In your country, your target audience already knows your brand. They are familiar with your USPs, your brand values, and are convinced enough to proceed to purchase. But in a new market? That’s much harder. In countries like Germany and France, while there are undoubtedly customers with similar demographics and comparable GDPs, the challenge lies in making your brand as successful abroad as it is at home.
Online marketing and content marketing are indispensable when you want to perform across borders. They help create awareness for your brand and effectively target your ideal audience, ensuring that you can export your product to countries like Germany in no time.
1. Target a Select Audience
Perhaps the most important part of developing an international strategy is focusing on a select audience. The more you know about your ideal customer, the easier it becomes to tailor your content for them. Take Seepje’s content strategy, for example. They perform as well in Germany as they do in the Netherlands because they understand their German target group and recognize how it differs from the Dutch audience. That’s a job well done!
2. Share, Don’t Sell
Many companies fall into the trap of creating content that is essentially sales propaganda. Don’t get us wrong—there’s a time and place for selling, but that’s not what potential customers are looking for. Content marketing is about sharing valuable information with your audience, not just promoting your products and services.
Make sure your content isn’t overly commercial. Instead, focus on answering your customers’ questions and addressing their problems. Put yourself in their shoes—what would you want to know if you were a potential customer? Lastly, always include a “30-second elevator pitch” when creating educational content.
3. Be Consistent with Your Content
Having an active blog with original, quality content is crucial. Many companies aspire to run a blog that drives traffic, but they often neglect to commit the necessary time and resources to update it consistently.
How can you fix this? Make blogging a priority. Commit to posting at least once a week—every week. If you don’t have the time or resources to create the content yourself, consider hiring someone who does. This will ensure both frequency and quality are maintained.
4. Don’t Expect Immediate Results
If you’re looking for instant results from content marketing, you’re likely setting yourself up for disappointment. Many businesses fail to realize that content marketing is a long-term strategy. It’s not designed to give you a quick sales boost, but rather to build a foundation that will yield results over time.
Feeling discouraged? Remember that Calvin Klein took about 20 years to establish their brand value, evolving far beyond just high-end fashion to become synonymous with values like equality. If they can persevere, so can you.
5. Don’t Treat Content Marketing as Just Social Media or SEO
Far too many companies—whether marketing agencies, multinationals, or social media managers—view content as little more than a tool to improve SEO or build a “lovable” brand. But content marketing should be seen as much more than that. While Google’s algorithms reward companies that publish relevant, high-quality content, that doesn’t mean your sole focus should be on creating SEO-friendly content.
Yes, content marketing can improve search rankings, but true value comes from creating content that resonates with your audience. So, how do you fix this? Stop creating content for search engines—start creating it for real people. SEO and social media are just tools, not the end goal. Your ultimate focus should be delivering value to your potential customers.