Secrets For Global Web Marketing Success
The globalization of marketing activities presents many challenges that can hinder the effectiveness of marketing efforts
. Businesses today not only face the challenge of operating across borders, they face the difficult task of understanding and communicating with clients who speak different languages and who live in different cultural environments. Global marketing success depends on how a business organizes and manages its efforts to overcome these barriers. This is especially true when it comes to managing website content. This process is known as website localization.
The secret of marketing is to anticipate and measure the needs and wants of different groups of consumers and provide them with the information and means to deliver the goods and services satisfactorily. It involves everything from identifying consumer needs, to communicating the proper message; and ultimately closing sales. This is difficult enough when this is done for a local market, but the level of complexity increases dramatically when it is done for foreign markets.
Global Internet marketing success depends on doing this right. We recommend that you consider your site as an organism that keeps growing outside of your domestic market. It must respond to different domestic needs in foreign markets with a local feeling, including fresh, updated information. To be successful you need to:
- Create brand consistency across multiple languages/markets.
- Offer market-specific commercial practices, technical support, ordering processes, etc.
- Create a "local" feel even if you have a virtual operation in that market.
- Provide full online functionality. For instance, if you create an FAQ section in your language, make sure to do so in the other languages also.
- Provide multilingual support in the languages that matter to your business.
- Provide a local value proposition - which as a refresher - is an analysis of the benefits, cost and value that an organization can deliver. Value = Benefits - Cost (including risk).
- Keep information updated across languages. You need an appropriate multilingual content management system.
- Constantly enhance content and functionality across languages.
In essence, think locally and execute globally at every level of your marketing process. Translation is not enough. Global web marketing represents a long term commitment and constant development.
The question then is how a company organizes to deliver this.
There are two ways a company can organize itself to execute a globalized marketing effort; by centralizing and/or decentralizing your web marketing structure.
The advantages of centralization are:
- Greater control of corporate/marketing message
- Branding consistency
- Efficiencies of scale
- Easier management
The dangers of centralization are:
- Out of touch with end-client's needs
- One-size-fits-all approach to marketing that does not appeal to local markets
- Unresponsive to local needs and opportunities
The advantages of decentralization solve the latter; however businesses must maintain control of the central corporate/marketing messages, control costs and have a system in place that keeps all of the content and documentation updated across the worldwide enterprise.
Although it may be challenging, most businesses opt for a combination of both approaches. What is clear is that any effort must be responsive to local needs and opportunities, so it becomes not only a question of translating content, but establishing a better organization in order to deliver an effective message and execute a coherent global strategy.
The bottom line is all about client satisfaction, which goes back to building strong customer relationships through localized marketing and responsive support. Good communications and proper response to local needs are fundamental to make and keep foreign clients. Make sure you work with a language translation service that understands these issues.
by: Richard Allenby
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