Taking your brand global is an exciting initiative, but comes with significant challenges. Expanding into other parts of the world presents hurdles different from any you’ve experienced before.
Rhythm is currently working with one of our clients, Green Boom, to help its business grow overseas and wanted to share some learnings through the years.
While this article will share tips for U.S. companies to make international connections, there are basics that must first be considered for maintaining your brand overseas. You need to meet customer needs while still keeping your brand consistent and recognizing cultural differences, which is easier said than done.
Branding tips to remember when you’re going global.
- Establish brand guidelines that are consistent and shared with everyone who will represent the brand in any way and ensure adherence. A key tactic for doing this is to establish a series of marketing templates that reside on a shared Drive that can be customized to fit the needs of the partner.
- Emphasize your core values through every aspect of the global expansion. This strategy consists of both customer-facing and internal elements.
- Be aware of culture & language differences before entering any region or country. Take the time to research any aspects of culture or language that may affect how their brand is perceived. In addition, conduct a legal assessment to avoid inadvertently breaking any rules or regulations.
- Keep it customer-focused to ensure your brand resonates with the new customers you’re attempting to reach. It may require small adjustments to better appeal to customers in different regions.
- Optimize your approval process to make it easy for employees to easily submit materials during the approval.
- Promote consistent internal communications to orchestrate a global brand expansion, a company needs a strong internal communications system to ensure that all offices, departments and employees are on the same page.
For those expanding overseas, international connections are a great way to enter new markets. Unfortunately, establishing an international network can be a real challenge if you don’t know anyone outside of your home country. So how do you meet people and create a trusted network of business connections outside your immediate area?
Consider the following ideas:
- Join International Business Organizations
- Attend Conventions and Trade Shows in Other Countries
- Partner with organizations that have overseas representation and brand extensions
- Take Advantage of Government Assistance
- Engage New Markets with Social Media
Cross-cultural communication isn’t necessarily easy, but it is worth making the effort to achieve success. Whatever your career or business goals happen to be, you’re likely to reap the rewards if you’re able to draw on a sizable international network of colleagues for exchanging information, sales leads and advice, and enjoying mutually-beneficial relationships.
Rhythm can help navigate the international GPS with your team.
