If you are thinking of entering new markets, then making the website multilingual, translating product documents and successful local campaigns might not be enough.
Global branding is a much wider topic. Building a global business for the long run requires a strong brand, multilingual online presence, and user support in different languages—many important aspects. We will try to help explain the essential ones.
Brand as a Concept
Local vs. Global Brand
Product-Market Fit
Tips for Building a Global Brand
Collect Information and Analyze It
Build a Brand Strategy
Understand the Audience
Write a Brand Promoting Message
In-depth Market Research
Create a Unique Corporate Identity
Be Consistent in your Branding
Build a Strong Relationship with Customers
Keeping Pace with Times
Promote Your Brand in the Market
Brand as a Concept
A brand is an identifying symbol, mark, logo, name, or slogan that organizations use to distinguish their product from others. A brand's unique image can successfully stand out from the clutter and attract thousands of customers' attention. A brand name can create and stand for loyalty, trust, or mass-market appeal, depending on how the brand is marketed, advertised, and promoted.
Having a successful brand can differentiate a product from other similar products and communicate with the customers. It is a kind of intangible asset through which consumers choose and buy a product and recommend it to others. Within the branding framework, a set of activities is carried out that form a springboard for marketing communications between the seller and the consumer.
Local vs. global brand
Building a brand globally generally requires a well-versed approach, time, budget, patience, and hard work before you can welcome customers from almost anywhere in the world.
Unlike local brands, global brands require localization. And localizing your product is hard and long-term work.
For the successful localization of a brand, it is necessary to maintain its values to the local people for any market you operate in.
To start with, let's check for the essential criteria for building a global brand:
targeting a well-defined audience assumes that you understand who you want to sell to, and you know what and how to say so that he/she would buy and want more.
building on a real business advantage assumes that you have a clear distinction from your competitors, and the brand communicates it to the buyer.
It helps to stand out among competitors and increase loyalty. However, nowadays, developing a global brand becomes more challenging due to thousands of brands appearing every day online.
A strong brand provides an opportunity to sell a product or service at a high price. It doesn't only explicitly increase the company's profits but also measures its economic benefit. However, brand development increases the added value of your service, and in some situations, provides the foremost opportunity to sell a product or service.
Such in-depth harmonious development of the brand allows it to keep pace with the times, grow, and strengthen its position.
Having a strong brand allows you to get talented specialists, better partners, and most importantly, loyal customers who love your products. It opens new opportunities and helps develop products further according to the people's needs across the globe. For many teams, it's motivating to have the chance to work on such ambitious projects.
The brand determines the company's weight and position in the consumer's mind. In the competition for customers, profits, and other benefits - organizations with a vital brand win.
Today, a brand has become more of a phenomenon than just a corporate identity or website on the Internet. It is a direct reflection of the role that the company plays in the market.
Branding determines what place the company will occupy among competitors, what level of service it will offer, with what target audience it will work. The company's task is to understand the company's position in the market and be able to convey it to others.
Product - Market Fit
The first and most crucial step in developing a brand globally is understanding the demand for products in other markets and customer behavior to achieve the desired product-market fit.
It implies a very long scheme of actions for the development of product-market fit across different markets. It works in five stages:
● Brand Positioning It is at this stage where the brand is just born. What niche it will occupy and what the company will strive for. For example, the famous Steve Jobs and his Apple company were born initially as "computers for everyone."
● Brand Strategy At this stage, an analysis of competitors, target audience, and other elements of the system is carried out. As a result, there is a perception of how the brand will be established in the future, including how it will reach consumers' minds.
● Brand Components It implies the brand's appearance, how consumers will see it, its name, trademark, slogan, and brand packaging. Inexperienced business people initially create a beautiful logo and then start thinking about where to put it on.
● Brand Promotion At this stage, a scrupulous and accurate action plan is created to promote your brand to the masses. Suggestions are made through advertising channels.
● Brand Management This step includes the main tools - analytics and monitoring of the state of the brand at the moment. After carrying out the test work, adjustments are made, if necessary. The primary tool for brand management is reputation management.
Sometimes it takes companies years and seven attempts to launch a product on the same market before achieving the product-market fit. Learning from your mistakes and never giving up is perhaps one of the most critical recommendations.
Tips for Building a Global Brand
● Collect Information and Analyze It
The first step towards building a global brand is collecting information and analyzing it. The ability to grasp a particular industry's development trends and consumer expectations is a strong base for the brand. It is necessary to correctly assess the evolution of use-cases and identify what consumers will need.
Nowadays, consumers spend more and more time on the Internet. Therefore, creating a more engaging brand will allow consumers to buy products from your site. And, it becomes possible if you conduct thorough research on the trendy market and apply it accordingly.
Here you can read more on market research and analysis.
● Build a Brand Strategy
The next step, after the research is done, comes strategic planning of the brand development. It means developing a solid plan to build a brand.
Among other things, the project should include the brand values and the goal you plan to achieve with it. The development strategy should match the specifics of your business as well as the mission and the vision.
The motive behind the business, nature, and type of services and product produced should shed light on target consumers.
● Understand the Audience
If you're new to the industry, ask yourself who you should target for the audience, who your ideal customers are, and how they would love your product/service. Also, find and analyze the work of your direct competitors. Before determining your target audience globally, it's recommended that analyze your products/services, branding strategy, customers/users, and how people interact with your online and offline business.
