Ensure your international marketing efforts succeed by following Karyn Bright, group marketing director at GBGroup‘s top tips
The business of doing business just got a whole lot harder. Now people we have never met – and may never meet – can influence our marketing campaigns and challenge our brands. This is even more serious in B2B marketing as a customer’s professional network is likely to be even smaller with good practice widely shared across industries – globally.
As you plan your international marketing strategy, make sure you understand what is valuable to the customers. If, like us, these are ‘the public’, your data management systems and processes need to be really well tuned into the local regulatory and cultural environments.
Here are five top tips for going global:
Know your customers’ customers
In the technology world, we have to prove that what we offer will make life simpler, faster or safer for the ultimate customer. Make sure you know what your customers’ customers want or need – and what the challenges to adoption may be. It is worth carrying out regular ‘needs’ assessments in each country to stay abreast of new marketing trends that affect how people purchase your customers’ products or services.
For example, when offering customer service solutions will a self-service approach to enquiry resolution appeal to all markets equally? Take a company that produces corporate videos – it is vital to understand the relative reluctance (or enthusiasm) of different nationalities to participate – and the different processes required to engage each person.
Be ready for the international data challenge
Make sure you can you cope with the myriad different data requirements that internationalisation brings. Several years ago postcode and telephone number formats were the main worry (remember the old days when we’d all tut in frustration at having to choose our ‘county’ from a long list of US federal states?) Today’s business buyer is much more likely to expect automated data capture, lookups and validation – in their own language. Will you force all visitors to your website to leave their details in good old Anglo Saxon script? Or can you adapt to accommodate Cyrillic, Mandarin characters, Arabic or the Greek alphabet? The less strategic your product or service, the greater chance you may need to talk to your clients in their own language so be ready.
Global or local
The golden rule is: the customer must always feel that he is dealing with a local team. For purely pragmatic reasons you may have to run some of your operations from global HQ – or from a combined regional office. In these cases, make sure the contact number you advertise – and the people picking up the call – can speak to the customer in his own language and in a knowledgeable manner. B2B marketing is all about building relationships for the longer term; don’t squander the opportunity to make the customer feel you understand them.
We define global marketing as being responsible for anything that requires a unified framework, (customer journey mapping, core website design, brand and corporate message development). All customer acquisition and retention campaigns should be handled locally by people who really understand those market needs. If your resources are too small to justify a local team; at least make sure you have an appointed an ‘on the ground’ expert to provide commentary and feedback on how your messages may be received.
Keep it fresh
Content has never been as so important as when you are trying to serve clients and prospects across the globe. Web searching is the one tool all your potential customers are likely to use – wherever they reside. And if the information you post locally – whether on your own websites or via blogs and forums – is relevant to your audience, you will get heard.
This is the one area that really does require a large degree of local expertise. And if you aren’t big enough to justify an entire local marketing team, perhaps consider using your good customers help? Creating a user group that may meet physically and then follow up with regular updates online can work really well. Customers are really good at not getting too sales-y and you can facilitate this sort of online networking remotely either within an established network like LinkedIn or via your own site.
Create partnerships
Marketing at a global level is tough – there are so many things that could go wrong. For many of us getting resource is a struggle – especially if sales are down or previous campaigns haven’t quite delivered. Today the challenge is not so much gaining share of wallet – its share of time. Desperate to attract our prospects’ attention, we’re visiting their favourite sites, attending their favourite trade shows, blogging where they like to read and desperately trying to persuade them to come out of the office – even just for breakfast – so we can show them how wonderfully expert we are on A, B or C. All very time consuming for a small team perhaps based several thousand miles away in a different time zone.
Why not consider partnering with companies that may already have a significant share of your prospects’ time and attention? If you’re selling business energy, a potential tie in with a business phone network could work? Can you embed your solution within a third party software platform perhaps? Or can you do a deal with a relevant trade body to offer members a significant discount or special deal? The more exclusivity, the more special the deal. Just one caveat though, if you are going to build a strong partner channel to help deliver your marketing, make sure you don’t cannibalise any direct sales effort. Have clear account white lists if two sales teams are likely to be operating separately. Or, best of all, get them to talk to one another.
