For a strong global content marketing plan to arise, the plan requires extensive collaboration, close communication and hard compromises.
Marketing is all about business growth. Content marketing has the same initial goal but the business growth is from creating content that is educational, insightful, and/or entertaining with the target audience.
The content that is written should enable consumers to learn about, search for and purchase a business’s services/products.
It’s simpler to create a content marketing plan with one country in mind, or one region, but creating a plan that is cross-country or cross-regional is more difficult.
However, if extensive collaboration, close communication and compromises are made between headquarters and local offices, it can be done if these five factors are taken care of:
1. Business goals between headquarters and regions
Many are surprised to discover that the headquarters and regions’ goals may not always align.
Headquarters will usually demand higher sales quotas which the regions may not be willing to commit to.
Before any planning can take place, a correspondence should take place to ensure there is full alignment between headquarters and the regions.
2. Define country’s priorities
As companies do not have an unlimited marketing budget, not all of the planet’s countries have to be marketed.
The term ‘global’ is used loosely in some aspect, referring to targeting certain regions or countries, rather than a literal global scale.
The company will need to determine which region or country they desire to nurture and build its growth strategically.
By identifying key countries, it will encourage marketing teams to prioritise content planning efforts.
3. Agreements on personas
Certain personas may not apply to the industry or business, but because of the marketing plan being global, a buyer persona needs to be thought of and should apply to all regions.
Depending on if products are equivalent across regions, it’ll make sense to create a global persona, or if a product is highly localised with regards to local behaviours, a localised persona would be more suitable.
4. Create topics and content roadmap
A well thought out persona will provide insights into the audiences’ attitudes, thought process, purchasing behaviour, challenges, desires and aspirations.
Personas will eventually lead to content planning and creation: once a few wide editorial topics have been selected, for example, fitness, health, mobility etc. the planning can begin.
5. Think of country-specific marketing campaigns
Post agreement on business goals, personas and the county’s priorities, the different teams will be able to craft their marketing campaigns.
Each team, in the headquarters and regionally, should all be striving to achieve the same business goal.
A global marketing plan requires flexibility and adaptability, collaboration and coordination.
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