By narrowing down your target audience, you get an accurate idea of what you should invest in and set the desired result. After all, the wider the target audience, the more difficult it is to satisfy everyone's requirements. Therefore, to begin with, a small or limited group of customers is a smart decision in brand development. Once company reaches resultative and scalable model, growing your business is the next critical step.
Example of understanding the audience and scaling online ecommerce business.
Example: How does the ideal target audience look?
If your company sells t-shirts for men, one of your ideal target groups would be women between the ages of 20 and 45, who usually buy similar products for their sons, husbands, or boyfriends. It is just one example.
You can do the same for your product or service. The more thorough your research, the better results you get. And your ideal customers can become brand ambassadors.
● Write a Brand Promoting Message
A brand positioning message is a phrase or tagline that reflects your business offers, target audience, and brand benefits. It is a severe difficulty for many teams. Such brainstorm helps to understand your brand and how you want others to perceive it.
One creating the message, start with defining the three aspects:
● Your target audience
● The value your brand represents
● What you do much better than competitors
If you plan to launch your brand in different markets, you might slightly modify these definitions.
Once you've decided on your message, make sure it fits with your brand story and think about how it will evolve as your company grows. You can always come back to it and make it more accurate, unique, and brand-relevant.
● In-depth Market Research
Once you have decided on your target audience, the next step is to get to know your customers more closely, getting an accurate idea of their brand's expectations. It will help fill in small gaps that may not pop up initially but are very important for its future development.
You can achieve it through various methods, including statistical analysis, surveys, and online research.
Identify your research goals, choose the tools, channels, and survey your target group. Getting to know your target audience is an important step in exploring potential markets.
For example, social media channels can provide you valuable information to use when researching a potential audience.
Join local groups, read and follow the activities, problems, and delights of the target group!
Exploring your target audience is a time-consuming task, but it is essential for creating a global brand.
● Create a Unique Corporate Identity
Indeed, people usually recognize brands by their logos, corporate colors, and messages. Such recognizable brands have successfully developed their corporate identity. It is the dream of every marketer.
Therefore, if you already operate on the market, you need to conduct a brand audit to understand your brand position relative to competitors. It will give you an idea of how to proceed. You need to develop the creative elements of your brand.
Having a widespread brand awareness means more people become aware of its existence. It's is where brand identity will play a significant role. By targeting the right audience, impressing them, and creating an emotional connection, your brand is sure to be remembered. You can build your brand awareness, both online and offline, using a variety of channels.
So, brand identity is all about how people will recognize your brand. It is imperative to create it authentic and reflect your values correctly. A strong and creative brand identity should be an integral part of your branding strategy.
● Be Consistent in your Branding
A bold fact - consistency builds trust!
Of course, no one will trust a business that appears and disappears a month later. Continually making changes in your business and behaving unpredictably, people will not trust your brand. Therefore, it's necessary to maintain consistency throughout the cycle.
Maintaining your brand consistency straightly depends on your active teamwork. Here are some tips.
Make sure your team is well-aware of your brand values
Create motivation for team and friends to share these values
All team members can access your branding style guide and use your branding materials when creating any content
Prepare posts and it easy for your team to spread the news through different channels online
Stay consistent when it comes to branding strategy.
● Build a Strong Relationship With Customers
When it comes to establishing your brand successfully in the new market, it's primary to retain your existing customers compared to attracting new ones. Keep in mind that people do not like advertisement.
It's essential to set and maintain a long-lasting and strong relationship with them. Make sure your team is customer-centric and has exceptional communication skills, not just advertisement on their mind. They can communicate with customers and share the required brand information and solve customers' problems quickly.
But yes, there's one of the best ways to satisfy your customers: fulfill their expectations on time. When you know that your customers face problems, deal with solving them instead of talking to new potential customers.
● Adapt to New Markets
If your brand becomes known in several markets, its ability to individualize and adapt becomes more and more crucial. A brand cannot stick to the same marketing strategies and action plans forever and everywhere. Customer requirements change over time and might have different needs across the world.
As customers' requirements change, so do their needs. Market conditions and your brand's position can deteriorate if products do not meet customer expectations and needs. Therefore, keeping pace with the times, rethinking old strategies, and constant brand renewal are paramount for its development.
● Promote Your Brand Globally
The last but by no means the insignificant factor is marketing, promoting your brand on the market, starting from its attributes and products.
A consistent and well-planned marketing strategy is critical to reaching target customers and bringing a brand to market. With the availability of various social media channels, you can easily advertise your brand and reach a wider audience. The more your business grows, the faster the brand develops.
Brand positioning is about defining and describing your brand's position to the rest of the world. It allows the brand to take the desired place in the market. You wish to make people love the carefully crafted group of words that best reflect the brand and product. It's like love at first sight. When being focused on the brand's rational and emotional aspects, delivering the message to the right audience at the right time can create massive success for your brand on any market.
The message must be realistic and contain only those promises that can be fulfilled. It gives customers an idea of what the brand is and leaves them with the first impression. It is a decisive factor in determining the brand's value, position, and benefit in the client's eyes.
Wrapping Up!
When planning to create a global brand and engage in its development, you should understand that many failures, testing, learning, new attempts, and consistency is ahead of your journey. It's the work that requires professional discipline, specialized skills, and regular monitoring of the achieved result.
As a help for marketers on this challenging journey to create reliable and efficient multilingual content, we have built a translation platform TranslateWise.
Once your decisions are made and ready to scale, this web platform wight help you turn news, product descriptions, emails, terms multilingual.
Read more about other tools that help translate and localize the web, app, and different content types.