As a successful business, you understand your primary market, that’s a given. But when you’re expanding into new international markets, new continents and new cultures, you might not automatically have that intimate market knowledge that helps you understand your target audience and serve their needs.
In this article, we will provide a guide on how to construct a content marketing strategy for a new market. We will explore considerations like branding, messaging, channels of distribution, customer communication and cultural factors.
Creating unique content with the country as a starting point
Rather than just translating everything you do in your primary market when expanding to new international markets, it’s important to create unique content with new countries or regions you’re expanding operations into as the starting point.
This means reconsidering your entire marketing strategy because when it comes to different markets, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.
Start with understanding your audience, identify where they live, what drives them and what they need from your proposition. From there, you will understand the messaging that will appeal to them. To support this, you’ll need a strong understanding of the culture of the country you’re hoping to enter. For instance, what holidays do they celebrate, what shapes consumer behaviour? Is shopping mainly online, or is there still a heavy high street presence?
Understanding these factors will enable you to create bespoke content from scratch, whether your research tells you that a whitepaper, video or social media campaign appeals most to your audience.
Coca Cola’s Share a Coke campaign, first launched in Australia in 2011, is a good example. The fizzy drink brand caused a stir when they started releasing bottles with names on the labels. One side of the label read ‘Share a coke with’, while the other side featured a popular first name. The beauty of this campaign was that it could be adjusted and easily localised in markets around the world.
In China, Coke took a slightly different tack, featuring nicknames on labels. Some of these translated to ‘cool dude’, ‘artistic youth’ and ‘fans’; crucially, the campaign was also linked to China’s preeminent social media platforms. Coke created a four-day social media event on Weibo, creating a contest asking its more than 100,000 fans to post their favourite nicknames on the microblogging website.
The combination of the novel nicknames approach and the Weibo contest demonstrated that Coke understood that in different markets, different tactics need to be used to ensure success, despite the seed of the idea being virtually the same.
Understanding cultural sensitivities
What one culture finds funny, considers being attractive attributes or appropriate dress can be diametrically opposite in another culture. For instance, in Western culture, dinner table etiquette dictates that diners make as little noise as possible while eating in respect of fellow diners. However in Japan, it is completely acceptable to slurp noodles, and volume is not a factor. The reason the Japanese like to slurp their noodles is to increase the speed of meals; it’s also thought to enhance the flavour and can be considered as a compliment to the chef.
By understanding these cultural differences, quirks and sensitivities, you’ll be less likely to commit social faux pas when launching your content marketing strategy in a new market.
Take the example of Nike. In 2013, the iconic sports brand launched a new line of women’s sports leggings, singlets and bras inspired by tattoos from the southwest Pacific Islands. All did not go to plan, however, as Nike was forced to pull the product from stores after a backlash from Pacific Islanders. The leggings were designed to imitate a traditional Samoan tattoo, the pe’a, so to all appearances, the women wearing them would have these tattoos. However, what Nike didn’t realise is that the pe’a is usually worn by men in Samoan culture.
Pacific Islander blogs aired their disgruntlement at the leggings, while comments addressed the ‘sacred’ nature of these tattoo designs to Samoan culture. A Change.org petition stated that the designs were in “direct violation of the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific, and is furthermore in violation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples”. After this petition received over 700 signatures, Nike relented, seeing the error of their ways and they ultimately pulled the products from circulation.
When launching any new product or venture, whether in a new market or at home, assessing cultural sensitivities is crucial to ensuring consumer goodwill. Be sure to have a firm grasp on the consumer needs of the market you are entering, otherwise, you’ll risk damaging your brand with an ill-advised product launch or marketing campaign.
Competitor landscape – understand what works for your potential competitors
In the digital age, international marketers have a significant advantage over marketers from other eras. That is, of course, having the internet and the power Google to understand what marketing techniques our competitors are using and how successful each of these are. Knowing this will allow your brand to identify the types of content which resonate with your audience, which platforms they favour online, and to identify any gaps which have been unexploited by your competition.
You can start by understanding where your competitor’s web traffic comes from. SimilarWeb is a really useful tool for this, it will allow you to identify an estimate of their website traffic. Now you can understand which businesses drive the most visitors to their website, and you can start to understand which of their webpages or pieces of content are the most popular by using free tools such as UberSuggest. Marry these approaches with some basic keyword research into the relevant keywords in your sector in new markets, and you will be able to identify some opportunities that your rivals aren’t taking advantage of.
By understanding the competitive landscape and what drives your competitor’s successes, you’ll be well on the road to making your international expansion a success story of your own.
Professional language translation services
Get in touch with our experienced team of project managers today to discuss your international content marketing approach. Whether your brand is expanding to a new market, or you want to refine your international marketing approach, we can help you translate your content (with some culturally sensitive and subtle transcreation). It will reflect your business at its best, and we can tailor your content to specific markets or regions and ultimately avoid marketing missteps.
