Reaching your Global Audience with Content Marketing
What content is relevant, how do you produce it and how do you get it out there?
August 28, 2015
Posted by: Simon Hodgkins, Chief Marketing Officer
Brands are creating a vast amount of content, in more recent times this is a lot closer to journalism than a simple advert. There is a real trend for high quality content marketing for leading organizations.
This is a real opportunity for brands to be global in nature and to produce far reaching successful content marketing.
As an example Red Bull has been doing this type of content for some time now. (One could argue that they are mainly a content and events company around their drink product!)
A lot of premium brands now want to get into publishing — think about premium clothing brands, car manufacturers and many others who now produce their own in house magazines and on-going bespoke pieces of content.
A trend can shift industries: we see start ups who provide content, stories and compelling articles for big and small clients and also agencies who must really sharpen their focus and skills in a world where there is so much more content readily available. The ability to reach a global audience is becoming so much more important for brands wishing to reach and connect with a wider audience.
The big questions are what content is relevant, how do you produce it and how do you get it out there?
A point to consider is that your company is not simply providing a product; but that it can help to shape the sector you are in. Having an internal or external team that can help with content creation is a requirement for any large brand and it is important to remember that it is a skill to make sure that the content appeals to your specific target markets. Areas such as global sensitivities, diverse cultures and of course multiple languages are all very important elements to getting it right. When growing a brand and producing content marketing you need to make sure your marketing team is ready to take on these challenges. Working with external partners if often the key to achieving accurate and considered pieces that work with your specific audiences and end goals in mind.
The Content marketing institute (the CMI mission is to advance the practice of content marketing) defines content marketing as: ‘a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.’ The CMI goes on to say that ‘Content marketing’s purpose is to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating relevant and valuable content with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behavior. It is an ongoing process that is best integrated into your overall marketing strategy.’
How you can greatly increase the success of your content changing or enhancing consumer behavior is to include localization and the very best translation practice strategies. Translation is the art of transforming your written content into multiple target languages. Localization is much more. Truly localized content is adapted so as to fully incorporate cultural nuance.
Organizations thrive on their ability to successfully monetize their products and services. Communicating value and informing potential customers are vital steps on the road to global commercial success. Ensuring that your marketing campaigns are effectively localized and accurately reflect your company’s message and values is a key success factor in this process.
Leveraging a culturally sensitive, linguistically skilled and international market-savvy linguistic team with an eye to the global market is imperative. We work closely with many of the world leading brands to get the true meaning of their brand for their company and help to mold that message for new international markets. For every new language, every new territory, we often need to re-craft and re-write the message while maintaining our client’s brand’s values and sentiment.
Simply put, we are all media companies now. The good news is that you can create strong global content for your brand in a cost-effective way. You don’t have to be experts in media content creation — you just have to know where to find it.