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Best Tips for Online Branding Your Global Business

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Best Tips for Online Branding Your Global Business

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In the wake of the pandemic, it seems that there is no point in talking about expanding a business and going global. Yet, many companies are not scared of the virus that has disrupted the entire business world and still work on bringing their global expansion plans to life.

The poll by Corporate Compliance Insights surveyed over 1,000 tech businesses from the U.S., and all of them confirmed that they are planning to go global despite the fact that the pandemic is still going on.

If you are among those fearless who still plan to go global in the nearest future, you need to start putting your online brand into that perspective as well. Today, we’re going to take a look at a few tips on how you can make that happen.

1. Think about Your Target Audience

It is essential to collect all the details to understand customer behavior when you’re entering the foreign market. But it’s also important to create a marketing strategy with the consideration of that audience’s language and culture. And, if you skip that step, it can undermine all your online branding efforts.

Besides, such negligence can undermine the reputation of your brand even before you enter the foreign market. It happened to KFC during its attempt to enter the Chinese market because of the improper translation of their slogan Finger-Lickin’ Good into Eat Your Fingers Off.

Even though this mishap didn’t ruin the company’s plans to succeed in China, it is still remembered in the business world as a poor practice which you should avoid at all costs. So, when developing the online brand for your global business, show respect to the target audience’s culture by localizing all your branding materials properly.

2. Find Local Influencers to Help Promote Your Global Brand

If you have plans to expand your business to different markets abroad, you need to make an effort to appear relatable to the local audiences. One of the most effective ways to achieve that is to partner with local influencers who can help you promote your brand in the respective market.

Airbnb is a great example of this strategy in action, as it often shows the hosts that sublet the apartments through Airbnb’s services around the world:

Image credit: Airbnb

With this approach, Airbnb tries to make its customers feel more welcome, no matter where they are and where they are coming from.

However, there is a trick with this strategy, as it requires you to find the influencer that has experience in your niche. For instance, if you’re expanding your foreign language school where people can study fluent English to other countries like Italy, Germany, and Russia, you need to find influencers there within the education industry who can help you promote your business locally.

It’s also worth mentioning that partnership with local influencers within your niche will also help you attract the right audience right away.

3. Create a Social Media Profile for Each Market

If you want your foreign audience to recognize you as a brand, when it comes to your digital marketing strategies, you need to speak your audience’s language. They need to have an opportunity to review your products and business updates in their native language to ensure that there is a full understanding between you and them.

And since people mostly use social media for brand updates, it makes sense to have a separate social media account for each country which you are planning to enter. IKEA is a great example in this case, as it has different Instagram profiles for every country where it sells its products:

Image credit: IKEA France

Such an approach also creates an opportunity for you to communicate with your target audience more, let them share their insights, and find out how you can improve your online branding strategy for your global business even more.

Over to You

Of course, going global with your business won’t deliver quick results. There are a lot of points to consider, and online branding is one of them.

That being said, the most important point in online branding for a global business is to understand the target audience and speak its language. If you achieve that, then your online branding efforts will definitely not go to waste.

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Ryan is a passionate blogger and writer who likes sharing his thoughts. Now he works as a content editor and internet researcher, you can check his site. He likes to travel and explore new countries.

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How to Measure Your Organizational Culture and Values

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The importance of a strong corporate culture and value is undeniable. Undoubtedly, cultivating corporate culture and values takes time, but the result is so much worth it.

Culture IQ researched the results from different companies with a strong organizational culture and values to find that:

-collaboration, work environment, and mission and value alignment are 20% higher at companies with strong cultures

-companies with established corporate cultures saw a 4 times increase in revenue growth

-if a company has appeared on The Best Place to Work list, its stock value increased by 75%

-companies that have strong employer brands have a 50% lower cost per hire

-82% of company leaders believe that culture is a potential competitive advantage

Of course, all corporate cultures are different, depending on how you want to organize your workers and which working environment you want to create. Organizational cultures and values even differ from one country to another.

