How to come up with the best business digital marketing strategy

Expanding business operations into another country is something that has become very common over the last years, usually done by businesses to explore new markets and diversify their revenue streams. But while international business expansion is something that will keep increasing over the years, many people seem to forget about the importance of the digital world when it comes to international business expansion. Indeed, your online platforms have to be suited for different kind of demographics the same way your products will be if you want a chance to get a significant part of the market share in the country you want to expand into.

This article will explore a few different options and give you a range of considerations you will need to think about in order to create a digital marketing strategy that will allow you to successfully expand your business on an international scale.

Being well prepared:

In order to successfully expand to another country, you need a strong digital marketing strategy, and in order to do so, you will have to think about some things before even starting your business expansion operation.

Market Research:

The first thing you will have to ask yourself is whether or not there is a market available for your product or service. While it may seem like an obvious question to ask, it remains very important to do some market research because if not, you risk losing a lot of time, money and energy trying to expand to a market in which your product has no chance of being successful.

Research regarding the competitors will also be very important. Look at what your competitors do, how they do it and try to think about a way to provide something to your market that they have not in order to gain a competitive advantage over them.

Look at their techniques and strategies to build your own, by having a better online platform, a better website and a better digital marketing strategy.

Translation:

Translating your content might be necessary depending on the country you are coming from and the country you are expanding into. You also have to understand how this language is used by your target market in order to make sure you don’t say anything wrong or translate the language in an inaccurate way. Here are a few things you should avoid when it comes to translating your online content for international business expansion:

• Depending on Google Translate:

Despite Google Translate being useful when it comes to translate one word at a time and maybe helping you out when you are looking for directions in a foreign country, using this tool to translate all of your content is not something we would recommend you to do.

If you are going to sell your product in another country, translating your content with Google Translate will not work because it might not make sense to the locals semantically. Instead of Google Translate, try to work maybe with someone fluent in the language and who is from the specific community you are try to target, that way the content you will translate for them will feel like it has been created specifically to suit their needs.

• Using English in foreign market websites

Very often, people consider English to be the default language that everyone in the world should be able to understand. While many people do speak English in many countries, having an English website for a market in which English is not the primary language is a big mistake and something we would not recommend.

International Web Design Considerations:

The way your website looks should be greatly impacted by the country in which you plan on expanding into. Here are a few things you might need to take into account when designing a website for a new market:

Your visuals:

The design of your website need to take into account the number of words and sentences on average in a country. Indeed, certain countries and languages have longer words than others: the German language for instance is known to have very long words along with special characters that you might need on your webpage.

Accomplishing this when it comes to design would mean moving away tight layouts and fonts that are small and difficult to read. You will also need to make sure that the mobile version of your webpage has a lot of room for the text.

The font on your webpage also needs to be carefully picked, since special characters are not supported by every font available.

Photography and images are also very important components of your website and good photography will improve your customers’ user experience. You will need to pick photos that will work for an international audiences, so moving away from culturally sensitive images that might offend your target market is something you should definitely do. Think about what your audience can identify with and try to highlight that in the images on your website. By recognizing themselves in the images, they will see your product in a more positive light and will be more likely to purchase them.

Your layout:

Doing research will allow you to see what kind of websites work best in what kind of countries. For instance, asian websites are considered in the Western market to be rather “busy” in terms of content on their webpages, wherehas people from Asia might find Western websites to be fairly empty.

Regardless of what the people in the country you are going to expand to prefers, it will be important for you to be aware of that and create a website that is as close to their preferences and to what they are used to as possible.

International SEO:

SEO is considered to be something very technical and complicated by many, which is why many people would rather not do anything SEO related. But SEO is very important when it comes to digital marketing and doing it right will be a determining factor in your company’s success. After all, what is the point of building a website for a target market if they can’t find said website on any search engines?

Remember that search engines are not universal, meaning that you will not necessarily find the same results from one country to the next. Additionally, Google might be the main search engine in many country but not in all of them, and other regions of the world use other search engines way more often.

Baidu dominates the Chinese market for instance, while Yandex is the main search engine in the Russian one.

Spending time sending signals to search engines (not necessarily the ones that you were expecting), and having a general idea of the amount of traffic that will be coming to your site is very important, since it will allow you to properly plan your website construction and everything you will need to do it successfully.

International PPC:

The rules for standard paid advertising all hold true in foreign markets: you will still need to change CPCs, quality scores, your average ad positions, as well as sending your visitors to relevant landing pages.

However, international PPC campaigns have their own specificities as well that you should not ignore. They go much deeper than simply asking “how to use Adwords” and demand a very strong knowledge of a country's search behaviour.

Knowing and understanding your market is therefore essential when developing an international digital marketing strategy.

Here is what you should be looking at when it comes to International PPC campaigns:

• Target audience

• Competitor Landscape

• Cultural habits

• CPC

International Social Media:

Nowadays, social media marketing is very important given the amount of traffic on social media everyday. Taking advantage of the constant use of social media by most people can be a good thing for you as it will allow you to easily market your product to your target market.

It is important to ask yourself if you are going to have one social media profile per platform or a profile per country. Whether you choose one or the other will depend on different things such as your resources, the number of people you work with and the amount of time you have.

While this decision will also depend on the kind of business you have, here are two things we would recommend you to think about:

1. Make sure that all of your accounts are active if you are going to have separate profiles for each country. It will also be very important for all the profiles to have the same message, branding and even visual aesthetic to show that you are consistent across countries while still tailoring your products to the specific needs of your local customers. Each of your social media managers therefore need to be on the same page in terms of what your brand represents and what it should communicate to the customers.

2. Avoid posting the same thing in different languages if you choose to have one profile for every country you get into. This look rather unprofessional and a bit confusing for your customers and also count as duplicate content, which is not good in terms of SEO. Look up geotargeting techniques and make sure you understand how users from one country can see a post that other users in other countries and speaking other languages won’t. This will allow you to still create specific content for each of your audience without confusing them with posts in other languages as well.

Much like search engines, social media platforms and their popularity change from one country to the next. Understanding which social media platforms work best in the country you are expanding into is therefore very important. For instance, Facebook is not available in China which means that you would need to focus your social media marketing efforts on other social media platforms.

The research report created by We Are Social highlighting social media usage in most countries can give you some insight on which social media platforms to focus on in which country.

But regardless of the platform you end up using, you will need to frequently post interesting and relevant content that your audience will be happy to engage with.

Hootsuite can also be used to monitor mentions of your brand in each country and allow you to respond. It will also help you to ensure that your content is being seen by relevant accounts and thus enable you have an even better digital marketing strategy.

While it seems like there is a lot of things to think about when it comes to international audiences, a lot of them come down to just being meticulous and thorough. Remember that organisation and an efficient planning will be primordial if you would like to have a strong digital marketing strategy to successfully expand your business internationally.

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