Create a blueprint for international marketing success

As with all things in life you can do it the easy way or the hard way. And in the context of international marketing the easy way is already hard.

Every international marketing scenario is different and the truth is there is no perfect solution. This ‘how to’ paper looks at the seven wonders on the path to worldwide domination.

I look at some of the decisions that must be made along the way and help you to weigh-up your options, so you can reflect on the best approach for you.

The benefit of writing this from an agency perspective is I get to see how different businesses approach international marketing, and I have learnt from experience what is easier and what is harder. Easier does not always mean better however, but it usually means cheaper.

1. Choose your decision makers wisely

I recommend you keep the number of people in your approval process to the lowest number political correctness will bear. And choose them wisely. Ask yourself the question; is this person qualified to comment on marketing? If the cleaner in your Azerbaijan office is the most brand cultured, educated, artistic, analytical, financially astute, digitally literate man among you, get him in the loop. If not, don’t waste his time. Because it is human nature to have an opinion on why what is not your work, at your place of work, doesn’t work quite as well as if you’d have worked on it.

Your approval team should also be your contribution team, as people who put something in will be better able to appreciate the result. Agree this group with your board, agree the process and stick to your guns.

2. Know your marketplace

Discovery and insights from the diverse marketplaces and cultures should come next. First decide how deep and detailed you should go? How much quant how much qual? To answer this ask; how in the dark are we? If you didn’t understand your market, you’d be out of business. Get your contribution team together with your agency insight experts and get what your combined experience can tell you on the table. Then go forth and validate. Usually you’ll find you are in touch with your customer’s wants and needs and a modest amount of research will help you establish a cross-cultural strategic position.

We’re not suggesting research isn’t valuable. But unless you have a team prepared to use experience and intuition to interpret the research, you can ask everyone in the world and still not know what to do next.

3. Unlock international buying power

Now establish the buyer journey. This is where there is no substitute for deep and detailed. If you think there are creative cultural differences to consider, they are nothing compared to the way different nationalities buy things. For example, if you’re operating in the Middle East and you haven’t factored in an audience with Royalty and how you’re going to handle that, deliberations over colours and headlines will look as trivial as they so often are.

4. Talk your audience’s language

Ok, this may seem pretty obvious, but I don’t mean swot up on your GCSE French, I’m talking about taking the buyer journey and creating the messages at each key stage that will move the buyer along it. It’s important to consider here what is relevant to each audience, not just applying the same to everyone.

You are now equipped with your audience profiles, a strategic position and every message you will need to convince people to continue with your brand on their list as they move from awareness to decision. That’s everything you need to plan your contact strategy.

5. Take technology at your own pace

There are some people in marketing in 2013 who will try and tell you that the Internet is not everywhere and that traditional channels are still really important. This is true in some limited marketplaces. For the rest of us, contact strategy (media plans) should be online, automated and cleverly record the buyer’s journey along the timeline and at the appropriate moment pass qualified leads to sales. This will improve your results dramatically and give you the information to prove it. If you are yet to deploy an automated contact strategy it is inevitable you will, so make this time the time. It doesn’t have to be all singing, all dancing, and it’s best to go at a speed and size that suits the organisation. The good news is the platforms and software you put in place this time will be there next time for you to build on.

6. Think big. Think long. Think universal

Last but not least, an internationally appreciated idea and how to implement it. Let’s start with the ideal way. Have a brilliant, universal idea that sums up your strategic position and that works as a platform to communicate to all your stakeholders in a segmented way. And helps inspire content all the way along the timeline. Think of it as a big and long idea. Then give your brilliant, trusted marketing teams in every country the idea, the media plan and ask them to produce campaigns true to the idea in their language, the brand and tailored to their local culture.

But if this isn’t possible and you don’t live in an ideal world the easy way is to have a big long idea, produce all the content in English (it is the language of business afterall) and command and control your regions from your ivory tower.

However, this isn’t always the most effective or popular way of doing things. The best balance is somewhere between these two extremes. An international big, long idea is what’s required, but make sure it doesn’t hinge on clever use of English as this is always lost in translation. Expediency dictates that you dictate content to a degree but you build in cultural adaptation and translation.

On your marks, get set, go global

What you should end up with is marketing that most people inside your organisation are happy with that will be valued by your audience, and built on measurable, adjustable digital foundations. And remember, you cannot please all the people, all of the time.

 

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