Tips for successful localised marketing:
1. Market Research
Studying your target market for your advertising campaign is the first step. Products or services that sell very well in one country may not be in demand in another. To do this you need to understand the customs, values, beliefs and even the language of its inhabitants. Without a deep understanding of the society in that country, it is difficult to hit the mark, so you need to enlist the help of a native speaker. For example, if KFC had done some research and collaborated with linguists before launching its campaign in China, it would have prevented its translation of “Finger-lickin’ good” ending up as “Eat your fingers”.
2. Alliances with Strategic Partners
How to communicate is the first step, but there are many other areas to master when internationalising a company. Partners such as Go Global Ecommerce, who work as a Merchant of Record entity, help brands to increase sales worldwide by managing payments, returns, legal compliance, tax, reconciliation, currency and language conversion, fraud, risk and more. Online campaigns also need to be segmented according to each country’s market, as the buyer persona can change according to culture. To do this, digital agencies like JEVNET have unique access to demographic, economic and industry data, as well as digital opportunities in each geographic.
3. Tracking and Measurement
All campaigns need to be tracked for performance. In addition to sales data, it is very important to know the opinion of the local consumers themselves, whether through surveys, focus groups or post-purchase online reviews.
4. The Mobile-First Era
Finally, remember that we are living in an increasingly mobile-first world and smartphone enquiries are far greater than desktop enquiries. It is therefore essential to ensure that your business website is optimised for mobile devices, both to provide a good user experience and to ensure that search engines such as Google rank it among the top results.
