International digital marketing: strategies and tools

Description:

Digital marketing (also known as online marketing) refers to the use of any number of digital channels to advertise and promote products and services. It can also be very useful to approach consumers and understand their behavior. 

RACE is a practical framework to help marketers and business owners to plan and manage their digital marketing strategy and improve results from it. This framework consists of an initial planning moment, followed by 4 strategic phases covering the entire customer life cycle.


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Introduction. What is international digital marketing?

International digital marketing Click to read

International digital marketing (also known as online marketing ) refers to the use of any number of digital channels to advertise and promote products and services in a international market.

 

Its aim is to reach and connect potential customers through internet and any forms of digital communication. 

It can also be very useful to approach consumers and understand their behavior.
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Types of digital marketing Click to read

It is possible to classify the different types of digital marketing according to the channel used.
Website Marketing → Promotion of a website to drive relevant traffic to the site
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising → The advertiser pays a fee only when a user actually clicks on the advertisement
Content Marketing → Creation and distribution of valuable and relevant content
Email Marketing → Using e-mail as a means of communicating messages to the target audience
Social Media Marketing → Using social media to generate visibility and interactions
Affiliate Marketing → Process by which an affiliate earns a commission for marketing another person's or company's products
Video Marketing → Based on the use of the audiovisual image

 
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Multichannel and omnichannel models Click to read

Companies often choose to reach potential customers combining traditional and digital marketing techniques.

There are too ways to combine this types of marketing
channels:

 Multichannel: the use of all channels (physical store, mobile, online marketing) to contact customers without a connection between the channels.
 

 

 Omnichannel: a modality that provides seamless integration and response between the channels.
 
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Summing up Click to read

Summing up
International marketing refers to the promotion of products in a international market   Digital marketing refers to the use of digital channels to advertise products and services   It is possible to classify the types of digital marketing according to the channel used
               
There are too ways to combine this types of marketing channels: Multi and Omni channel models  
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Successful strategies for your digital marketing campaign.

RACE Framework: Plan Click to read

RACE is a practical framework to help marketers and business owners to plan and manage their digital marketing strategy and improve results from it. This framework consists of an initial planning moment, followed by 4 strategic phases covering the entire customer life cycle.

 

 

Nowadays, a lot of companies do digital marketing but many of them do so without prior planning and a well-defined strategy. However, planning a digital marketing strategy in a well-structured manner is essential for it to have good results at the lowest possible cost. It is advisable to take a data-driven approach when planning.
 
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RACE: Reach Click to read

At this stage, it is important to reach as many potential customers as possible by exploiting multiple types of channels, possibly with an omnichannel model. This is the time to create awareness of the brand, products and services.

 

The online marketing techniques that can be used are constantly evolving. One must continue to study them and stay up-to-date because our digital marketing strategy must include the latest online marketing techniques.
 
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RACE: Act Click to read

This is the phase to generate actions and interactions in one's channels (website, social media, etc.). Keep in mind that the aim now is to influence the behaviour and next steps of the audience reached in the previous phase.

The specific goals to be set depend on the type of company. 
Certainly the first is to generate leads. The others can range from getting interested and finding out more about the company and its products, reading the company blog, searching for products and much more. 
 

At this stage, content marketing can be very useful to entertain, educate, inspire and convince the potential customers reached.
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RACE: Convert Click to read

This is where the crucial step takes place: the conversion from action into sale (both online and offline) and from potential customer into paying customer.

 

This is a good time to exploit marketing techniques such as:

 Retargeting (or remarketing). Reaching out previous visitors;

Lead nurturing. Set of activities, actions or practices aimed at creating a relationship with contacts potentially interested in a product or service, through
the delivery of relevant and customized content;

 Website personalization. Creating customized experiences for visitors to a website tailored to their needs and desires;

 Conversion rate optimization (CRO). Process of figuring out what your visitors are looking for when they come to your website and ensuring that they find it.
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RACE: Engage Click to read

After the first purchase of a new customer, work on customer loyalty. The aim is to develop long-term engagement, commitment and relationship with the customer.

 

At this stage we have already collected enough data on the behaviour of the new customer. This data can be exploited to create hyper-personalised marketing campaigns and communications

 

This is also the right time to measure the percentage of active customers and their satisfaction level.
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Summing up Click to read

Summing up
RACE is a framework that can help to plan and manage digital marketing strategies   This framework consists of an initial planning moment, followed by 4 strategic phases   RACE stands for: Reach Act Convert Engage
               
It is advisable to take a data-driven approach when planning  
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Main tools

Social media marketing tools Click to read

1) Sprout Social: a social media management platform that helps business organise their content calendar, publish and schedule content across multiple platforms and according to when followers are most active, and simplify collaboration with colleagues and customers.
   
