketing strategy with Smartling
If you’re looking to grow your business globally to find new revenue opportunities, you’ll need an overall marketing strategy that includes content marketing, public relations, and event plans.
Implementing a global strategy to find new revenue opportunities requires a deep understanding of local markets and the ability to deliver localized content at scale. Smartling relieves you of the burden of finding top-notch local translators, by automating your entire localization workflow.
Are your customers’ offline and online local experiences in sync? Here’s a discussion on how to bridge the global digital marketing divide and streamline the customer experience with your brand, wherever they are and whatever language they speak. Look now.
