Global Marketing

Global marketing best practices: Balancing global expansion and local needs

When devising your global marketing, you need to consider –

• Changing the focus of your marketing organization from local to global
• Understanding of the right B2B marketing tools to support your expansion
• Ensuring you have the right processes to scale and grow
• Taking into account localization in global markets

Picking the right B2B agency for global growth is your first step. You should also reconsider your approach to B2B lead generation and B2B inbound marketing.

What you need to consider before starting a global marketing effort

In the B2B marketing world, marketing activities must be tailored not only to each target audience, but also to every stage in the buying cycle. This makes the process of B2B marketing highly complex. Adding to this level of complexity the international marketing variable, and you are treading in deep waters. This is not your backyard – where you have intimate knowledge of the market, the culture, and the language. Expanding globally means you have to be very careful. You, as well as your agency, need to understand exactly the right channels that will work for your B2B global marketing strategy.

In addition, you need to consider localization variables. Duplicating one successful marketing campaign to a different market will not always work, and you need to be aware of the differences between regions and countries, and even areas and states within countries: Different channels; different users behaviors; different colors to use; languages and dialects; time zones, hours, holidays and special dates on which the campaigns are active, and more.

Global marketing and online channels

Online marketing has made global marketing strategy attainable, affordable, and results-driven. In the old days, you needed to engage face-to-face to generate leads and bring new business. Today, instead of flying a whole crew to a tradeshow, you can engage with your target audience in different online channels.

Why is online a perfect fit for global marketing?

• Your online marketing channels work for you everywhere, and anytime
• You can find leads and locate decision makers online
• You can grow your professional network online much faster than any other way
• Professionals just like you are used to networking online and communication through different e-channels

Some specific channels that are ideal for B2Bs expanding to the global market: Social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Linkedin are major channels for B2B awareness and B2B lead generation, as well as online advertising channels.

Localization: Crucial aspect to your global marketing success

Understanding your market is the first step towards devising the right marketing strategy. When you’re going global, you should know that you are actually creating many different mini-marketing plans tailored to specific markets. What worked in the US, will not necessarily work in the UK or in Asia. The first thing to take into account when localizing a marketing campaign is the language. Another one is holidays, work hours, and vacation times. Picking the right channels is also highly affected by localization. Some channels are completely local – for example, Xing is more popular in Germany than Linkedin. Twitter is not that popular in Israel, but a highly effective B2B tool across the US.

Part of a successful global marketing strategy is realizing when there’s so much difference, you need to be careful when duplicating a marketing campaign between countries or regions. The right way is to test case one aspect of the campaign before fully deploying it – while taking into considerations the local market’s demands and limitations.

Linkedin: A winning international marketing channel

Yes, there are many channels that may work for your global marketing expansion, but before all the rest, there is Linkedin, the “Mecca” of B2B marketing, which is the most robust, accurate and quality-based traffic generator for businesses all around the world.

Consider the following Linkedin methods as core components of any B2B marketing efforts on a global scale:

• Creating a Linkedin Group: This is a great opportunity for exposure and demonstrating thought leadership in your area of your company’s expertise
• Creating a Linkedin company page: The company page is more than free exposure. It has the ability to customize content for different target audience, and is a place of social proof, where vendors and customers can create recommendations for your company and product
• Linkedin advertising campaigns: Linkedin has tremendous audience targeting capabilities, so your advertising campaigns in Linkedin can hit your target audience in the most precise and accurate manner.