2) Loomly: this “brand success platform” is ideal to collaborate efficiently within marketing teams. It has a variety of features such as built-in calendars, content library, optimization guide and tips, post ideas based on trending topics, analytics and much more.
   
3) Audiense: this platform can help business in the processes of audience segmentation and targeting, and advertising by putting social listening, consumer segmentation and cultural understanding at the center of the marketing strategy.

 
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SEO (search engine optimization) tools Click to read

1) Ahrefs: an all-in-one SEO toolset: it has a project dashboard, site explorer, keywords explorer, site audit, rank tracker and content explorer.
   
2) Clearscope: a platform that provides a detailed editor to recommend keywords, headers and readability to help you write (or rewrite) high-ranking, well-balanced blog posts and optimize your existing contents.
   
3) SEMrush: This platform contains tools for social media marketing, content marketing and much more. In particular, it is also a great tool for SEO, as it allows you to track the position of your priority keywords and likewise explore new terms to rank for.
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Conversion optimization tools Click to read

1) Unbounce: an AI-powered landing page builder with smart features that let you create high-performing marketing campaigns in just a few minutes to turn more of your visitors into customers.
   
2) Optimizely: Optimizely Digital Experience Platform combines tools for visual creation and audience targeting to quickly run tests on different segments of your audience. It also allows you to test both major and minor edits to your pages and fine-tune your site for performance.
   
3) Hotjar: a platform with powerful marketing tools such as: heatmaps that visually represent where users click, move, and scroll on your site; actual video recordings of your visitor’s journey (scrolling, moving, u-turning, and rage clicking) on your site; live feedback and much more.
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Other useful tools Click to read

1) Sendgrid: a suite of tools to create engaging email campaigns.
   
2) Typeform: a platform that allows you to create forms, surveys, and quizzes that people enjoy answering. It helps you to keep your audience engaged and get more thoughtful responses and higher completion rates.
   
3) Canva: is a tool that allows you to create visual content with which to engage your audience and develop your brand. it is ideal for working in collaboration with other people, even without graphic design experience.
   
4) Powtoon: another very intuitive graphic tool that allows you to create videos and presentations with text, images, characters and animations. This platform also offers the possibility of working on your own projects in collaboration with others.
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Summing up Click to read

Summing up
There are several tools that can help to plan and manage the international digital marketing   The main ones can be divided in: Social media marketing, SEO and Conversion optimization tools   There are also useful tools that can help with the graphic aspects of marketing campaigns
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Recommendations and Tips. Do's and Dont's

General tips Click to read

Know your target audience  
  Get an insight into their behaviour, their demographics, and their taste. Try A/B testing and see what your audience likes and dislikes. Address your product to the right audience instead of the mass audience.
Know your brand and competition  
  When you invest in digital marketing, it is crucial to building a strong branding strategy and keeping a close eye on what the competitors are doing is unskippable.
Find the right channels  
  It is very likely that when opening up to a new market, the product has to be adapted to the new customer segments needs. Be prepared to make various adjustments not only in your product and service offering, but also in your marketing campaigns and business model.  
Create engaging content  
  Make sure you are using high-quality photos, selecting pleasing fonts and colors, and making them useful to your audience.  
Be consistent  
  This way your audience can regularly find your content and engage with it, and your consumers will know that you are active.  
Be flexible in the international market  
  Research  and find about the cultural values of the country in which you operate. You often need to change your marketing strategies (as well as your business model) according to the country. What works in your market may not work in other contexts.  
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Do’s and Don’ts Click to read

 

DO…

  

DON’T…

  
  Set realistic goals Be afraid to ask for professional help    
  Implement clear and concise calls-to-action Place quantity over quality    
  Invest in a business blog Spam or Overshare    
  Optimize for a mobile-friendly website Ignore or underestimate email marketing    
  Integrate personalization in your customer journey Be impatient    
  Keep your website updated Overlook video in your marketing mix    
  Create country-specific websites Forget to optimize for local search    
      Forget to double-check translations    
         
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Summing up Click to read

Summing up
It is advisable to know the brand, the target audience and the competition, and to find the right channels         It is advisable to create engaging contents, to be consistent and flexible in the international market
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Keywords

Digital marketing, marketing campaign plan and management, marketing strategies and tools

Objectives / Goals:

•    Learn about diferent types of digital marketing
•    Plan and manage a digital marketing campaign
•    Learn about the main marketing tools
 
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