3 STEPS TO CREATING GLOCAL MARKETING

An ongoing struggle for large corporations with national or international audiences is whether or not to standardize their marketing campaign to stay in brand unison, or to customize their marketing campaign to reach individual local markets. According to the Harvard Business Review, “great advertising is both local and global,” and is exactly what Akio Morita, founder of Sony Corporation, had conceptualized when he coined the term “glocal.”

The term glocal describes when a company’s global marketing strategy provides overall clear brand standards while allowing flexibility to adapt to local markets. In order to stay relevant to consumers, businesses of any size must adopt a global approach in their marketing efforts. A perfect example of a corporation utilizing a glocal approach to marketing is Coca-Cola. Of the company and its glocal marketing strategy, the Harvard Business Review said:

The company’s “freedom within a framework” marketing philosophy epitomizes a successful glocal mindset and organizational culture and architecture. It requires that the designers of global advertising strategy carry a creative concept most of the way to execution while regional marketers tailor the work to make it locally relevant and aligned to the different category and brand situations in different places. Importantly, the framework respects and encourages local decision-making while at the same time supporting a unified brand identity.

So how can your company begin to glocalize your marketing efforts

Step 1: Get your marketing materials into a marketing asset management platform.

Moving your marketing materials into a marketing asset management system can provide many benefits, the most prominent being that you will save time and money – which is important for any business. By storing all of your information, communication and marketing materials in one place, you can make it quicker and easier for your marketing and sales departments to focus on the task at-hand, rather than combing through folders and emails for the documents they need. (For more information, check out the blog post “Save Time with a Marketing Asset Management System.”)

Step 2: Segment your customer database.

It is no secret than an essential part of making a sale is targeting the right message to the right audience. If you are a large company with multiple locations representing a wide variety of demographics, targeting the right audience can be a difficult task to accomplish.

A surefire way to bridge the gap between reaching your mass audience while staying relevant to individual groups is to segment your database list. There are hundreds of ways that you can break down your database list, but some of the most common are: geographic location, age range, line of business, and contact’s level of seniority within their business. For more information on segmenting your customers into lists, check out the blog post “How to Create an Effective Database List in 3 Simple Steps.”

Step 3: Create and send out relevant marketing materials.

Segmenting your audiences is a crucial step – but it can often be easy to get lost in translation when you are trying to reach segmented audiences. In many cases, local markets can perceive national or global efforts as being generic one-size-fits-all messaging. If you are a large company with a wide audience, you need to customize your marketing materials to reflect the individuality of each audience while still staying true to your national or global brand. One way to do this is to capture universal human missions that fulfill human needs and craft your message with local sensitivity.

Get Started Today

If your company wants to get started with going glocal to build a more relevant personal relationship with your customers and prospects, contact our full-service agency today to learn more about Conduit, our marketing asset management tool, and to receive a free demonstration. Conduit is a web-based tool that allows your company to create, edit, and manage user permissions to maintain maximum brand control while giving local customization options that tailor to your specific audience. Conduit is an excellent resource for marketing asset management, list management and more.

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