Can Content Marketing Build Exports?

By Alan Boyce, Managing Director, Axonn Media

Everyone’s heard of content marketing

LAST

Some of you are doing it, some are thinking about doing it and others have written it off as a fad or the latest internet hype story

LAST

BACK THERE

Content marketing isn’t a fad. It’s a proven technique

62% cheaper than conventional

marketing and generates three times as many

leads.* * Demand Metric, November 2013

Conversion rates average x6 higher

for content marketing

adopters vs. non-adopters.** Kapost, November 2013

78% of chief marketing officers

believe custom content is the

future of marketing.*

* Demand Metric, November 2013

Declaration of interest!

My company is a content marketing agency and we provide outsourced content marketing services and expertise. So I would say all that, wouldn’t I?

BUY OUR STUFFI can’t deny it: I have a professional interest in convincing people to do more content marketing. Specifically, to outsource their content marketing.

Precisely, to outsource it to us.

BUY OUR STUFFPLEASE

However, everything in this presentation applies no matter who does your content marketing. This technique appears to be simple and straightforward, but it’s notoriously tricky to get right. CMI research found 58% of people doing content marketing believed it was not as effective as they had expected it to be – so “how” remains a very important question to resolve.

So in this presentation I’ll cover:•The case for content marketing•The problems British companies often experience in beginning to export or in growing their export markets •Why the opportunities online offers makes it worth overcoming those obstacles•How content marketing approaches can make it, if not easy, then at least clear what needs to be done •Examples from Axonn Media’s experience in selling our services abroad and in providing content marketing services for businesses in the UK selling overseas, and for overseas businesses selling in the UK and in third countries.

Content marketing treats its audience as an equal partner in a dialogue rather than a passive “mark” to be taken advantage of.

Whether it’s paying Google to position your results prominently or trying to trick Google into doing so (by cloaking ten years ago, by keyword stuffing five years ago or by unnatural link building a couple of years ago) – it’s all essentially the pushy salesman jamming his foot into the audience’s mental door; of getting the message across whether it’s something the audience wants to hear or not.

Content Marketing vs Interruption MarketingInterruption marketing says “you want what I’ve got? Well you can’t have it, until you’ve done what I want” and it may or may not give you what you were after, once it has pitched you.

Content marketing says “here is what you wanted. Now that I’ve given that to you, will you do something for me?” It treats the audience as an equal partner.

Content marketing is eclipsing and will continue to eclipse interruption marketing.

For example: This poster on a bus stop has a QR code. Viewers can choose to interact with content that is valuable to them. If they choose to do this and the content fulfils their needs, they are better disposed towards the business or product that gave them something they valued without insisting on taking anything in return.

Be interestingto make people like you

then they might do what

you want

We believe there are 3 factors every organisation needs to succeed in content marketing.

Every organisation has some capacity for each of these already. The trick is to get them into the right balance to achieve the results you want.

Getting

GREAT IDEASthat

RESONATE WITH THE RIGHT PEOPLEin front of

THOSE PEOPLEleading them to

CHOOSEto do

WHAT YOU WANT THEM TO DO

What does this have to do with exports?

The simple answer is that an online presence can be an incredibly effective and relatively inexpensive bridgehead for taking a product or a service into a new market. Online offers an incredibly powerful sales and marketing platform with very low entry costs and unhampered by physical distance. And content marketing is the most cost-effective way of getting the most out of that platform.

UK growth is projected to be below the worldwide average in coming years – although if you leave out China, Indonesia and India, which distort the figures a lot, it remains ahead of trend – for this one segment (B2B ecommerce sales) at least.

Every country is adopting online as a business platform at different rates, and along different curves – curves that are the products of history, technology, law, domestic economics, and culture as well as being affected by what everyone else is doing.

Globalisation is not spreading evenly and it doesn’t spread in a linear way and Western European businesses are among the best-positioned in the world to take advantage of these disparities, thanks to the relative maturity of our online economies, stability of jurisprudence and more advanced technical infrastructures and skills bases.

Less than a third of UK SMEs are active in overseas

marketsOnly a quarter plan to

increase their activities in 2014*

* Baker Tilly, January 2014

58% of businesses say language is the biggest barrier to exporting, according to Global Lingo. An offshoot of this is differences in “business culture”.

Law and how it works in other countries is another big concern

Was Pepsi’s 1960s slogan “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” really translated into Chinese as “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave”?

And how did Coca-Cola become “Bite the Wax Tadpole” in China?

