1) Perform Your Due Diligence

Before launching your marketing campaigns, you’ll need to conduct detailed research on your target overseas market. This entails knowing your competition and gathering details on your target market, including its purchasing power, tariffs, logistics, and legislation. Statistics websites, trade journals, and trade associations can be great sources of information.

You can check out sites like UN Comtrade Database and Worldbank for global trade data. You can also use Google to conduct competitor research - search companies online and concentrate on their products or services, their pricing, unique selling points, strength, and limitations.

2) Set Up a Diverse Team

For you to crack an overseas market, you must have in-house professionals who understand that market. The in-house team of experts should consist of individuals who are natives of that country or have lived and worked there for some time. You’ll need to readjust your hiring process to support cross-cultural teams.

On the same breath, your company culture must evolve to fully capitalise on such diversity rather than getting threatened by it. A good international PEO service can help your business build a competent cross-cultural team that’s knowledgeable of your target market.

 3) Tailor Search Engine Marketing to Suit the Local Usage

 Global search engine marketing is a blend of selecting the best search engines, creating content that resonates with the locals and choosing native keywords.

• Select the Best Search Engines: Find out the search engines used in your target market. The three prominent search engines, Google, Bing, and Yahoo, allow you to reach English-speaking customers. But if you’re targeting a non-English speaking market, you must take advantage of local search engines.
• Create Content that Resonates with the Local Market: Simply translating your website into local languages is akin to delivering second-rate content to your global customers. This can be a recipe for failure. So ensure you create content in the language of your target market. Consider enlisting the services of a professional content creator who not only lives but also speaks the native language of your target market.
• Choosing Native Keywords: When it comes to targeting international audiences via search engines, you shouldn’t concentrate on just translating keywords into local languages. Instead, partner with native speakers who are competent in search marketing to help you identify the right native keywords to incorporate into your website along with its content. Bear in mind that keywords are condensed thoughts that Internet browsers use to search for specific kinds of content. So culture plays an important role in determining the kind of keywords used in a particular country. That’s why you need to work with local search marketers.

4) Customise Social Media for Multiple Languages

Once you’ve expanded your business to multiple markets, you should find ways to reach your international audience through social media. Below are a few tips for some of the leading social media networks.

• Facebook: You can choose to create either one or multiple pages. With a single brand page, you can create updates based on location and language. The upside of this strategy is that users see targeted updates by just checking their news feeds. The disadvantage is the likelihood of confusing people who check your page and find content in different languages.
• Setting up multiple pages allows you to localise each page for each market. This strategy takes more time and resources, as different logos and text must be developed for each page.
• Twitter: If you’ll tweet in different languages, then having multiple Twitter accounts is the best move. This reduces confusion with users who don’t understand the multiple languages you tweet in.
• YouTube: Creating video content in different languages is an effort-intensive task, but it helps you reach your customers in a language they understand.  If that’s impossible at the moment, add subtitles to your videos and you’ll still reach a bigger audience.

Although the international market offers loads of lucrative opportunities, it completely changes the marketing process by bringing in diverse target audiences. To succeed in such a market, you must revise your marketing strategy to align with the unique needs of your target audiences.