5 Essential Global Content Marketing Strategies

This blog is written by guest, Asher Elran, who takes us through his 5 essential steps to marketing your content internationally.

Global content marketing is quickly becoming one of the top marketing methods, and you need to know about it.

Marketing strategies have greatly changed and evolved ever since the development of the World Wide Web. Marketers can now reach customers or potential customers that are millions of miles away with a single click of a mouse.

With the use of social media millions of people from all over the world can be exposed to your product, company, brand, or service in a matter of seconds. All of the latest updates, features and add-ons can be sent anywhere you can imagine in the blink of an eye.

:: To be successful with global content marketing there are a few tips and tricks that you can apply.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is defined as being any type of marketing that involves creating and sharing media as well as publishing content.

This includes a wide variety of tactics and methods including question and answer articles, how-to guides, case studies, whitepapers, e-books, images, news, and the list goes on. Content marketing is used for the purpose of bring in new customers.

This marketing tactic has become a very popular method for many companies.

With the advancement of technology increasing every year, companies are striving to keep up and to find ways to use these advancements to their advantage. Content marketing is just one of the ways that has been discovered. The use of technology and the internet allows marketers to extend their reach much farther than was ever possible in the past.

How does Global Differ from Local?

One of the most important differences is the number of cultures and people who you are trying to market to vs. knowing your target audience.

When you are marketing locally, you know more about the type of people who you are selling to as well as the laws, rules, and regulations that pertain to marketing your product or service.

Knowing the laws for marketing is extremely vital; they change from country to country and when you are marketing globally you have to know and obey them all.

:: The following 5 strategies offer a great launch pad for this essential marketing method.

1: Define your Niche

Before you can achieve successful marketing, you must first define your niche. Defining your niche requires several things. First, it is very costly and time consuming to create a whole new niche, so the best option is to find a niche that fits your product or service and then to develop and define that niche. When you have a diverse product or service it is best to develop more than one niche; however, be very careful to not over extend yourself. If you are running too many different niches you will not be able to give enough attention to any one of them, thus defeating the point.

2: Team Work

It is vital to remember that you cannot attempt the large undertaking of global content marketing alone. Use your team to delegate tasks and projects to others so you can better concentrate on your preferred areas. Many people are not used to delegating work; they are used to doing everything themselves. This is a bad practice, especially for big projects that require more areas of work to be covered. Marketing of any kind requires a lot of time and attention in multiple areas; you must use the people on your team to make the project work. It is important to create a team of hard-working, trustworthy individuals; trust that your team members can handle their work and then let them do their jobs.

3: Languages

When working towards global marketing, it is of the utmost importance that you provide content in the native language of your customers. To do so, offer translation for your company’s website in any and all languages possible; the more languages that you offer, the more customers you will inevitably pull in. Do not stop with the website – set all of your social media accounts to translate into multiple languages as well. In order to successfully achieve global marketing, your product or service must be accessible to many different people.

When deciding on a language strategy for your social networks it comes down to one main decision: work from one account or set up multiple accounts? In the majority of cases it is best to use multiple accounts, especially on Twitter where it would quickly become too confusing to readers if you tweeted in several languages on one page. Facebook allows for an admin to make posts that are directed towards various regions and can be set in many languages. The problem with this is the regular users of your page can become very confused by all of the different languages, thus dropping your read rate. If you use YouTube, it is too time-consuming to even consider making videos in multiple languages; the solution to this is subtitles.

4: Regional Laws

You must know what the regional laws are for the various areas that you are marketing when regarding products, sales, and advertising. Some places require certain things to be approved by a governing body while some things may be banned entirely. In several countries including Germany, Belgium, and France, they frown on comparative marketing and advertising. It is completely acceptable in America to use words and phrases like “world’s best” or “better than,” but in other places it can cause unnecessary trouble. Sale promotion tactics are also different in many countries. Marketing methods such as premium offers, contests, sweepstakes, and special deals are under different regulations. Also, remember that when you are selling to an overseas audience you must adhere to the product development laws and regulations regarding safety, chemicals, and performance. Also included in this is languages, designs, sizing, and the materials used for packaging.

5: Images

Images are a controversial topic when it comes to content marketing. Some marketers think only in terms of text content and believe that it is very easy to have too many images, while others think that images are the only way to go. The truth of the matter is that images are a very important part of marketing products and services because our world is full of people who buy based off of what they see. It is, however, extremely important to find the fine line between enough images and too many. Choose the images that you will use very carefully to tell a story to your customers. You should also take the time to find the best page arrangement. To tell a complete story the images must be not only carefully chosen but strategically placed as well.

These strategies are not difficult to apply to your global content marketing; some can take a bit of time but they are well worth the time and effort. Remember to define and develop whatever niche(s) you choose for your company. This will keep you on your toes and help you to stand out from the rest.

Also, remember to apply multiple language translations to both your website and social media pages. When you are marketing globally you must be sure that your audience knows what it is that you are offering. Use your team to your advantage by delegating tasks and projects to make it easier to accomplish goals faster and more efficiently.

Learn and apply any and all regional laws and regulations that apply to content marketing and your product or service. Use images to pull in your audience and pick images that speak about your product, service, or company and place them strategically on your content pages.

Each of these tactics will positively influence your global marketing strategy.

About the Author:

Asher Elran is a practical software engineer and a marketing specialist. CEO at Dynamic Search and founder of Web Ethics.