Our world has never been more interconnected, and many businesses and organizations aim to reach a global audience. Strategic media placement can help your business reach diverse audiences around the world. Expanding your business on a global scale is an exciting prospect and can bring you many new customers while growing your business further than you ever dreamed.
However, global expansion also comes with complexities. If you want to ensure that your promotional content resonates cross-culturally, there are many factors that you must consider first. By doing thorough research before moving into a new market, your strategic media placement can succeed and get the right message in front of the right people.
Here are some factors you should consider when planning global strategic media placement:
Conduct Thorough Market Research
Market research is crucial no matter where you’re expanding your business worldwide. Without it, your marketing efforts and strategic media placement may not be practical, which can cost you valuable time and money.
Market research is not a corner you should cut. When Target attempted to expand into Canada, it skipped market research, believing that brand recognition would be effective enough. Spoiler: it wasn’t. Target closed all its Canadian locations after just two years because their business didn’t adjust to the Canadian market; they assumed the way the US stores operated would work for Canada.
You’re likely familiar with your target market close to your home store and what resonates with them, but every market is different. How should you engage with your new target market when expanding across the country or globally?
Conducting thorough market research can help you understand your new potential customers’ preferences, behaviors, and attitudes. It will inform you on how to tailor your message and choose the most effective channels for reaching new customers.
Speak Your Target Market’s Language
Proper use of language is vital when marketing globally. Potential customers are discerning and may be hesitant to engage with a company that doesn’t make an attempt to speak to their customers in their language in a natural way.
If your new market speaks a different language than your original language, it’s not enough to run your existing marketing and media through a translation program like Google Translate and call it good. Online translation tools often lack the nuance needed to make your message sound natural, accurate, and thoughtful.
Significant vocabulary, dialect, and grammar differences can impact how your message is understood even within the same language. Marketing in America must be modified before being promoted to customers in Canada, Australia, or England, despite all these countries speaking English.
Information should be localized to resonate with the specific linguistic nuances of your target audience. For instance, consider whether your business should speak to customers on a formal level or use more casual language. Any translated marketing should reflect this for a consistent brand image.
Understand Cultural Sensitivities and Norms
Speaking someone’s language isn’t just about translation. It’s also about understanding that different cultures have different norms, values, and taboos. Cultural sensitivities can significantly impact how your strategic media placement is received. An advertisement that works well in your home country may be met differently in another culture. You don’t want to spend money on a campaign only to be met with indifference or, worse, offended customers.
Before crafting promotional content, do extensive research on the values and norms of the countries and cultures you’re targeting. What values do they have? What appeals to them? What might offend them? What does promotional content usually look like to them?
Understanding these nuances is crucial for crafting strategic media placement that resonates with your target audience and inspires trust in your business.
Localize Your Content
Each market worldwide has regional differences, preferences, lifestyles, and behaviors. That means there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to marketing, no single way of advertising that will work for all markets. The most effective, engaging marketing involves tailoring your content to address specific markets.
What unique preferences, interests, and concerns does your new target market have? Do they celebrate any special, region-specific holidays that may drive sales? Are there community events that you could engage with as a business?
Localize your online content, such as websites, social media accounts, and advertising campaigns. Dedicated websites and accounts for each region can help you tailor your language, visuals, and promotions to each target market, making it easier to get the right message to the right people.
Having localized online content that reflects each target market’s lifestyle and cultural nuances can help you build rapport, credibility, and trust with potential new customers.
Learn About Regional Media Consumption Habits
How does your target market consume media? What are their favorite types of entertainment? What social media sites and apps are the most popular? Where are they most likely to see your marketing?
Different regions have different media consumption habits. Some prefer traditional media, such as newspapers and television, while others spend most of their time on digital and social media platforms. Researching and understanding your target audience’s media consumption habits can help you choose the most effective ways to reach your customers and maximize your impact.
Collaborate With Global Media Experts
Entering the global market is exciting, but it can also be challenging. Sometimes, you may not have all the answers or know how to conduct market research.
That’s why partnering with global media experts who understand how to break into new markets is beneficial. By collaborating with a global brand agency that knows and understands the market you’re looking to break into, you can gain valuable insight and connections you wouldn’t be able to otherwise.
Local media experts have a deep understanding of local cultural norms, language use, regional nuances, and more. They can provide guidance and valuable insights for tailoring your marketing messages for maximum impact, helping you ensure that your message effectively resonates with your target audience.
Strategic media placement is vital when your business expands to new global markets. By conducting thorough research, localizing your content, and partnering with a global brand agency like InnoVision Global Marketing, you can ensure that your strategic media placement has maximum impact while being culturally sensitive.