 11 Min. Read |  Dominic Dithurbide |  March 12, 2022 |
International branding is the process of increasing business growth by establishing and building a brand identity within global markets. Businesses create their brand through advertising, media, website content, word-of-mouth, and interactions with products or services.
Global brand building involves defining your company's personality and shaping how you want customers and the public to perceive your organization. This process aims to create a clear image of your company and to influence how others view it. It is crucial to determine how customers and the general public perceive your organization.
Branding takes time and effort, involving naming products, creating logos, and maintaining consistent messaging across the business. Is all that effort worth expanding to international markets?
According to research, the answer is "yes". Around 45% of medium-sized companies generate more than 50% of their revenue from international markets. Additionally, having a strong brand can increase their revenue by up to 23%.
Implementing global marketing efforts is a simple way to create a new source of income compared to local alternatives. When you explore new markets, you are looking for chances to offer different products or services. When you start selling in a new place, you have to change how you do business to fit that country’s ways.
Different countries may have different market needs, so the products and services required may vary. Because of this, the methods of expansion associated with each market will also be different. Creating and using a global branding plan can help you make more money than just selling in your own country.
International branding helps build and solidify your competitive advantage. Having competitive advantages allows a new company to enter the market and shake up the current top products. New places to grow your business represent new opportunities. You may access technologies, labor pools, or industrial ecosystems that perfectly align with your organizational goals.
Global expansion, particularly into emerging markets, can give you a head start on your competition. If your competitors are not there, you can establish your brand as the top choice. This builds a global brand, giving your business a good reputation and an advantage in the local market. Over time, the company's image and notoriety can continue to grow.
When you prioritize international branding, your brand becomes more authentic. Good global brand management helps more people see and understand your brand and what you offer. In fact, 88% of consumers identify authenticity as crucial when deciding what brands they like and support.
For example, a brand that expands globally might emphasize its original values and unique story, ensuring that these elements are consistent across all markets. Consistency creates an authentic perception. Consumers in various regions value the brand's commitment to its origins and core values. By maintaining its original ethos while adapting to diverse cultures, a global brand can strengthen its authenticity, making it more appealing to a global audience.
Identify your business goals, including global branding strategy, to start every aspect of your business journey towards success. Before making any big moves, it's important to have a plan that outlines company goals and key performance indicators. The most commonly used KPIs include revenue growth, profit margins, and customer satisfaction measurements.
Here are some critical questions to answer thoroughly as you map out a global branding strategy:
First, choose the market you want to enter and your goals. Then, create a strong plan for expanding your business globally. There are four main international strategies that businesses typically follow. The branding strategy you choose depends on your business model, goals, budget, and limitations.
An international strategy, also called an export strategy, focuses on exporting products and services to foreign markets while maintaining a single production headquarters. Multinational companies make products in their home country and send them to customers worldwide, without focusing on local needs.
Subsidiaries act as local channels that sell the products to the end-consumer. Large wine producers from countries such as France and Italy are great examples of international companies. When wine brands sell outside of their home country, the branding, products, and pricing stay the same.
International businesses sell the same product everywhere and try to save money by being efficient. A global strategy entails being highly centralized, and subsidiaries are often dependent on headquarters. Their main role is to implement the parent company’s decisions and to act as pipelines of products and strategies.
Global strategies have lower local responsiveness, but they prioritize global integration. Pharmaceutical companies, such as Pfizer, operate worldwide. They may make slight adjustments to their products to comply with various country regulations. However, all of these products still belong to the same brand.
A business utilizes a multidomestic strategy when it uses entirely different sales, marketing, and product strategies based on the specific countries in which it is operating. Rather than one global brand, there are many smaller, country-specific brands tailored to local tastes and local customers. Companies with multidomestic strategies prioritize local responsiveness, adapting their product offerings and brand to local preferences. This requires a higher amount of brand localization as well as more authenticity and appeal to the local market.
Businesses that utilize transnational strategy operate with a central office in one country, coordinating local subsidiaries within international markets. This strategy combines the best of centralized decision-making while still allowing for scale in varied markets.
Companies such as McDonald's, Nike, and Coca-Cola use the transnational model. Famous global brands sell similar products worldwide. They also create special products for local customers. This is done to meet their preferences and cultural needs.
Once you know your goals, the markets you plan to enter and your entry strategy, localize your content and brand to meet the demands of that strategy and begin building your international brand. First, develop your brand voice, identity, promise, values, targeting, and positioning in your local market to ensure success.
Brand localization is the process of adapting a brand to appeal to a foreign market, including a comprehensive plan to address the target market's language and cultural nuances. It adapts your brand to meet demand, including services/products, platforms, and marketing messages.
Brand localization serves as an essential piece of the international branding puzzle but can't stand alone. To fully bridge global markets, and take full advantage of the benefits international branding provides, your company needs to follow each of these steps.
Nike is a prime example of a brand that has successfully leveraged a transnational strategy to build its global brand presence. With a strategy that combines global consistency with local adaptability, Nike’s approach to international branding highlights the importance of tailoring brand messages while maintaining a unified global identity. Their “Just Do It” campaign, which resonates with consumers worldwide, is an example of a message that speaks universally but is adapted to different markets to connect more authentically.
Nike has expanded into diverse markets by staying true to its core values of empowerment, performance, and innovation while adapting to local cultures. For example, Nike collaborates with regional athletes and sports events, such as cricket partnerships in India and soccer in Latin America, to strengthen its appeal across different audiences.
This adaptability combined with a solid global brand image allows Nike to maintain a dominant position in the global marketplace.
Unilever is a British multinational consumer goods company that produces food, cleaning agents, beauty products, and personal care items, and sells them in 190 countries. The company needs to be close to local markets for its 400+ consumer goods brands. Local managers handle operations and manufacturing in each country, and the company is divided by product type.
Some of Unilever's most recognizable brands include Axe, Dove, Ben & Jerry's, Knorr, and Hellman's. Their international branding strategy yielded a network of local brands that focus on the products that sell best in that particular sphere, such as Marmite in Australia versus mayonnaise in the United States.
Harley-Davidson takes a different approach to international branding. They have been producing motorcycles in the U.S. since 1903, and started exporting bikes soon after the founding of the company. Harley-Davidson competes in various country markets using an export strategy.
When Harley-Davidson sells motorcycles abroad, they don't need to lower prices or adapt the bike to local motorcycle standards. The "Made in the USA" guarantee has been Harley-Davidson's unique feature and a means of differentiation from its competitors. In 2021, almost 1,500 suppliers exported around 194,260 motorcycles to Canada, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Most of Harley-Davidson's bikes go to India, Vietnam and Lithuania.
Spotify has built a strong international brand by employing a global strategy, focusing on delivering the same product worldwide with minimal customization. The music streaming service offers its users access to music from all over the globe, ensuring that local preferences are met with localized playlists and music recommendations based on user data.
By ensuring consistency across borders, Spotify allows users worldwide to have a seamless, personalized experience while still adhering to their global brand identity of being a versatile and user-friendly music platform.
Building a global brand strategy is a multi-faceted process that involves selecting the right approach, understanding local cultures, and ensuring your brand message resonates across diverse markets. By looking at successful examples like Unilever, Harley-Davidson, Nike, Airbnb, and Spotify, you can better understand how to adapt your brand for international growth.
Whether you’re considering entering new markets or refining your existing international branding efforts, it’s important to have a well-defined strategy. Localization plays a key role in aligning your messaging, products, and services with the preferences of international consumers, making your brand more authentic and engaging.
Let us help you navigate the complexities of global brand building. Contact us today!
