Marketers love to create and set their strategy but when it comes to delivering the campaign globally, they come across some hurdles. The complexity of making the big idea work across multiple markets and languages makes some people believe that the very concept of global marketing is a misnomer and it’s not practical to deliver multilingual brand campaigns. However, the big ideas can be rolled out across borders if you spend as much time planning how to make your marketing campaign go global as on the creative side.
Giving full focus to how you’ll implement your global campaign will cut costs and stress while keeping the campaign on schedule. 80/20 is a great rule when you’re looking at strategy but when considering how to implement your campaign, it’s got to be 100%.
Follow these 4 steps, and your global campaign is guaranteed to succeed:
Create Once, Implement Globally
Managing marketing collateral, and making sure local teams have all they need takes knowledge, skills and patience. You’ll need to collaborate with them closely, combining ‘on the ground’ knowledge and global understanding, to tailor campaigns that fit different territories.
You should adapt and localise creative assets centrally and apply in-market Quality Assurance (QA) and testing. The process must ensure that the campaign messages really say what you want them to say in every language required, not just in the home market. Working closely with the local teams is critical.
Having a global creative brief that all marketing teams can work from avoids massive reworking in market. In addition you should understand the creative toolkit needs for each market; be open to developing toolkits that work for larger, medium and smaller markets.
Smart localisation and campaign adaptation will deliver better results, protect your brand globally, and save money, time, and stress for yourself and stakeholders.
Check The Teams
Successful implementation depends on having the right blend of people, so it’s important to check that your teams have the right balance and make any changes needed.
The best campaign ideas can become unintelligible when they cross cultures or languages because local teams may not have a firm understanding of the culture where the big idea was generated and vice-versa.
To overcome any resistance to the campaign concept, work with local teams early in the process to define the best ways to collaborate creatively within a global plan that has the creative concept as a guide. This way, you should also avoid costly, time-consuming revisions in different markets.
At the heart of the teams, you should have forward-thinking and agile project managers, headed by an experienced and knowledgeable Project Lead, to deliver the most effective management and communication.
They will maintain consistency while facilitating the flow of knowledge between translators, validators, developers, client stakeholders and creative agencies. With their guidance, everyone will know their campaign goals and tasks, clear sign-off processes and methods for resolving issues.
Be Clear On Budgets
If you want the marketing teams to take your marketing campaign global effectively and confidently, sort out the budget details at an early stage to make sure your people know where the money is coming from and who has ownership and allocation rights. With this knowledge, regions will not need to guess campaign budgets, which can lead to wasteful creative production.
Choose The Best Tools
Make sure you choose valuable global marketing tools and technology.
Prioritise a single, secure and robust Digital Asset Management system, accessible to both partners and agencies.
Also invest in an inclusive campaign management and collaboration platform to efficiently manage the complete campaign process.
Other tools like translation memory and workflow, video subtitling and web-based CMS translation software will also help you to implement global campaigns effectively.
In Summary:
- Create once, implement globally
- Check the teams
- Be clear on budgets
- Choose the best tools
There is an undeniable ROI from spending as much time planning how to deliver a brilliant campaign across multiple markets as on the initial creative concept. Through implementation planning, costs are kept under control and campaign delivery is less stressful
Want to know more? Make sure to download our guide on Taking Your Brand Global.