Content Marketing is a powerful approach to expand your business’s organic reach, attracting potential consumers, and starting their journey in the sales funnel.
Through blog posts, ebooks, and several other formats, you can deliver the right message to educate the public about your brand and solutions.
One of the main characteristics of this type of strategy is the need for customization.
Generally, content creators work with a buyer persona, which is nothing more than a representation of an imagined ideal customer. It serves as a guide for the production of engaging materials.
This, combined with SEO techniques, allows you to reach the right person, in the most appropriate way and in the most relevant channel.
However, what happens if your audience doesn’t fit into one or two personas? What happens if you want to impact clients on a global level, not just locally?
Well, that’s why you need to know how to create a Global Content Marketing strategy. Read on to learn:
- What is a Global Content Marketing strategy?
- What are the benefits of creating one?
- How can you create a Global Content Marketing strategy in your company?
What is a Global Content Marketing strategy?
Before moving forward, let’s recap some fundamental points about the concept of Content Marketing.
The strategy is based on the idea of producing relevant content and, in an organic way, attract and qualify leads. This takes shape through a series of interlinked actions.
As we mentioned in the introduction, all planning is based on the buyer persona’s characteristics to increase the chances of engagement and conversion.
Decisions such as the topics addressed, the channels used, and even the language employed involve analyzing the ideal client.
It happens that, thanks to the growing potential of reach and interactivity of the Internet, more companies seek to expand their operations to other countries.
This, of course, represents a phenomenal opportunity to explore new markets and strengthen brand image.
However, it also means that the company will have to deal with a much wider public, who will hardly present the same characteristics as the local audience.
That’s why it is useless to simply replicate your content strategy in other regions.
It is necessary to have teams capable of recognizing each audience’s particularities and, from the structure that already exists, develop an appropriate approach to achieve the business objectives.
This is what we call a Global Content Marketing strategy. It is an initiative to optimize content strategies implemented in different regions of the globe, strengthening the brand image worldwide and creating a much broader and engaged audience.
The 4 P’s of Global Content Marketing
No doubt you already know the 4p’s of marketing, concept created by Professor Jerome McCarthy and widely spread by Philip Kotler.
It is part of any marketer’s academic and professional formation and, even years after its creation is still fundamental to understand how this area works.
Well, to help you understand what Global Content Marketing is, we will show you its 4 fundamental P’s, introduced by Pam Didner in the book “Global Content Marketing: Plan, Produce, Promote, and Perfect”.
Keep reading!
Planning
The first step could not be different. Efficient planning is central to any strategy’s success. Thus, it is important to define it in advance. As we are talking about a global strategy, its planning must have the same proportions.
This means that teams from different countries and regions must be involved to align goals, target audiences, define KPIs and priorities, and plan editorial calendars.
Producing
After planning, it’s time to produce content that really impacts the buyer persona.
The development of these materials must consider the differences between each region’s characteristics, including the most relevant channels and consumers’ own peculiarities.
Promotion
There’s no point in producing rich content if people don’t access it. Therefore, the third P stands for promotion.
It is important to use an omnichannel approach, integrating social networks, blogs, email marketing, and whatever else is relevant to the brand.
In some cases, it can be difficult to find organic reach in the initial phase of the strategy. However, it is always valid to use sponsored links and paid advertising campaigns to boost the business’ promotional efforts.
Perfection
The last element described by Didner is perfection. To maintain and achieve good results, a Global Content Marketing strategy must always aim for perfection, which demands constant monitoring of results.
What are the benefits of creating one?
The reason why you should create a Global Content Marketing strategy is very simple: this is the only way to expand the benefits of your local approach to a global audience.
Even if you have strong channels that receive international access, this is not enough.
What we are saying becomes clear in a survey conducted by Common Sense Advisory. The study shows that more than 56% of consumers consider that, during the buying journey, the possibility of obtaining information in their native language is more important than the price itself.
The report also shows that 72.1% of internet users spend most of their time on websites written in their own language.
At this point, you may be wondering: well, I could just provide a translated version of the website.
It’s not that simple since the pages’ content needs to be customized according to the user’s location and preferences — if you want to achieve more significant results.
Thus, by creating a Global Marketing Content strategy, you enable the company’s marketing department to organize itself to best meet the needs and desires of consumers in every region the business operates.
The outcome is a strong image worldwide and an increase in your channel’s traffic.
The production of content also facilitates the entry into new markets, since it represents an efficient way to educate new consumers about your brand and the solutions you offer.
How can you create a Global Content Marketing strategy in your company?
Now that you know what a Global Content Marketing strategy is and how important it is, we’ll give some valuable tips for implementing this concept in your company. Keep reading!
Put your teams together
All your teams must be on the same page about the strategy’s goals and stages. Using management tools makes it possible to ensure clear and efficient internal communication, engage team members, and encourage collaborative work.
However, as we have already mentioned, your standard strategy cannot be applied in all your regions of operation.
Therefore, it is important to designate people responsible for adapting the approach according to the country’s culture in question and the public’s behaviors.
It is also valid and recommended to hire a manager, especially to deal with the global teams’ management.
In this way, we create an environment conducive to the generation of valuable feedback to optimize results.
Understand your global audience
You need to understand your global audience. A good way to start this process is by observing where your website’s international visits come from.
If it receives more visitors from country X than from country Y, that means the audience coming from country X is already a little more familiar with your brand.
Noticing the level of familiarity is fundamental to develop an ideal approach. After all, it is no use landing in a new country talking about your solutions if the audience doesn’t even know your brand.
So, it is fundamental to carry out market research in order to discover the peculiarities of the public you want to reach. This generation of data can also be gained by the creation of interactive content and engaging experiences.
Find the most appropriate channels
Once you know your audience, you should be able to define which are the most relevant channels to spread your messages. This is a very important issue since a social network can be extremely popular in one country and absolutely irrelevant in another.
Not to mention the restrictions that occur in some countries. The United States itself recently considered banning Tik Tok, a Chinese social media platform that is gaining popularity worldwide.
Being aware of this kind of issue avoids investments in channels that offer little stability in the long term.
Use specialized tools
In any content strategy, quality is key. So don’t hesitate to invest in the best tools to produce your materials. It is important to look for options that offer varied formats in order to diversify your editorial calendar.
The tools should also have integration functions with other platforms to disseminate your content on different channels.
Work on your branding, but consider local cultures
If you are entering a new market or are looking to expand into one, it is essential to work on your branding.
After all, consumers give preferences to brands that establish a good relationship with the public, demonstrating visions and values appreciated by the community.
To build this image is crucial, but you should also worry about respecting the local culture. To understand the importance of this issue is much easier if you already have a working environment based on the idea of diversity.
In doing so, you will not only act respectfully and ethically, but you will also be able to identify new opportunities.
Define local and global KPIs
Working with metrics is the only way you can map your strategy and find room for optimization.
However, it is important to differentiate local from global metrics. That is, performance in different markets should be interpreted in different ways.
If your content strategy is already successful in the U.S., the rate of leads converted to purchase may be your most important KPI.
However, if you are investing in another country — and still don’t have much authority there — the number of visits on your website is already a metric that should receive great attention.
Working on a Global Content Marketing strategy is the best way to ensure positive results in the different markets you want to reach.
In this process, it is essential to consider the cultural and behavioral differences between audiences in different locations.
Want to learn more about Global Content Marketing? Hear the words of an expert! Watch the recording of our WebinarJam Session with Pam Didner on “Content Marketing Across Regions: the balance between global vs. local“!
