If you’re planning to take your brand beyond domestic markets, you need the right talents on board. And by talents, we’re talking about influencers who already have an engaging community.
Compared to traditional adverts, influencers have a better reach and would help you penetrate the international market without hassle. One unique thing that makes influencer marketing unique is that it isn’t affected by ad blocks.
You’re sure of getting the needed traction with the right talents on your team. In addition, your influencers will bridge the cross-cultural flubs and language barriers that can affect your entry. However, there’s more to unpack.
If you stick to the end of this guide, you’ll learn five incredible tips that would help you to penetrate the international market using influencers successfully.
1. Study The Demographics
Before you pack your team to conquer China, you want to first know about the locals. You need a clear idea of your demographics in terms of age, ethnicity, income, and occupation, including their pain points and possibly, most profound desires.
When you know your audience, your audience knows. Through in-depth knowledge of your new target audience, creating content and products that resonate with them becomes easy peasy. Most of all, it will give you an idea of the perfect influencer for your campaign.
However, to successfully penetrate the international market, you will need to hone in on individual regions. Often, populations across a region are believed to be homogenous. But that is not usually the case with the various levels of conformity and diversity seen in the different areas.
Understanding these diversities is your ticket to dominance cause; and influencers which have grown a big follower base in the region you want to penetrate will make your brand resonate better with the locals.
2. Local Vs. International Influencers
When you’re in a new market, do you work with local or international influencers? If your company’s goal is to dominate a certain region or country, the best connection point is local influencers.
That is because these influencers understand the market better than you. So while you focus on the features and benefits that your product offers, your influencers will be in charge of making sure your message resonates with your ideal audience by incorporating cultural nuances.
So, local influencers are the best to work with if you want to conquer new territory. But, of course, that doesn’t mean there won’t come a time for an international influencer to play a role. Our take here is to first start with local influencers and then scale up to international ones. This strategy was followed by the likes of Daniel Wellington.
3. Influencers As Brand Ambassadors
Marketing is an integral part of your business, so you have to think long-term when dealing with influencers. When you find the right influencers to work with, making them ambassadors means they’ll stick around for a long time.
So try to avoid one-off collaborations and offer them a long term partnership where they get part of the money they generate for you.
With a long-term contract, you discover that these influencers are ready to reduce their influencer pricing to suit your budget. With local influencers working to position your product, such as differentiating your products from competitors, you have nothing to worry about.
Note that your influencers might not be the ones with the biggest social media followings. Studies have shown that a smaller audience equals better engagement and conversion. So don't worry much about their followers but rather their engagement rate.
4. Monitor Performance
While influencer marketing is undoubtedly a formidable strategy, you will also need to lay out a detailed measurement strategy. Gone are the days of blinding paying influencers money for the sake of vanity metrics.
You need to set goal-oriented KPIs, even before deciding on the ideal influencer to work with. The top influencer marketing KPIs to analyze your campaign performance include:
- Audience growth
- Impressions & Reach
- Mentions
- Engagement rate
- click-through-rate
- Sales
- Referral traffic, etc.
It’s good to make it a habit to check the performance of every campaign and assess how each influencer contributed to your campaign KPIs. In marketing, everything is about A/B testing, including the influencers you work with. Some of the tools that you can use include:
- BuzzSumo
- Klear
- Famepick, etc
Something that will help you track your results will also be a discount code for your followers so you can check how many of their followers actually bought your product.
5. User-Centric Marketing
Klarna is a financial technology unicorn transforming how consumers shop and pay for products online. In the sea of brands, Klarna’s marketing strategy went in different directions, such as speaking to the emotional nature of their customers and providing a superior checkout experience.
But one of their best strategies was to partner up with local influencers first and then establish long term relationships with international influencers such as Snoop Dog for their "smooth" campaign and lately with Lady Gaga.
Since it was founded in 2005 in Stockholm, Sweden, Klarna has continually adapted as older generations adopt online shopping. They have also joined emerging platforms like TikTok, connecting with their consumers through their various favorite platforms.
To penetrate the international market, you need to do what Klarna did by being user-centric, and combine this with an influencer marketing strategy to make users and potential buyers resonate with your brand.
Takeaway!
With the advantage of speaking directly to your target audience through the voices they trust, influencer campaigns have been the most effective way to penetrate the international market successfully.
The fact is, it’s not always rosy. However, with the right talent and resources, it wouldn’t be so hard to pull. All hands will be on deck to make this happen, and the more significant part of your job will be ensuring that every member of your team is working together for the common goal.
No matter what happens, we’re here to guide you every step of the way. We’re consistently publishing helpful guides such as this, so feel free to subscribe to our newsletter to never miss an update.
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