The problem goes deeper than language. there is the problem of speaking clearly to another culture, of which a foreign language is just a very prominent but partial expression.

Something to consider...“Merry Christmas” is easy to translate, but did you know for Orthodox Christian countries like Russia, Christmas is on January 7 not December 25? So what happens if all your customer service operators disappear on holiday just when the local shopping season hits its peak?

The number of English speakers online has grown by 300% in the last ten years – but the number of Spanish speakers has grown by 800%, the number of Chinese speakers by 1500% and the number of Arabic speakers by 2500%.

There are 2.4 billion web users worldwide.

English is the native language of just 26% of them. *

* NewsReach, 2013

http://www.newsreach.co.uk/how-far-does-your-content-reach/

Access the interactive infographic by NewsReach here

http://www.newsreach.co.uk/how-far-does-your-content-reach/

It shows how far various languages reach worldwide. English and Chinese can reach more than half of the world’s web users. These two, plus the next 8 most-spoken languages, give you access to 81% of them.

But does that matter? Don’t all foreigners speak English anyway?

Only 18% of web users would be comfortable purchasing in a non-

native language.42% would NEVER buy in any

language other than their own. *

* European Union, 2013

Being understood isn’t the same as doing business!

85% of people are more likely to buy from a site in their local language

54% deem localisation more important than price

[CSA Research]

Welcome to my

Lebenswelt

Only 18% of web users would be comfortable purchasing in a non-

native language.42% would NEVER buy in any

language other than their own. *

* European Union, 2013

Edmund Husserl’s Lebenswelt (“lifeworld”)The set of intersubjective rules and norms that exist between people who understand each other. It’s more than just a language and includes cultural norms, etiquette, expectations of behaviour etc.

To market to somebody in the most effective way, you have to be seek admission to their lifeworld.

- More than 85 localised websites - More than 35 different languages - More than 75 different currencies

Source: A Christmas Story: Content Marketing for Ecommerce Success in a Multicultural WorldDownload here: http://bit.ly/HOdVUS

And then: the law

Some considerations

- Taxation - Consumer protection regimes- Freedom of speech- Privacy- Cookies- Personal data- Cultural attitudes to law and arbitration- Business culture

And not all products and services lend themselves to exporting

SO WHY BOTHER?

FINEST ONLINE MARKETING EXPERTISE

Online marketing is one of the few sectors where we can truly say that British businesses have a real competitive advantage

English is the lingua franca of the internet, even if that doesn’t translate into sales. That means the English language internet is far more advanced and far more competitive than its equivalent in any other language. We have a big advantage and a finite window of opportunity.

Content marketers should hardly be intimidated by exporting at all, because successful content

marketing is about building pathways to engagement and interaction that recognise the

differences between the needs of different audience segments.

Most content marketing is premised on catering for the needs of multiple audience personas.

Your online presence exists to facilitate a desired range of interactions between you and

your audience, which are stereotyped to a degree.

Online Presence

But your audience is not a monolith, just as there is no “rest of the world”.

You must segment your audience to address different needs and desires.

If you try to speak to everyone, you’ll end up speaking to no one.

Sales

Lead Gen

Brand Awareness

Customer Service

And having done so, approach the segments that are most likely undertake and complete your desired tasks in ways that encourage those desired behaviours in people like that.

Sales

Lead Gen

Brand Awareness

Customer Service

For good content marketers, a foreign audience is just another segment, and a new set of personas to develop and serve – it’s a difference of degree, not of kind.

Content marketers already think like this and so are better positioned to help exporters than other kinds of marketer, online or offline.

:

In summary:1. Partner locally to transcreate, not

translate

2. Restrict the number of markets you

enter at once

3. Test the waters, adapt

4. Don’t be afraid to communicate

Partner locally to transcreate – not translate

Restrict the number of markets you enter at once

Partner locally to transcreate – not translate

Restrict the number of markets you enter at once

Test the waters, adapt...and don’t be afraid to communicate

COINCIDENCE!

New eBook on Persona Development out June 16th from

Sign up for our newsletter at www.axonn.co.uk

ANOTHER COINCIDENCE!August 14 webinar: “Think Local, Act

Global: How To Implement A Multilingual Content Strategy” from

Sign up at https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/43/114303

ALAN BOYCE, AXONN MEDIA• Twitter - @boycealan• LinkedIn -

linkedin.com/pub/alan-boyce/9/298/538

• Web - axonn.co.uk• Email –

alan.boyce@axonn.co.uk