What are the key factors for optimizing international marketing?

I'd like to advise you that this piece of content is considered Top-of-Funnel. So, if you're a marketing director, I suggest you share this article on your networks.

If you haven't, I invite you to read on and write to me on LinkedIn to discuss this in more detail.
In this article, I'm going to outline the must-haves for optimizing your international marketing positioning. The list is of course non-exhaustive and applies to the local market too.
I've tried to be indifferent to the business model, except perhaps for point 2.

1. Know your competition

You've already identified your competitors, visited their LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, then checked out their websites. But do you have any idea how your competitors communicate with their target audience? What media do they use?
A tool like SimilarWeb allows you to make a comparison with your competitors and your industry, by analyzing their online strategy.
Is your battleground the Google search results page? Whether for SEO or SEM, the SEMrush platform will be the powder in your guns. This tool reveals your competitors' biggest secrets, such as the keywords used, the ads displayed and even a budget estimate.
If your budget is tighter, I recommend the extension Ghostery. This little addition to your browser lets you know what trackers are present on websites. If you see Facebook Custom Audience there, it's quite possible that your rival is accumulating data for remarketing or targeting a similar audience to their website visitors.
Finally, Owletter automatically captures all emails sent from a website to their mailing list. It then takes a screenshot, stores and analyzes it, alerting you to the email if it's important to you. You'll learn a lot about your competitors' email marketing behavior.

2. Define segments

What's your biggest account? Which companies do you want to do business with? How many of those accounts do you want?
You need to define the customer segments you want to reach, your ideal customer profiles, or ICPs. I recommend you have three, which we could separate into levels, or tier.
Normally, we establish these with basic information about these companies, such as industry, location, number of employees, size by revenue or company business model (B2B, B2C, B2B2C, D2C).
You can define your segments according to your marketing positioning. This is a little more subtle. What are the strong elements of your value proposition crossed with your target's needs? Are you offering something tailor-made, or are you integrating the same recipe?

3. Define personas

Personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers, based on data and research. They help you focus your time on qualified prospects, gearing your positioning to their needs.
We're talking about individuals here. Even if the company has needs and objectives, the individuals within it are very important, because they have their own needs and objectives, or aspirations. For example, a marketing assistant who wants to know how to create a marketing-plan.
In B2B, we often focus on occupation-based data. Like their roles and functions, responsibilities and goals, education and interests.
In B2C, it's more socio-demographic data, like age, sex and gender, household income, type of profession, family situation, and again, interests.
A fundamental question to ask when working on your personas: What media do they consume?
As a first step, open up your CRM. Look at the jobs and search job sites for job descriptions.
As a second step, interview these people to get a little more definition.
I suggest you complete a matrix, like the one suggested by HubSpot.

4. Personalize your communications

On the B2B sales side, it's easy to have one-to-one communication, but for marketing it's a little more complex. The more you know about a lead, the easier it becomes to segment and personalize your approach.

The ideal is to break down key messages by personas and by their position in the decision-making process. Personalization increases engagement with a given audience.

The SAQ's Inspire program enables consumers to receive a customized weekly newsletter. It features not only exclusive offers, but news and invitations geared to their segmentations.
The SAQ example is a very advanced level of personalization, but it's possible to get close.

5. Automate the approach

Procure yourself a Marketing Automation platform, such as HubSpot. These tools will allow you to accumulate data on your prospects and align yourself with the sales team.
Accumulate information that helps identify your audience's segments and personas, such as industry, their companies or their roles.
The more information you accumulate, the more you're able to qualify your database. In addition, your audience's engagement with your marketing actions can be seen as qualifying elements.
With sales, establish a lead feedback procedure. This will help you improve your approach.

6. Define the value proposition

I certainly won't settle the fate of your value proposition in these few lines, but here are a few pointers.
Simply put, your value proposition revolves around the problems you solve.
This isn't a what. Apple doesn't sell computers. We still remember the " Think Different " campaign, which was a response to IBM's "Think". Not so long ago, we laughed at the fact that the Cupertino-based brand had removed disk drives from their machines. Apple sells avant-garde.

Value Proposition Canvas

The Value Proposition Canvas is a tool for ensuring that a product or service is positioned according to the customer's values and needs. Widely used by startups, it is one of the frameworks, along with the Business Model Canvas, offered by Strategizer. The Value Proposition Canvas was originally developed as a framework for ensuring that there is a product-market fit. In this article we presented the elements of the Value Proposition.

Start with Why

Why are some people and organizations more innovative, influential and profitable than others? That's the question Simon Sinek asks in " Start with Why ". The framework proposed here is the Golden Circle. To sum up very quickly, we start with the why - your organization's raison d'être, the promised results. Then the how - your processes and actions that enable you to achieve the why. And finally, the what - your products and services.

7. Choosing channels based on personas

Earlier, we asked a fundamental question: what media do they consume?
This is where it gets important. There are a multitude of channels, both inbound and outbound.

The strategy to adopt is to be multi-channel and to rely on a three horizons model, as is common in strategic or financial planning.

In short, don't expect to see quick results with an SEO strategy, but it can be very beneficial for your business in a long-term horizon.
If you want to test your key messages and audience, start with ad buying.

8. Define KPIs

All marketing actions must be measurable and measured.

One thing's for sure, you want to produce Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL), but your work doesn't stop here. It would be more important to generate Sales Qualified Leads (SQL). In short, producing SQL will force you to work with sales, align and team up. Your KPIs need to be aligned, and you need to establish a feedback procedure to find out the status of your leads.
Beyond that, make sure you follow these few rules:

• Use rates and growth instead of total figures;
• Fix a recurrence to measure them;
• Choose a realistic and achievable target.

Finally, it's important to validate your assumptions made in the previous steps and adjust them. Coming back to them from time to time will keep you focused and consistent in your tactics.

In conclusion

One of the first questions we ask with new consulting mandates at Parkour3 is about the existence of personas. This information gives us a big clue about a company's "marketing maturity", and goes a long way towards guiding the mandate.
What's your impression of this article? Are you enlightened? What is your marketing maturity ?
Once again, I invite you to share this article on your networks or to contact us for your digital marketing support needs!