Many organizations aim to understand and adopt globalization strategies, such as global branding. Using global branding can help companies increase customer awareness, lower marketing and production costs, improve the value of their brand and ultimately raise profits. Learning more about global branding may allow the business you work for to market its products or services to people of different cultures and countries while keeping your branding consistent.
In this article, we define global branding, explore its benefits and potential drawbacks, explain various global branding strategies and offer tips on how you can develop your own international marketing campaigns.
What is global branding?
Global branding is the process of creating a brand image that's consistent in markets all over the world. The purpose of global branding is to help people from a variety of countries and cultures recognize your brand. While some brands choose to cater to a more local, centralized market, global brands choose to market to any country or region that carries their offerings. Their marketing and messaging stay the same all over the world, except for minor language or cultural adjustments. By keeping this branding consistent, global brands can share their values overseas and locally.
Benefits of global branding
These are some of the major benefits of global branding:
- Offers more consistency: Both brands and consumers can benefit from the consistency of global branding. While brands can spread their message across all continents, consumers can be sure they're getting the same quality of product whether they're in, for example, France or Brazil.
- Increases customer awareness: When the company you work for sells products around the world, more people may become familiar with your company's offerings. This familiarity may cause consumers to search for your product instead of one they haven't seen as often.
- Reduces marketing costs: Rather than changing your campaign based on local markets, your brand can save money on marketing by keeping your advertisements and messaging consistent around the globe.
- Saves on production costs: When you can keep your package design the same across the world, this can save your brand money on production costs. Along with saving money, this can contribute to less waste, which might be good for the environment.
- Improves brand value: Engaging In global branding can potentially increase the monetary value of the organization.
- Offers more economic stability: Companies that sell to more markets tend to have more financial stability. Even if one of their markets provides economic challenges, other segments in that company's diverse audience base may continue to purchase at the same pace.
- Optimizes profits: Ultimately, using an effective global branding strategy can increase your overall sales, which might boost revenue.
Potential drawbacks of global branding
Following are some of the potential disadvantages of expanding into international markets, along with some possible solutions:
- Duration: It can take a company months or potentially years to become established in a new market. If you want to expand into international markets, it's important to create a realistic schedule of how long it might take to develop your branding and increase sales in that market.
- Financial risk: Diversifying your target market can have an increased financial risk, as you might not see a return on your branding investment immediately. Before you decide to engage in a global branding strategy, make sure that you have enough in the budget to sustain your other marketing efforts for several months or longer.
- Legal issues: Expanding into international markets can sometimes mean encountering unfamiliar legal issues, such as those posed by local legislation. That's why it's crucial for companies to research any local or national regulations that might affect the distribution, marketing or sales of their products or services in international markets.
Related: 8 Tips To Help You Become a More Effective Global Leader
Strategies to build a global brand
Here are some strategies you can follow when building a global brand:
Be aware of translations
When developing a global brand, strive to be aware of different cultures across various regions and countries. The way that an audience interprets your marketing in one region may differ greatly from another. When creating your campaigns, devise content that's likely to appeal to consumers all over the world. Along with your marketing, think of how prospective customers might interpret your actual brand name in different countries. Do some research to see how it translates in different languages.
Along with competing against other global brands, try to be mindful of local brands you might encounter. Have your team conduct extensive research about all of your competitor's unique selling points, comparing your own to each one. Get to know what advantages your brand has and think of ways you can position yourself to be the best option in each market.
Expand your offerings
Instead of trying to be a niche brand, consider ways to reframe your branding to make it broader. Rather than capitalizing on one product you sell, for instance, you may want to release several products that cater to different parts of the market. As an example, soda brands tend to sell different variations of their products to meet the wants and needs of different types of consumers. They may sell diet soda for those who want a zero-calorie option, fun flavors for those who like to try new things and regular soda for those who prefer a classic taste.
Research customer behaviors
The way customers act can vary around the world. The factors that encourage consumers to choose one brand can be drastically different from region to region. By getting to know consumers' preferences in different markets, you can make more successful branding decisions. Get to know where people in your new international markets like to shop and why they choose to support brands. Likewise, get to know what kind of marketing messages are more likely to capture their attention and convince them to take action.
Related: Understanding Brand Guidelines: Tips and Examples
Tips for global branding
Use these tips to help improve your global branding efforts:
- Stay consistent. Rather than changing your brand's values to fit a local market, keep the most important aspects the same across all regions. While you may make some slight changes to fit within different cultures, your overall messaging ideally can convey the same emotional appeal and value proposition.
- Practice social responsibility. If you want a good reputation around the world, then try to align your brand with ethical business decisions. This means treating employees fairly, implementing sustainable business practices and giving back to those in need.
- Create brand guidelines. These guidelines can outline everything your brand represents or embodies. This might include your visual style, content style, vision statement and anything else that defines your brand's voice and overall tone.
- Invest in internal communications. Make sure your team is conveying the same messages, goals and expectations across all of your brand's locations.
- Hire local employees. Hiring people within your different markets can help you gain a better understanding of their culture and ways of doing business. Even working with local consultants can help your brand understand how these international markets work.
- Find the right tools. Keep your marketing streamlined by using different online marketing tools and software. Since you're working within different time zones, you may benefit from using a platform that can automatically launch campaigns and post to social media at designated times.