Marketing is a global game as organizations seek to extend their reach to as many parts of the world as possible.
But connecting with people from different countries presents a number of challenges, as linguistic and cultural nuances need to be factored in to create a message that will resonate with everyone.
China's Huawei has recently revealed it is spending $300 million on marketing in 2014, which gives an indication of how seriously brands are taking their promotional activities in an effort to expand their customer base.
But how can companies improve their chances of being successful with global marketing?
Research
Your firm needs to have an in-depth understanding of every market. It is not enough to just make assumptions, because different markets will have different requirements. For example, while some brands may be successful in the US because of their price, it could be the prestige of owning a foreign product that drives sales in Asia. On top of this, around 70 per cent of South Koreans perform searches on Naver as they prefer it over Google, while Yahoo! is popular in Japan. If companies do not spend time finding out important information like this, they could very easily mis-market their products and services.
Using keywords
Keywords and phrases, which are strategically placed in online literature to attract people to a site, should not simply be translated for different audiences. Instead, culture-specific user behavior needs to be taken into consideration when coming up with appropriate terms. While 'good rates' is an accepted term in the hotel business, people are more likely to search for 'cheap hotel prices' when online. This is why employing a native speaker is an essential part of global marketing.
Localize the message
Ideally, a product or service should be developed so localization is relatively easy to achieve. By laying out content in a certain way – such as using graphics where appropriate – brands can speed up the localization process. Don't forget, just because you're targeting an international audience doesn't mean you can do without localization! Cultural and language issues will also crop up and so you need an expert who can adjust your message for different markets.
E-A-T your content
Google has recently updated its quality rating guidelines as it seeks to make sure only the best content makes it onto the web. Underpinning this is an evaluation of any website's Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. Brands therefore need to make sure everything they create meets these guidelines if they want to appear high up on search engine ranking pages (SERPs). If they fail to E-A-T, they will not be successful.
Benchmarking
The most accurate way of monitoring the success of a multilingual campaign is to perform regular testing. By analyzing the reach of your marketing efforts, you can revise and improve campaigns to extend this reach even further. For example, Google Analytics allows brands to monitor their website traffic and see how long prospects are staying on a portal's various pages.
