Crafting international campaigns: getting the messaging right

In today’s digital landscape, global consumers interact with brands through a plethora of channels. Whether it’s social media, email, web search, or online campaigns, maintaining a cohesive brand presence across all these touch points is essential for a successful international multi-channel campaign.

 

Campaign messaging: the heart of connection

Effective campaign messaging is crucial in capturing the attention of your target audience. Tailor your messaging to resonate with your target markets’ unique cultural and market contexts. Localization goes beyond translation – it’s about understanding local customer behaviour, preferences, and values. 

Creating a compelling brand messaging and positioning strategy is integral to the success of a business in a new competitive market. A well-executed localization strategy begins with a deep understanding of the target audience’s needs, desires, and pain points.

 

Here are a few things to consider:

#1 Understand your audience

The first step is to understand who your audience is. Conduct thorough market research to understand their demographics, psychographics, needs, and wants. Understanding your audience will enable you to craft messages that resonate with them and appeal to their interests and needs. 

Be aware that there can be cultural gaps from one country to the next where campaigns, slogans and initiatives don’t resonate as you expected them to. 

Here are some examples of international marketing mishaps based on cultural gaps:

• Braniff Airlines faced a marketing misstep in 1987 when they launched their campaign for new leather seats in Latin America using the same slogan as they did in the United States: “Fly in leather”. While the Spanish translation, “Vuela en cuero,” was appropriate throughout much of Latin America, it had a different connotation in Mexico, where the expression also means “Fly Naked”. 
• Swedish vacuum maker Electrolux got a quick lesson in English slang when it introduced its products in the USA. Intending to highlight its vacuum’s high power, the company’s ad campaign boasted, “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.” While the slogan might have been grammatically correct, it did not resonate quite the right way with U.S. shoppers.
• A famous Finnish company marketing blunder happened to Nokia in 1998 when the company created a slogan for their mobile phone ads in German that happened to be the exact same message that was used in a sign at the entrance to Buchenwald, a Nazi concentration camp where thousands of Jews died during World War II. Nokia pulled the advertising after realizing this (but a lot of brand damage got done).

 

#2 Customize the messaging to the market

When you want to launch a new international marketing campaign, share content on social media, or make your content known in global target markets, make sure you check it first with native speakers who are knowledgeable in the local language and culture of the target market. This way you can ensure you avoid idioms, jargon or specialized terms that could be misinterpreted. It is essential that you utilize a local partner with a digital sales agency such as Junko specialized in digital sales localization services.

 

#3 Localize your marketing

Localizing your marketing campaigns enhances your visibility, eases market entry, and helps with brand identification. A good example:

• Wieden + Kennedy designed a campaign focused on London for Nike, called “Nothing Beats a Londoner.” The advertisements were successful because they authentically portrayed youth life in London, even featuring less mainstream neighbourhoods like Dalston and Peckham. This approach struck a chord with the young London audience. The campaign garnered recognition, winning awards at prestigious events such as the Cannes Lions and Grand Prix.

Benefits of marketing localization are

• Improved brand visibility: Localization optimizes your content for global SEO, making you a global brand. It involves translating text, adjusting images, and using local keywords to boost SEO rankings.
• More easy market entry: Localization reduces barriers to new markets by making your website region, language, and currency compatible while respecting local cultures. Remember to take into account your website imagery, wording, colour, or even references that may work well in some countries but in others may be considered offensive, and they could hurt your brand.
• Better brand identification: Localization connects your brand directly with the audience in a way that makes your business feel local, creating new markets and adapting your brand in these markets.

 

#4 Communicate effectively

Your brand voice is the distinctive personality of your brand, reflected in your messaging. It should be consistent across all marketing channels to build brand recognition and trust. 

• Use clear and concise language: Your message should be easy to understand. Avoid jargon and complex language that might confuse your audience. Keep your messages short, clear, and to the point.
• Choose the right channels and touchpoints: Your campaign might get great results on Facebook in the USA but may not work similarly on YouTube in Japan.
• Include a strong call to action: Every effective marketing message needs a strong call to action (CTA). The CTA tells your audience what you want them to do next, whether it’s to buy your product, sign up for your newsletter, or follow you on social media.
• Test and refine your messages: Finally, test your messages to see how they resonate with your audience. Use A/B testing to try out different versions of your message and see which one performs better. Use the insights gained from testing to refine and improve your messages.

 

#5 Gain more marketing velocity with AI

GPT-4 and other AI-driven marketing tools can provide significant support to marketers in planning, versioning, and evaluating global marketing campaign materials. 

Here are some AI-specific use cases across the customer journey that can drive impact:

• Content versioning: Content creation is a creative process where the strategy and ideas come from the marketers but AI models like GPT-4 can help fast generate multiple versions of your content, headlines or copy texts. Whether it’s three different versions of catchy advertising headlines, copy text versions to various channels or suggestions for a series of social media posts. AI can help marketers quickly produce multiple variations of content that resonate with their target audience. This accelerates the content production process, allowing marketers to focus more on strategy.
• Content personalization: With its ability to analyze customer behaviour, preferences, and demographics, AI can help tailor content to different segments of your audience based on their unique preferences and behaviour. For instance, it can generate different versions of an email for different customer segments, or create personalized product recommendations to include in your communications.
• A/B Testing: AI can help analyze A/B tests to determine the most effective content for your campaign materials to help optimize your campaigns.
• Automation: AI can automate repetitive tasks such as sending out emails, posting on social media, or updating website content. This not only saves time but also ensures that your campaigns run smoothly and efficiently.

According to McKinsey Research in 2023, 90 per cent of commercial leaders expect to utilize generative AI solutions “often” over the next two years. Their research also indicates that players that invest in AI are seeing a revenue uplift of 3 to 15 per cent and a sales ROI uplift of 10 to 20 per cent.

 

#6 Set goals, monitor and improve continuously

Setting clear, measurable goals is critical to the success of your international marketing campaigns. Define what success looks like for your campaign – it could be increased website traffic, higher conversion rates, more email sign-ups, or a boost in online sales.

Establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that align with these goals to track your campaign’s success.It is important to track and analyse the customer journey across your customer journey touchpoints and understand how each channel contributes to the overall campaign goals. Regular monitoring and adjustment of your campaigns are essential to maximize their effectiveness.