International Marketing & Brand Strategy

Taking your brand (no matter how established it is in the US) into European and other international markets will require a solid and well-thought-out international marketing and brand strategy.

You can't just create an international version of your website and social media channels and expect sales to fly in! You will have either done this already and are wondering why your results are poor or you're looking to take your brand international and wondering how to do so, either way, this post is for you.

In this article, we will share key points to take your brand global through international marketing and brand strategies, sharing real examples of our own work.

International Marketing Strategies to Enter New Markets

It's more than important to look at how you can adapt your brand to each new market you would like to establish your brand in if you're launching in Europe you will have to adapt your marketing strategy for each country in Europe, rather than as a whole.

To look into this further, the UK market has very different mannerisms, feelings, words, outlooks, and characteristics. They are not patriotic, nor care for how established your brand is in America, eagles and US flags are not going to cut it. If the end-user cannot resonate with your brand, then the sale is already lost.

Streamlight the number one flashlight brand in the US, a household name that is trusted by many Americans. Unfortunately, many Europeans hadn't heard of or seen their products before so didn't have the same trust and feelings toward the brand.

With our international marketing and brand strategies, we were able to adapt their brand to the French, German and British markets.

Streamlight's strapline in the US is ‘Heroes Trust Streamlight®’ after gaining immense loyalty from the military, police and fire services. It's clear this was not going to communicate as well in the EU markets since the forces and services in Europe did not have the same recognition with the brand.

We looked deep into the core values of Streamlight and adapted a new strapline for the European markets - ‘Brilliant Thinking®'. Looking deeper into how this was created; one of Streamlight's key core values was innovation.

As we toured their plant and had a hands on session with their products, this core value showed. We understood trust would grow naturally with the products and that it shouldn't be the focus, innovation should be.

Taking innovation we bounced with words, settling on brilliant as it means clever, ingenious and bright, playing on words with the adjective associated with lights and lighting.

This is just one small part of our transnational strategy for the brand, you can see more adaptations in our case study.

International Social Media Marketing