In one of our recent articles we took a look at the current state of corporate culture in the U.S. While it is quite different from what other countries have as a norm for corporate culture, there is one prerequisite in all organizational culture cases that makes it strong – corporate culture analysis.

To do it, there are several methodologies that can help you take a look at your corporate culture and values.

BNS to Measure Positive and Potentially Limiting Values

BNS (Business Needs Scorecard) is one of the most precise methods to measure organizational values. This method is designed to identify and elaborate on the positive and potentially limiting values to outline the desired and not desired corporate values.

Myctt Values Centre recognizes BNS as a diagnostic tool in cultural value assessment that uses 6 sections to categorize positive and potentially limiting values:

-Finance – values that impact the growth of the company in terms of profits and financial performance.

-Fitness – values that describe productivity and the general performance of your employees.

-External relationships – values that affect your company’s relationship with outside players, including partners and customers.

-Evolution – values that impact creativity and innovation of your company as well as its growth in comparison to your competitors.

-Culture – values that influence communication and trust between the employees and corporate leaders.

-Contribution to society – the alignment of your corporate values with the values of society.

This method allows you to perform a comprehensive analysis of your corporate values, especially from the perspective of leadership and what it takes for you to observe these values as a leader.

OCAI Method to Measure Organizational Culture

Another issue is measuring the methods that dominate and dominate in your organizational culture, in other words – your active and passive values.

Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument or OCAI is a method that can help you do exactly that. It uses the so-called Competing Values Framework. “OCAI is a validated method of assessing organizational culture, actively used by over 10,000 companies. We’ve used it for several years, and it’s been one of the most precise ways to measure values”, says Claire Jefferson, an HR manager at Axonim, an electronic device service company.

This method uses a diagram, which helps you identify the direction that your organizational values work towards:

Image credit: OCAI-Online

As a result, you get an answer, which corporate culture dominates in your company, indicating the changes that need to be made to create the organizational culture you aspire to have.

Employee Surveys for Precise Engagement Rates

Who knows your organizational culture and values better than your employees?

Surveying employees is one of the most informative and precise ways to measure organizational culture. Besides, you actively engage your employees in creating your organizational culture.

One of the most common types of employee surveys is an employee satisfaction survey. This survey can take many different forms, but mostly aims at defining the following aspects of organizational culture:

-The position of your employees in the corporate culture – where your employees see their role in defining organizational culture.

-Motivation rate of your employees – helps you understand how much your employees support your corporate culture.

-Employee insights –what needs to be done and which values need to be adopted to help the employees fit in your organizational culture.

Here’s a great example of an employee satisfaction survey:

Image credit: Template.net

This survey can be done in many different forms. The ultimate goal, however, is to give your employees as many choices to answer the questions, possibly avoiding essay questions.

Over to You

The methods that we’ve mentioned above are aimed at assessing organizational culture from three different perspectives:

-a general analysis of your organizational values

-an analysis describing active and passive organizational values

-in comparison to the methods from above, which are used to analyze organizational culture and values from the leadership perspective, you can also take the perspective of your employees by doing employee satisfaction surveys

What is your approach to measuring your organizational culture and values?

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Ryan is a passionate writer who likes sharing his thoughts and experience with the readers. Currently, he works as a content strategist at https://axonim.com. He likes everything related to traveling and new countries.

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Archives, Global Trade Daily, Special Reports

How to Benefit from Multichannel World for Your Global Business

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When running an international business, your company needs to have a versatile marketing strategy. There’s no way out of it if you want to remain relevant and competitive. 

Global businesses around the world employ multichannel marketing strategies to target their international audiences, which, in their turn, are getting more and more demanding. To comply with the needs of their target audiences, international businesses diversify their business promotion strategies by exploring the world of multichannel marketing. 

Here are some stats to prove the rising demand for the multichannel world:

–95% of marketers recognize the importance of multichannel marketing and the role it plays in targeting

-73% of marketers already have a multichannel marketing strategy in place

-Businesses that employ multichannel marketing achieve over 90% year-to-year customer retention rates. 

