In this modern world, small companies compete in the vast international market to attract more customers. As long as you can sell your products and services online, you can cater to a large multinational audience. Not only will this boost your profits, but it can also set the basis for unprecedented brand growth.
Unfortunately, selling to foreign clients is much harder than you might think. Besides language barriers, you also have to consider consumer preferences in different countries. Even if your products have great positioning on the domestic market, they might fall flat internationally just because foreigners can’t perceive their value.
Because of that, you need to be very careful when promoting your offer. You should create universal messages that would allow you to connect with people abroad and ensure your success. Among others, you need to choose the right digital marketing strategies that will maximize your marketing dollar.
Why Is International Digital Marketing Strategy Important?
Basically, a digital marketing strategy creates a framework for all your promotional activities. It streamlines all your efforts, showing your team which tasks they should prioritize. A good strategy clarifies your processes, reduces waste, and maximizes results.
It is worth noting that your choice of strategy can vary significantly based on the market you’re targeting, as well as your industry. Some businesses might prioritize international SEO, while others will see value in paid advertising. Whatever the case might be, you need to determine which approach is best for your brand and can provide most long-term value.
6 Best Digital Marketing Strategies
In an ideal world, you would use all these strategies alongside. However, as you have limited resources on your hands, you’ll likely have to prioritize certain tasks over others. Here are the 6 most common strategies that brands use when pitching prospects internationally:
Search Engine Optimization
The most popular digital marketing strategy focuses on SEO. With this method, you use your business website as the main hub for lead generation. The majority of your traffic will come from search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, by ranking for target keywords.
Your main task is to find relevant phrases for your business that will attract highly-converting prospects. After determining your target audience and keywords, you start creating content that would not only satisfy future website visitors, but also search engines. You round up the approach by building links from other sites and executing other PR activities.
The reason why SEO is so great is because it instills trust in foreign users. When people see your pages on top of Google, they automatically presume you’re one of the best brands within your respective vertical. This makes a big impact on their purchasing decision while shortening buyers’ journey.
Account-Based Marketing
Account-based marketing, or ABM, is a strategy where the marketing team focuses on a small number of highly lucrative prospects. Instead of pitching the general public, you’re trying to make money by selling high quantities of merchandise to several accounts. The method focuses on building strong relationships with a limited number of prospects instead of sharing your message through mass media.
ABM can utilize all sorts of channels including search engines, social media, and third-party websites and channels. It gives a lot of leeway to creative teams that understand market requirements and their target audience. In fact, you’ll likely combine several outreach tactics concurrently to maximize your results.
Video Marketing
As the name implies, video marketing is a process of creating and posting videos all across the web. Besides usual ads, you might also use interviews, explainer videos, webinars, podcasts, and other types of video content for promoting your brand. Video marketing is ideal for companies that want to focus on YouTube, but also other social media.
Most marketers use these videos for their own channels, such as websites and social media accounts. However, it would be even better if you could make other companies share your content through their own channels. By going viral, your promotional messages can make an enormous impact and reach various international audiences.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a strategy often used as a backbone for other strategies. For example, you need content for just about anything you do online, from running ads to optimizing your site for search engines. As such, every serious web business has at least one or two writers on their team.
The great thing about content is that it helps you build a bridge of trust with international prospects. You can create posts that will entice readers to purchase from your brand or interact with your site in some other manner. It’s vital you create posts in the local language as well as with their culture and consumer behavior in mind.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing, also known as SMM, is something that almost everyone uses. Even if you’re focusing on paid ads or SEO, you’ll likely have a Facebook or LinkedIn account as an ancillary channel.
Besides helping you gain more leads, social media accounts allow you to communicate with users in a simpler manner. For example, instead of going back and forth via email, you can communicate directly with international prospects through Messenger or Instagram chat.
Paid Ads
In the digital world, paid ads are the fastest way of attracting and converting leads. Unlike some other tactics that require time to set up, you can start running ads almost immediately. All you need to do is set a few demographic parameters, create a copy, and set a budget, and you’re ready to go.
While ads provide immediate results, they’re not ideal for long-term brand building. Instead, it would be much smarter to invest in SEO or SMM instead if you’re looking to slowly grow your name.
Ending Note
Finding international customers is much easier if you have a good understanding of digital marketing strategies. By creating the right international marketing plan, you can target ideal prospects and maximize your budget spend. This helps you reach more customers around the globe and improve bottom line.
