By Al Gomez
Going global is perhaps the ultimate dream of many businesses. But for some reasons, small business owners perceived global growth as a “shoot to the moon”. They fail to really understand the in order to go global, you don’t need to have a deep pocket. Oftentimes, the simplest of things can be your ticket to enter the global market.
Although global growth can be overwhelming and daunting, it is shot worth taking. If you are ready to face the global market, here are some things you can do.
Viral Content Lasts, But Good Content Lasts Longer
The phrase “content is king” has been used so many times that it has become saturated. But despite how trivial the phrase has become; there are only a few startups who really realized how content can take their business to places. This is the very reason why most of them neglect the importance of good content to create a lasting brand identity.
Whether a business should prioritize virality or quality has been debatable. While many entrepreneurs or marketers believe that getting an instant hit could help make a buzz in the industry, only a few of them are actually aware that virality is not a long shot.
Viral content may be the ultimate big time, perhaps considered as the holy grail of content marketing by many. But have you ever asked yourself what’s next after getting viral? Just because people liked, and shared your content, doesn’t mean they stopped by to look at your brand in a buyer’s perspective. You have to follow up your viral content with quality content so you can encourage viewers or readers to take action.
Take for example, those cat memes. They may have thousands of shares and likes but is there anything about those kinds of contents that actually encourage readers to act? No.
In order to drive audience towards your business, it is not enough that you entertain them. You need to inform, entertain and persuade so you can tap into your them and effectively take them to the desired purchasing journey.
So rather than focusing on getting viral, focus on producing content that is relevant and useful to your market to achieve a long-term effect. Viral content? — It’s just a bonus.
Localized You Social Media Presence
We can no longer deny the fact that social media has indeed reshaped the global marketing landscape. Whether you like it or not, social media is now an essential component of the new consumer’s journey.
But in a global perspective, there are few who know how to utilize it for their startup business. Social media can be an effective tool to boost your presence both in a local and international scene. Here’s how?
Know their preferred network. Your target market from different regions has different preferences for their social networks. Just because your target audiences from the US prefer Facebook as their network, doesn’t mean it’s the same in Canada.
Take a brief look at recent survey and statistics and get to know which among the networks your target users use the most and capitalize on them.
Pay attention to social conversations. Traditional and cultural differences affect what people are talking about. There are tools like Hootsuite that allows you to add streams based on your assigned criteria like social channels, location and keywords or hashtags.
This will allow you to listen to what your market is talking about and what they care about. Through social listening, you can personalize your social campaign. This can help you tailor your updates and posts according to their interests.
Find the right timing.
The best time to post on Facebook is not the same as the best time to post on Twitter and Instagram. Also, your current location could be hours behind or ahead of your target locations. You need to figure out the best time to post your contents and adjust your time of posting based on your target location’s time zone. Don’t worry; there are plenty of social media schedDon’t be surprised to know that your social media post will not last long. Chances are the contents your shared will only be slumped by newer feeds and updates.ulers and tools you can use to help you automate your social media updates.
There is no secret sauce in effectively using social media for global marketing. With proper research, you can steadily build your momentum and use social media to your advantage.
Join the Gig Economy
These days, global workforce is dominated by Millennials. This is a generation that prefers a digital workplace rather than the traditional offices. These Millennials grew up with technology; they have innate marketing skills which your business can benefit from.
It is easier to launch or implement a localized campaign if there are local people working with you. Targeting Millennial workforce from your target location can help you connect and communicate with local audiences, even when you are inactive.
It may be a risk to bring in freelancers but let’s face the fact that as an entrepreneur, you can’t do everything yourself. With remote workers or freelancers, you can implement the best possible campaign suited for certain locations, deliver your message across and take your business to the global market.
Summing Up
While there is no easy way to tap into the global market, it isn’t that hard either. All you need is the right mindset. There are hundreds of ways to take your business to the next level but you don’t have to jump into all of them to achieve growth.
Don’t be superficial either ambitious. Choose the ways which are within your capabilities and utilize your available resources. Be true to your business and little by little, you can take the next steps towards global business growth.
Al Gomez is a Digital Marketing Consultant at Dlinkers and Sagad. With more than twelve years of digital marketing experience in search engine optimization, paid search and email marketing, he has contributed to a variety of online publications including Moz, Semrush and Wordtracker.
