Global marketing campaigns: Is your approach personalized for each locale?

You’ve created the perfect global marketing campaign, and now it’s time to unveil it across your 12 key markets. Great! Time to break out the champagne and watch as the new revenue rolls in.

It’s an important question to ask, because individual consumers want to feel as though you are speaking directly to them—and that’s true all over the globe.

If you’re involved in global marketing, one of the smartest moves you can make is to tailor your approach for each locale.

One message, multiple voices

It used to be common for brands to create one global campaign with the intention of running it unaltered in the company’s target locales. In most cases, this simply isn’t a feasible option anymore.

More people than ever today expect personalization. That means communicating with your audience members in a way that tells them you understand who they are and what they want, by localizing according to some very important elements:

• Geographic location
• Language and regional dialects
• Expressions and slang
• Visual layout and color schemes
• Images, video and audio
• Popular culture references and local events
• Social customs, traditions and taboos
• Platforms on which content is shared . . . etc.

Locally adapting your global marketing campaign entails many different aspects, from the campaign content itself to how it’s ultimately shared with locals. A certain approach involving just one of the above components could delight people of one culture but seriously offend those of another.

Global and local = “glocal”

For your campaign to work, you need to convey your core brand message—while adapting that message so that it resonates for each audience.

Coca-Cola has perfected the art of taking their iconic global brand and mixing in the right amount of local tastes. They begin with a framework—a familiar logo and a core message that syncs with their brand identity—and then regional marketers add that all-important local spin.

They’ve also claimed a spot in the figurative global marketing hall of fame with their highly successful —albeit a tad older— “Share a Coke” campaign in multiple markets. It’s all about celebrating personalization.

Source: Coca-Cola website

The importance of local flavor

Some companies try to design a global marketing campaign to be as broadly appealing as possible, with a goal of requiring less localization. If you’re in this position, you might find that expediently pushing out content is your number one priority.

That’s fine, but you’ll still need to consider each target country’s expectations. After all, a failed global marketing effort due to inadequate localization can color an entire country’s perception of a company brand.

Remember: There will always be elements of local acceptance that you’ll need to make decisions around. Local relevance will always be important to your customers. In today’s world, this degree of personalized resonance is necessary to help your brand stand out in a crowded, complex and international marketplace.

With this in mind, let’s talk about one option for doing it right.

Global marketing campaigns in three steps

1. Design and adapt your campaign

It begins with creating your border-spanning marketing campaign. Acolad can help by adapting every component of the campaign for each audience you’re trying to reach.

Whether it’s tweaking advertising copy to hit the right emotional chord or choosing appropriate graphics for point-of-sale materials, it’s all about getting local. We’ll also work with you to make sure your brand voice comes across in a unified way across all campaigns and all locales.

2. Reach the right people

If your carefully tailored marketing campaign isn’t found by the right people online—it’s pretty hard to call that a success. To help your campaigns get in front of your audience, we can identify and employ the most impactful keywords in each target region through multilingual SEO. 

3. Measure its success

Once your global marketing campaigns are out there, you’ll want to be able to track how successful they are. As time passes, how are your efforts converting to new revenue? If you’d like, we can perform market analyses and help you with reporting to get insight into your campaigns’ financial returns. We can also drive user acceptance testing to see how well your target audiences are responding to your localized website, for example.

Learn more about localizing your international marketing campaigns 

Going global requires planning a comprehensive globalization strategy that includes a localization plan to ensure your brand and content is not only understood in the target market, but also well-received and effective with your global audiences.

Global marketing campaigns across languages, cultures and locales is a broad topic. Check our webinars on demand to find more information about the key components of a localization strategy such as product availability, language and culture, messaging, channels, campaigns, visuals and graphics and local regulatory considerations.

You'll find insights on the differences between global and hyper-local approaches to your localization plans and you will gain valuable insights on strategy considerations including:

• The number of languages required
• The degree of localization per region
• The marketing organization – centralized or de-centralized?
• The process to create, translate, localize and publish marketing collateral
• The platforms and channels to manage and distribute content

Would you like to discuss your next global marketing campaign?
Talk to our experts!
Contact us