Looking for ideas on how to market a product on a global scale? Here are best practices that won’t let cultural differences trip you up. Coming up with a new product or service is a lot of work, which unfortunately does not stop once it’s ready—launching and promoting it is the other half of the equation.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of promotion strategies, let’s do a quick refresher on the 4 Ps of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. When it comes to promoting a new product or service for your business, it can seem like there are endless options. It can be difficult to figure out where to get started and which methods of promotion will give you the best results. The truth is, there are many low-cost ways to promote your business, and what works may depend on your industry, offerings, and audience.
To market any product successfully, i.e., to nail the last P, which stands for “promotion,” you need to have a firm understanding of the previous 3 Ps: product, price, and place. With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at each of the other Ps in the context of effective global marketing.
Product
In order to market your product overseas, you first need to make sure there's a demand for it in the target market. It's important to understand the needs and wants of your target customers and ensure that your product is the right fit.
The first step is to understand the local market and your competition—this is where research comes in, which we'll discuss more in detail in the following section.
Price
Pricing is another key element of international marketing, and it's especially important when you want to promote a product globally. When setting a price for your product, you need to take into account the local economic conditions, the perceived value of your product, and what your competition is doing.
Some businesses choose to simply convert their prices from their home currency to the local currency, while others adjust their prices to better reflect the local market. There's no one-size-fits-all answer here—it really depends on your product and your target market.
Place
Place refers to the distribution channels you use to get your product into the hands of your target customers. When selling overseas, you need to be aware of the local distribution channels and make sure your product is available where your target customers are looking for it.
Once you've got the first 3 Ps of marketing down, you can start thinking about promotion. Getting the word out about your product and generating interest among potential customers is essential to your success, but each market is different, so you need to tailor your promotion strategy to the local culture.
Here are some best practices for promoting your product in foreign markets.
Create a free Google My Business account
For local businesses especially, a Google Business Profile has become one of the most effective free marketing strategies available. This must-have piece of marketing collateral allows your business to show up on Google Maps, the local section of Google Search, and the right-side Knowledge Panel for branded searches.
Collect local reviews and testimonials
Reviews and testimonials from local customers can be very helpful in promoting your product to a new audience. They serve as social proof that your product is worth buying and can help you build trust with potential customers.
While you can always start off by translating and republishing the reviews and testimonials you already have, it’s also a good idea to try to get new ones from customers in each target market. You can do this by asking customers to leave a review on your website, social media page, or a popular local review site. You can also offer discounts or other incentives in exchange for reviews.
Post (and engage) on social media
Increasing social media engagement and building a community online is a free way to grow your small business while expressing your brand’s personality and building trust with your audience. Create business accounts and participate in the big social media sites—Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and more. This is something you can do whenever you have a few minutes to spare.
You can:
- Promote your blog posts, which drive traffic to your website.
- Directly dialogue with followers to express your brand voice and garner more engagement.
- Run polls and request feedback.
Take excerpts from longer forms of content and create quick and informational posts that are easier to digest.
Whatever your motivation, make sure you are regularly active and proactive on the social media accounts you create. Think: consistency, community, collaboration, and commitment.
Tag people (and brands) on social media
Tagging your loyal customers, brand evangelists, or even neighboring companies and vendors on social media can broaden the organic reach of your business to a new potential audience, help you grow your following, and potentially even attain more clients. You should also encourage your followers to tag your social media handle or business location in their posts.
Social media influencers can be a powerful force in promoting your product to a new audience. In most cases, it’s recommended to start off working with micro-influencers, who have fewer followers but are more engaged with their audience. Micro-influencers usually have a high level of trust with their followers, which can translate into sales for you.
To find the right social media influencers to work with, start by looking at who’s already talking online about your product. There are many tools on the market that can help you track mentions of your brand, keywords, or competitors in media such as blog posts or in questions asked in forums.
Don’t sleep on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a major social media site that is often under-utilized. Don’t just add network connections and sign out; enter into dialogue with the connections you make, share your blog posts and offers, join and contribute to forums, and share others’ quality content.
By enabling other professionals to grow and educating your potential customers, you can build your brand and earn trust and respect in your industry. Also, encourage all your employees to get active on the platform too!
Do some local SEO
The best part about Google’s algorithm is that it is designed to serve up the most accurate, high-quality, and relevant content for any given search query. It’s not pay to play, so this levels the playing field and enables small businesses to compete with large competitors for page one real estate.
Local SEO is free, but it can take some time, so start now and keep working; the benefits over time can be huge. Here are some local SEO must-dos:Add location-based keywords (think: “Portland bakery”) to the titles, headings, and body content of your main website pages.
Get listed in online directories, making sure your information is identical across platforms.
Publish pages or blog posts specific to the neighborhoods you serve.
Contests & Giveaways
Giveaways are a simple way of creating awareness for your product while also rewarding customers or new prospects for being keen supporters of the business.
Lay’s launched a ‘Do Us A Flavour’ campaign in 2012 in the United States. All users had to do was select a chip flavor. They then created a Facebook page that allowed users to participate by submitting a proposal for a new potato chip flavor.
The creator of the winning chip flavor would win $1 million or 1% of the 2013 net sales of the winning flavor, whichever is greatest. And guess what? It worked like magic!
The campaign received about 3.8 million submissions. They achieved over 22.5 million Facebook page visits and experienced an upliftment in sales by 12% year after year.
Form industry partnerships
Team up with a business related to your industry (but not a direct competitor) for a joint project. This can be done locally and offline through some kind of special event, or online (which could still be locally) with a webinar or promotional giveaway.
Partnering with another business means twice as much notice and exposure to a whole new audience related to your niche.
Industry partnerships are a great marketing tactic because they allow small business owners access to marketing know-how, technology, and customer bases that they could not have achieved on their own. You need to put careful thought and effort in if you want to form a profitable partnership. Clarify expectations, engage with and vet different businesses, assess how you can work together, and have several conversations before making things official.
Leverage international SEO (search engine optimization)
In a digital world, another good way to answer the public’s needs when promoting your product is search engine marketing (SEM). Especially if you’re on a tight budget, you might want to try improving the organic SEO reach of your website before spending money on pay per click (PPC), i.e. search engine advertising (SEA). Here, too, it’s not just about translating the keywords you already targeted for your home market.
International SEO requires a thorough strategy that starts with some market research to define which audiences may be interested in your product and find out what’s important to them. Next comes competitor research, which will help you find new opportunities, especially if your competitors are not currently optimizing their content for your target market.
To be successful in SEO, you need to take care of its 3 key aspects: technical, off-page, and on-page. A holistic approach that considers all of them simultaneously is essential to get better visibility and return on investment (ROI).
Flash Sale
If you are a business that can’t offer flexibility on pricing, flash sales are for you! They create a sense of urgency for customers to buy now.
Like when Kennedy Blue, a bridesmaid’s dressing store, created a countdown timer for a flash sale they had set up, it helped them increase sales by over 50%!
You can organize flash sales every month, or annually. Just get your social media channels on board with such flash sales, so that you can create even more buzz for it.
By following the best practices in this guide and taking the time to properly localize your product, successful global expansion can be within reach in no time. Remember each business is different, and so are the audiences, All the above sales promotions examples are full-proof, just find the one that best resonates with your brand.
Analyze your audience, devise a plan, and create the right enticing and undeniable offers that will capture the 21st-century audience.