International content marketing for global web sites

The pressure of the international SEO competition and the new rules of marketing have changed the rules of global e-business. Companies looking to go abroad are increasingly struggling to invent new ways in order to attract foreign buyers through inbound marketing strategies. Global content marketing is the basis of online marketing campaigns targeting foreign markets.

A recent study of Fortune 500 companies showed that companies with localized content were two times more likely to increase profit. Localization of content is critical for engaging audiences outside of your home country. Leads in other markets expect you to deliver value through great content.

On the web, international search depends on optimized content, and social engagement is boosted by shareable content. When targeting foreign markets, your company needs to produce multilingual content to:
– to be found in search engines at an international level: you need content that matches the right query, that
– to build awareness on social media: that means content that is emotionally stimulating and likely to be shared, that is viral and engaging
– to actually close the sale: content that is authoritative that educates and informs, that provides value, content that changes minds of your foreign customers
International content marketing is about sharing relevant knowledge with your target customers abroad through the language they speak, the information channels they prefer, the trust anchors they believe in and shaped in a way they respect, to win their confidence and improve your company’s credibility.

By creating interesting information and great content, people are becoming aware about your brand and they actually start paying attention to it. Also, by sharing content related to what your company sells, people are getting educated so they are becoming aware, liking and trusting the brand enough to do business with it.

International or multilingual content marketing could be defined as a pull rather than push marketing, which makes people aware of how to solve their problems, with the ultimate goal to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience. Great global content marketing boosts your international SEO strategy, and increases brand awareness. With the development of great content, interested foreign potential customers return again and again, and the company achieves goals such as building traffic, adding revenue, and generating sales leads.

Listening foreign markets first

Analyzing which content performs best for any market is always the first step. Openvalley uses specific tools for content marketing intelligence. We are able to find the most shared content over a period of time across different markets and social media platfoms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, or Google+, and we are then able to find out the contents that match your foreign customers interest: this information is really useful to start producing new content on a regular basis.

Evaluate foreign competitors content marketing strategies

There is a lot to learn from your competitors . Prior producing local content targeting foreign markets, it can be helpful to track and evaluate your competitor’s content performance. By reviewing the most shared content of your competitors, we get useful insights on the type of content that performs well on a foreign market.

Leverage existing content

It can also be useful to analyse the current content that attracts new visitors to your current website, and converts them into customers. We can analyse your traffic data to see which content is performing well. We will use these information to create original content on a similar subject,crafted to the local markets that you are targeting. Translating your content word-for-word isn’t always enough to reach an audience in foreign markets, and we’ll need to localize it.

Creating great multilingual content

Creating content that is both relevant and valuable to your international target audience is at the very heart of effective content marketing. This can be very challenging when we are dealing with multiple languages and cultural differences. It iscertainly not as simple as throwing your content through an automatic translation program and hoping your message still gets across. There can be a lot more work involved, but it’s undoubtedly worth the effort and the Openvalley team has the experience to créate successful content.
Types of content:
Different content has different objectives and typically a piece of content will support one or two parts of the sales funnel as we can see below.

(source: Buzzsumo)

Topical authority

With the explosion of content marketing, more and more companies are producing content. To be great at content marketing, you have to write great content, build a loyal audience, educate that audience, convert them to paying customers, and support them with even more content. All of this content means that the competition to get your content read has never been greater. Most companies have not understood how Google is evaluating their content in organic search..
Link authority has been, and still continues to be, the primary driver for high ranking content on search engines. But recently, Google has been moving away from only looking at links by adding new algorithms that focus on“topical authority”. The more comprehensive coverage your site has on specific topics (i.e. the higher your topical relevance) , the higher Topical Authority you’ll get from Google and the higher you’ll rank in organic search. The Openvalley team can support your company in the process of building topical authority for the foreign markets you are targeting.

Fresh content in a multilingual context

One of the challenges of an international content marketing strategy is to produce fresh content on a regular basis. There is nothing worse, when you visit a company website, that nothing has been published for the last few moths . very update made on a website plays a part in its interaction with search engines, visitors, and customers. A website without updates of any kind may be viewed by search engines as not valuable. Fresh content means frequent Indexing, and Google loves fresh content. That can be a real challenge for companies to publish fresh content in multiple languages on a regular basis. The Openvalley team is made up of native specialists that can help in creating such content to target international audiences.

Get in touch with influencers, build local communities around your content

Once amazing local content has been produced and published, out team works to drive traffic to your website. Influencer marketing allows brands to connect with digital audiences in unprecedented ways. We then have to work on leveraging your content marketing campaigns, contacting with key local influencers. 93 % of marketers believe influencer marketing is effective in raising brand awareness, according to State of Influencer Engagement 2015. A that stage, the openvalley team gets in touch with local influencers who will resonate with your foreign consumers through strategic data analysis.

Many content marketers think that success depends on using a good translation agency or localization firm. However, this is not always true and some questions should be asked before creating international content for foreign markets.

Ready to expand your online business internationally ? For specific pricing rates regarding multilingual content creation, please contact our team directly.