International Marketing: Tips for Creating a Localization Strategy

If you are an international company looking to break into the market in the United States, you may need help to overcome significant hurdles. After all, marketing in the US is different from marketing in your home country. Therefore, developing a localization strategy in international business is critical to your long-term success. Fortunately, with the proper research, preparation, and planning, you can create localization in marketing and ensure success in launching your product or service. Read on to better understand how to achieve successful international marketing with localization.

Understand Your Customer Segments and Profiles

The phrase “US marketing” is a bit of a misnomer. Marketing in the US means you need to understand not one customer segment but several. America is a much more heterogeneous society than many other countries. As such, you must understand your target customer. What is their gender? Location? Income level? Where do they shop? Where do they work? Remember that these are not minor, esoteric questions but absolute requirements to successfully engage in US marketing.

Furthermore, you must understand your customer persona to break into the market appropriately. A customer persona refers to who a customer is, what goals they have, and how they spend their money. Customer personas are creative representations that refer to specific descriptions of your customer. However, extensive research has gone into the development of these customer personas. Successful marketing localization means understanding your customer personas and how you can best connect with these individuals.

Your localization marketing strategy has to consider all of these factors to achieve the necessary marketing localization and integrated marketing success.

Dig Into Marketing Data To Determine Effective Message Delivery Platforms

Once you understand your ideal customer, you want to focus on achieving successful international marketing with localization. As such, your next charge will determine the most effective way to deliver a solid marketing message.

Getting US marketing right means understanding where your ideal customer spends their time and how you can connect with them to develop appropriate marketing localization. Where your customer spends their time in the United States might be different from where a similarly-situated customer would spend their time in other parts of the world. Of course, America has different internet consumption patterns, driving patterns, television-watching habits, and even mass transit usage.

Marketing in the US also requires understanding where and how your audience may differ across the country. For example, wealthier individuals are likely to use the subway in New York, but affluent individuals in other states are unlikely to use mass transit. As such, ads that you place on specific mass transit platforms in one part of the country may flop in another.

Last, even with all these localization challenges, you must ensure appropriate brand alignment using the same messaging, logo, design, and more. This brand alignment will enable your different marketing messages to reinforce each other.

Get a Firm Grasp of the Language

Anyone who has tried to use Google Translate knows that a firm grasp of local language and slang is critical to any localization strategy in international business. Unfortunately, computerized tools won’t cut it: You must work with someone who understands English. If English is not your first language, you should hire staff to assist you in translating.

However, true marketing localization also means you understand the nuance of language and the importance of regional dialects. Some estimates hold that there are as many as 30 different regional dialects in the United States, each with its nuance, colloquialisms, slang vocabulary, and tones.

A localization marketing strategy may require different understandings of dialects to communicate effectively with your audience. For example, saying “wicked” for “really cool” would work well if advertising a product in Boston or New England. On the other hand, using the same word in the Deep South would result in ridicule.

It’s also worth noting that various mediums require different language strategies. For example, what you say in a Facebook advertisement will ultimately differ from what you say in an email.

Final Thoughts

Localization in marketing is a complicated topic, and international marketing strategies are much more complex to manage than domestic ones. Developing a localization marketing strategy requires a firm understanding of more than your region: You must know who your customer is, where they spend their time, how they speak, and what messages they will respond to best.

If you want to understand international marketing strategies to sell your product or service in the United States, reach out to Madison Taylor Marketing. As experts in marketing localization, we have years of experience helping businesses develop the marketing strategies they need to succeed in the United States.

Ready to find out more? Contact us today to learn how we can help you successfully localize your product or service for a United States audience.