Do your paid media campaigns need localised personas?

Posted by TP 30th November 2020 Tips and advice

Tips and advice

localised personas

If you’re familiar with our blog, you already know that localisation for paid media advertising in international markets is essential. As we’ve discussed in the past, when localising your advertising, you should try to go much further than simply accommodating the linguistic quirks and cultural intricacies of your market in your ad content. In order to do this effectively, it’s often sensible to create a whole new audience persona – One which is specifically tailored to the market you are advertising in.

The nuances of customers can be entirely distinct from market to market, so it’s essential that you know the key areas of difference from one market to the next. Getting familiar with your audience in this way enables you to really understand what that audiences needs are, and to more effectively position your offering as the solution. Taking this localised approach to personas allows you to create a real connection with your audience, leading to a significantly higher chance of conversions and sales – and, brand growth.

Here, we explain what influences whether you need to localise your audience persona. 

When do you need localised personas?

The process of localisation aims to factor in all of the ways in which one market differs from another. It’s essential to localise your marketing if your products or services themselves are localised from one market to the next.

Let’s take soft drinks as an example. You can go anywhere in the world and buy specific brands – and only in some countries would you notice a difference in taste. In the UK, the Soft Drinks Industry Levy meant that many drinks manufacturers opted to change their recipe to avoid the new tax. This altered the taste.

In this instance, the product itself had been localised for the UK specifically due to a change in taxation, however there any many reasons a product or service may be localised from one market to the next. Spoken language, perception of colours, cultural bias and technological development and access are just a few market factors which can influence the acceptance of a product or service.

That’s why it’s very important when expanding internationally to build a detailed understanding of your audience there, to understand if you need to tailor your paid media approach. Let’s consider some of the key questions to ask when you are considering if you need to localise your audience personas

Does the audience speak a different language dialect?

Language is perhaps the first factor that springs to mind when discussing localisation, but even if the spoken language is technically the same – Some markets have adopted their own versions. For instance – Brazil and Portugal both speak Portuguese, but each has their own approach that has evolved as a result of years of cultural and historical differences. Marketing to the Brazilian market with traditional Portuguese language variant would likely make your ads look out of place, and could potentially damage the perception of your brand.

Do they access the same media?

Social media, content site and even search engine preferences vary from market to market. You may have the best product offering and perfectly curated advert creative, but if you promote it on channels that your audience doesn’t use then your efforts have been wasted. It’s important to understand how your new market behaves online when curating your overarching paid media strategy.

How mature is your market?

Markets can develop at a completely different rate from one-another. This means that audiences in your new market may have a completely different level of understanding of your products or services than your current one. Typically we find these differences are most apparent in B2B or consumer products related to technology – Where fast changing landscapes mean the potential for discrepancies in understanding can vary. For example, in our work with Stratus Technologies, a market leader in the field of Industrial Automation (also known as industry 4.0) we found that advert messaging needed to be tailored completely differently across 5 of their key European markets. This is because the understanding of the associated technology and processes varied so greatly from market to market, that even within our highly specific targeting pools the audiences understanding and how we catered to them varied significantly.

Do their payment & shipping preferences differ?

Often overlooked, but vitally important is how your new market values things like shipping costs, speed and payment methods available. For example, audiences in Germany much prefer to pay through trusted 3rd party payment processors like PayPal, than directly with their own card details. Similarly, for products under €1,000 pre-pandemic French audiences actually preferred the flexibility of delivery to a local store for later collection, over fast shipping directly to their home. If your new market differs in their preferences, it’s key to understand this and adapt your messaging accordingly.

How does their economic status vary?

Elements such as disposable income per capita can greatly impact how an audience prioritises products or services when making a buying decision. How price sensitive your audience is can be a factor that has major influence on your marketing strategy. Audiences in some markets may much prefer to know that they are making an investment in a higher priced product that will last longer, others with a lower disposable income will be more focused on the immediate cost of the purchase. Even at a more macro level, in a lower average income country, maintaining the current price of your product or service may make it a much more considered purchase, and change the whole buyer journey. Understanding this will influence your paid media tactics, like which elements of your messaging you focus on with your advertising, or how long after a certain action should your retargeting ads start being served.

Advertising that accelerates businesses

If you don’t localise your approach to paid media, then you could potentially offend your audience, or end up investing lots of money into advertising that doesn’t deliver results. If you’ve found difficulty with ads bringing the same success in new markets, then taking a more localised view of your audience could help. 

Paid media localisation is at the heart of what we do here at Clickoo. From the very beginning, we’ve been applying regional insights so that every paid media ad we produce – along with the wider strategies behind them – reflects the audience our clients are targeting. This means we don’t just translate ads into their language, either. We take into account audience insights such as how they purchase, as well as the wider market environment they’re in, including search trends. 

Through us, you can ensure that your paid media advertising connects with your customers on a truly human level. You’ll have access to our years of experience and extensive knowledge, meaning that you don’t have to do any of the work required for localised paid media campaigns yourself. Instead, you can focus your efforts on your own areas of expertise and watch your brand grow.

Create the most hyper-targeted campaigns with Clickoo, and allow your brand to cross boundaries – no matter how ambitious. Speak to our friendly team today. 


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