Global marketing: do Western marketers hold the answers?

Say ‘global marketing’ and most people’s understanding will be of centrally created campaigns and policies being rolled out imperialistically across the globe. Certainly, as Omobono’s What Works Where in B2B Digital Marketing study shows, marketing centralisation is increasing, particularly for bigger companies. 78% of respondents who are responsible for marketing in more than one country said that they are marketing to more territories than they were 3 years ago.

But as our discussion at The Marketing Society dinner on 17 October revealed, global marketing is more subtle and more challenging than that.  

The group gathered to discuss whether the West has all the answers when it comes to global digital marketing. Input came from some global heavy hitters such as HSBC, GSK and 3M, as well as from top tier law firms Dentons and Freshfields, whose need to roll out global brands across newly acquired partnerships poses particular challenges.

We shared the results of our recent What Works Where studies, which explore the pressures B2B marketers are under and how they are reaching out to global audiences.

Three points stood out:

1. It seems that global marketers face more challenges than their domestic counterparts. 70% say that keeping pace with developments in marketing and technology has become more difficult in the last 3 years.
2. Those in global marketing roles set more store on internal audiences. They are twice as likely to put ‘ensuring the organisation is living the brand’ in their top 3 objectives, and they put more focus on employees and senior internal stakeholders.
3. The importance of thought leadership varies according to geography, with US marketers putting it as their top objective, above deepening customer relationships. In comparison, in China personal relationships are put right to the top of marketers’ priorities.

Judging from the conversation around the table, the reality of what global marketers are up to is not about imposing international uniformity but taking the essence of what they are doing and allowing it to be localised. One of the attendees summed it up neatly: 'It’s not about taking one approach and rolling the same thing out all over the world, but setting up the internal processes to share frameworks and approaches that people can activate locally.' Perhaps that accounts for the increased focus on the internal audience that marketers have noted over the past 3 years. And the fact that the key to this is brand consistency certainly explains why ensuring the organisation is living the brand takes on an increased importance for global marketers.  

And what of thought leadership – the obsession of the West, which seems almost ignored in the East? In fact, thought leadership and personal recommendation may be two sides of the same coin. Ultimately, B2B buyers are looking for people with expertise they can trust. In the West, this comes from the skill set and knowledge on display from a company, or from a consultant working in the sector. In the East it comes from people you know. Not surprising, perhaps – after all, in China the word for risk is the same as the word for opportunity. So working with people (and, by extension, companies) you know and can trust is a good way to reduce the risk associated with opportunity.  

What I took away from the discussion is that global marketing is both a challenge and an opportunity – to get to the heart of the business, understand its message and find the best ways to communicate that message to different audiences across the globe.

What Works Where in B2B Digital Marketing
Over the past 3 years, Omobono has conducted ‘What Works Where’ studies to explore and share best practice in B2B digital marketing. This year we’ve extended our research to include marketers in the USA and China, as well as those in the UK. Take a look at the research in our Library.