Consumers support businesses that have an active multichannel marketing strategy, giving their preference to the companies that have several social media channels with customer support chatbots, a variety of content, and a branded app in addition to the desktop and mobile versions of a company website. 

So, as you can imagine, achieving all these objectives puts a lot of financial pressure on your company. Running a global business already involves substantial investment, so putting extra money and effort into a multichannel marketing strategy may seem like something secondary. 

In reality, however, your multichannel marketing efforts have a huge influence on the success of your international business. The way you run your marketing strategy affects the relationship with your target audience. Hence, if you don’t have this relationship, you won’t have success in the international market. 

So, let’s take a look at how your global business can benefit from the multichannel world (with tips and examples of how to implement a multichannel marketing strategy). 

Localized Social Media Accounts

According to Hootsuite, 40% of digital consumers use social networks to research new brands and products. When looking for a product, consumers go on a research hunt, digging as much information about a brand as possible. 

But if you’re running a global business, you need to make sure that all the information about your company can be accessible to your international audience in their native language. Thus, if you want to benefit from the multichannel world, you need to take your marketing strategy a step further and create localized social media accounts. 

You have definitely already seen many examples of this strategy in action. IKEA, for instance, runs several Instagram accounts in different languages. Here are the examples of their Instagram accounts in French:

… and in Polish:

Image credit: IKEA Polska

If you visit IKEA’s international Instagram pages, you’ll see that all their content is localized, including stories, hashtags, and, of course, image descriptions. 

Having a localized social media marketing strategy helps your global business:

-You create personalized connections with your international audience

-You help them reach your business faster, which gives you a competitive advantage

-It increases your website traffic on the local markets

On top of that, having localized social media profiles helps you diversify your multichannel marketing strategy and strengthen your global presence. 

Mobile App, Available Worldwide

Running a multichannel marketing strategy presupposes the launch of mobile app as well. Desktop Internet usage is falling, mobile internet usage is rising, and hence, the demand for apps keeps growing. 

There are three main reasons why your international brand needs an app:

-Better user experience – when targeting a foreign market, you need your target audience to perceive you not as a someone alien and unknown but as a trustworthy brand that caters to the needs of its target audience;

-A more personalized approach – having an app allows you to analyze and better understand each user’s individual session, understand their needs, and create a more personalized user experience;

-Creating a direct marketing channel – with an app, special offers and promotions will be right at your target user’s fingertips. 

For international business, having an app also presupposes app localization for every country, where the business operates. For instance, Flatfy, an international real estate company, has translated its app Korter to cater to the needs of their audience in Kazakhstan, Romania, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. 

Having a localized app helps a global business build brand recognition and cultivate customer loyalty by improving customer experience. 

Multilanguage Customer Support

Internet users often contact brands through social media. Thus, the need for accessing customer support through social media keeps growing. The growing demand for chatbots shows how traditional marketing and customer support can benefit from a digital twist and improve the brand-customer relationship. 

From the standpoint of multichannel marketing, a chatbot is another channel for the customers to access your brand. For global businesses, however, creating a chatbot that can speak different languages is a must since, for the seamless customer support experience, your audience needs to feel confident when communicating any issues with your customer service. 

Sephora is one of the brands that run their Facebook chatbot in the world’s most spoken languages, including English and Spanish:

Having a localized customer support channel is another step to establishing a strong and long-lasting relationship with your international audience. 

Localization is Key

If you take a closer look at all the three above-mentioned points, you’ll notice that localization is a prerequisite of running a multichannel marketing strategy on an international scale. 

Since multichannel marketing involves a variety of channels, which (unlike in omnichannel marketing) operate individually, you need to make sure that all these channels have high quality in order to perform to their full capacity and bring value to your international audience. 

So, take your global business’s multichannel marketing strategy to the next level and start speaking the languages of your foreign audiences. This way you’ll ensure the success of your marketing efforts and remain competitive on the global market. 

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Ryan is a passionate writer who likes sharing his thoughts and experience with the readers. Currently, he works as a digital marketing specialist, you can check his website https://flatfy.ro. He likes everything related to traveling and new countries.