April 18, 2019 Andrew Warren-Payne
Our upcoming Insight50 session will be exploring how marketers can simplify their international marketing. Sign up for the session to get your questions answered, with expert speakers including Michael Meinhardt, CEO and Founder at Cloudwords, Peter Bell, Marketing Director at Marketo, and Paula Morris, Senior Director and Founder at Pi Marketing.
Digital technology opens up a literal world of opportunity when it comes to B2B marketing. Teams no longer need to stick to targeting companies that are based close enough for a face-to-face meeting, as both identifying and connecting with prospects can be done from anywhere with an internet connection.
But scaling efforts to reach a global market isn’t as straightforward as it might sound, as there are a whole host of potential challenges that can get in the way.
Ahead of the webinar, we’ve put together a few thoughts to consider before you run your campaigns internationally.
Engagement differs across markets
An obvious challenge when marketing internationally is language. Your target audience may not speak the same language as you so translations need to be consistent and accurate and your content needs to resonate.
But it’s more than language. There will be local challenges for each target audience that are different and could present a challenge. You will want to be conscientious about cultural factors may exist and, depending on the area you are dealing with, the regulatory and competitive landscape may vary. Another thing to keep in mind is campaign performance can also vary significantly.
Aligning efforts need effective coordination
Even in a single market, it can be easy to step on a colleague’s toes when it comes to running campaigns. It can be even more complicated when you’re dealing with global and regional teams that may not interact regularly and may have some crossover of accounts.
Communication is really the key here. To avoid crossing streams and getting in each others’ way, it’s important for the different teams to establish clear ownership of accounts and establish targeting rules. Through effective and ongoing communication, regional and global marketing teams can actually help instead of hinder each other.
Small teams can struggle to be heard and win resources
Depending on your organization’s structure, local teams may find it hard to get the resources and buy-in they need if they require approval from head office. Other factors such as language and vastly different time zones can exacerbate the problem making smaller teams feel stranded out there on their own.
Technology can help
The good news is that technology can assist with all these challenges and others.
Language barriers can be overcome with translation technology, which has improved considerably in recent years. A centralised and well-maintained marketing technology stack (including CRM and marketing automation) can avoid different teams getting in each others’ way or approaching the same targets. In addition, collaboration software such as Slack can narrow the gap between teams within the organisation as well as bring smaller groups into the loop with the head office.
Furthermore, technology can also help simplify your efforts, which can help you reach more markets even when resources are limited.
So while there may be challenges to marketing internationally, these will always be outweighed by the opportunities.
To find out more and ask your questions, make sure to sign up to our Insight50 webinar on Simplifying International Marketing.