Tips and examples to help plan and run global-local social media campaigns

Whilst the emergence of social media makes it increasingly difficult to contain campaigns within a given market, it offers brands greater opportunities than ever to connect with large, global audiences in a way that feels far more personal than most mediums previously available. This blog provides successful examples of how companies are enhancing their global brand, the campaign development process and how to embrace the evolution.

Examples of companies successfully using social media to enhance their brand and increase sales.

A few months ago, Coca-Cola launched what they refer to as the ‘Cocal-Cola TV project’ campaign, essentially bringing live entertainment to its target audience via multiple social media channels and devices in a year-long project primarily aimed at audiences in Latin America.  Paul McCartney’s free concert in Mexico was streamed live on Coca-Cola TV, with viewers encouraged to drive conversations on social…

Presentations on Mobile and Digital Strategy from two On The Edge conferences in 2013

10 Mobile marketing mistakes you can avoid through creating a Mobile Marketing Strategy

In this presentation to On The Edge Digital Marketing, London in October 2013 I covered 10 common mistakes and a 10 step plan to help marketers work through a mobile strategy. I hope these are helpful, see Rob Thurner's Smart Insights guide to developing a digital mobile strategy for more detail. Avoiding the 10 most common mobile marketing mistakes from Dave Chaffey

Global digital strategy

The next two decks are from similar talks by Dave Chaffey in 2013 reviewing 8 key factors to to focus on to help deliver business growth from…

New report highlights opportunities for companies to attract global trade online

Against a backdrop of a challenging economic times in domestic markets, many companies are looking at opportunities for international expansion. In our recent white paper, Web Magnetism: Attracting Global Trade Online we review the opportunities and look at how companies are responding. This post gives a summary of our main findings.

1.  Use of the Internet to drive overseas sales

Our research showed that, surprisingly, 64% of senior decision makers do not recognise the Internet in their top three avenues for driving overseas trade. The survey, conducted in Q2 2012, analysed attitudes amongst 350 senior decision makers in ‘large enterprises’, defined as companies with 200 employees or more, spread across the UK. The white paper demonstrates that UK businesses seem to be missing out on a golden…

Localisation – much more than just translation

In the previous  post in this series, I looked at the opportunities for growth from international markets. Now that you have identified that you want to expand internationally, you’ve got your budget approved, but what about all that web and printed content that you now need to translate? Well, the good news is that you are not ready to think about translating anything just yet. Before you do so, you will need to consult with other stakeholders in the business and where possible, existing and potential customers to identify what your strategic objectives are. There are a lot of issues to consider that need to go into your plan: [caption id="attachment_16312" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Localisation project activities[/caption] High-level questions you should collectively be asking yourselves at this stage include: What are our competitors doing and to whom are…

New research shows social media use maturing in large companies

International brands who have a presence in many countries have a bigger challenge in managing social media marketing than companies who focus on a single market. The Third Annual Burson-Marsteller Global Social Media Check-up reviewed 100 companies in the Fortune Global 100 for their use of popular social networking platforms including: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and, for the first time, Google Plus and Pinterest. Companies were located as follows: U.S. = 29 companies Europe = 45 companies, Asia-Pacific = 23 companies Latin America = 3 companies Here's what I took from the infographic: Section 1. c 10 million social mentions a month. That's around 100,000 mentions per brand per month. Section 2. Branded YouTube content is increasing with 79% having a branded YouTube channel with an average of 2 million views. Section 3. A relatively good level of engagement (79%), response (70%) and updating…

Making the case for a winning localisation strategy

In my experience, many companies give localisation very little thought until growth begins to stagnate and they are forced to look at additional revenue from international markets. So what happens when you have exhausted the potential in your domestic market? Organisations are generally faced with two choices: 1. Develop new products or services to get more traction in your own back yard 2. Sell your existing products or services on a global scale Since developing innovative products and services can be an expensive, high-risk strategy, it is not surprising that companies will opt to tap into international markets as a preference. What may surprise you, however, is that very few have any sort of strategy around their localisation programs and so they eventually lose out to savvy competitors who were quicker at adapting to selling to a global audience.

Making the business case for localisation

Convincing Finance Directors…

Why global marketing theory often differs from reality

On paper, global marketing is undoubtedly a great concept. The idea of leveraging a marketing strategy across multiple markets seems to be nothing but beneficial. It saves effort and resources, and ensures a high degree of consistency between all in-market branding and activities. However, the question of whether global marketing works is a frequent conversation topic amongst marketers, and the concept of globally-led marketing resources can be subject to much scepticism. So, how do you make global marketing work?

Stop the swinging pendulum

Marketing departments, particularly those in larger companies, seem to follow similar pendulum movements. Sometimes central teams are set up to oversee all territories; at other times these same teams are fragmented into regional or local components, each focusing on their specific market(s). Yet, there are ways to stabilise the pendulum…

An interview with Katy Andić, European Web Marketing Manager at Misco

Our articles by Emma Durant on the challenges of managing international marketing online have been popular, so when I recently connected with Katy Andić of Misco on LinkedIn, I thought it would make an interesting case study of how these challenges are managed in practice.  Misco provides a range of over 25,000 IT products via online and direct mail channels across Europe. A big thank you to Katy for summarising the approach Misco use to manage international online marketing in an interview with me.

Resources for managing local markets

Q. How many different European sites do you co-ordinate at Misco? What resource do you have available in each country for managing the site content? What are the biggest challenges in managing across all these sites? There are marketing resources in each country UK, DE, NL, FR, ES, IT and SE. In addition, there is…

An 11 step process to review your international marketing effectiveness

Following on from my first post on Understanding your Global Customers, in this post we look at how to conduct a Global Digital Marketing Audit  within your business before creating a Global Digital Marketing Strategy. This includes the following areas: Review global website and digital inventory Regional Campaign activity Mobile activity Regional Social Media Activity Regional Digital Marketing Plans Regional Search Engine Marketing Measurement tools Regional content Global digital agencies and suppliers Regional team structure and skills audit Communication and information sharing 1. Review global website and digital inventory How many websites does your business ‘own’, and who looks after them on a day-to-day? Pull together a list of all active domains and main contacts. This sounds obvious, but if you have marketing teams or even individuals based in several different regions, you can often find the odd microsite/campaign…

A 9 step approach to help understand your global customers

Editor's note: This is the first in a series of articles giving best practice advice on International Marketing using digital media. I'm delighted that Emma Durant, a specialist consultant in this area, has agreed to share her knowledge on how to best use digital marketing channels for this; a neglected topic since many marketers are faced with this challenge. Dave Chaffey Everyone in marketing knows the importance of understanding your customers. In a way, this becomes an even more important issue when faced with a global digital strategy, as you not only need to understand them, you also need to look at their regional differences and similarities.

Step 1. Confirm your global business customers

You should already have a clear idea of who your overall target customer groups are as a business. If not, then you need to…