Episode 51
The Simple Way to Build Global Brand Awareness (with Lee Densmer)
In this episode of Distribution First, Justin dives into the world of global content strategy with Lee Densmer, a global content marketing strategist.
Lee shares insights and examples of the pitfalls of global content distribution, as well as practical steps for content marketers to take when expanding their reach to global markets.
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In this episode, you'll learn:
- How to know which markets to focus on
- Why translating content isn't enough
- What pitfalls to avoid when creating and sharing content on a global scale
- How cultural and linguistic awareness can change the way content is crafted for different markets
- Why starting small and testing is crucial
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Transcript
Everybody, before we get started, I want to thank my friends at Hatch for producing
Speaker:this episode. You can get unlimited podcast editing and strategy for
Speaker:one flat rate by visiting Hatch FM.
Speaker:All right, let's get in the show.
Speaker:Welcome to distribution. First, the show where we flip content marketing on its head
Speaker:and focus on what happens after you hit publish. Each week I
Speaker:share playbooks, motivations, stories, and strategies to help you repurpose and
Speaker:distribute your content because you deserve to get the most out of everything you
Speaker:created.
Speaker:Hey, everybody. Welcome to this week's episode of Distribution.
Speaker:First, super excited to have Lee Densberg on. She is a
Speaker:global content marketing strategist. And on today's episode, we
Speaker:are going to emphasize global. We're going to talk all about global
Speaker:distribution, what the sort of pitfalls are with global
Speaker:distribution, what may be some of the mistakes, assumptions, all those things that go into
Speaker:it as we're trying to create and share content on a global
Speaker:scale versus just maybe our home market. So, Lee, welcome to the
Speaker:show. That's right. Thank you. Excited to be here. Awesome. So
Speaker:I know we were chatting before we got on here, but I think you've
Speaker:got a great sort of just starting point to level us up on with
Speaker:global distribution. So maybe we can just start right there. Yes.
Speaker:So 70% of all businesses that are online
Speaker:sell outside of their own market. And I don't think
Speaker:businesses realize this. That goes up to 90% when those companies have more than
Speaker:50 people on board at their company. So if you are online,
Speaker:you are selling globally, you have a global market. Global people are
Speaker:interested in your content. And I want to talk more about what that
Speaker:means. Yeah, I love that. It's so interesting. So when I worked at
Speaker:Techsmith two companies ago, definite global company, we
Speaker:had sales across, over, I think, 180, if not 200
Speaker:countries across the world. I had global in my title for that exact reason,
Speaker:was like, hey, Justin, you're not just going to lead us content, you're leading our
Speaker:global content efforts. A little bit different. When I went to the
Speaker:startup world, we did sell globally, but it was less so.
Speaker:But even now, running my own thing, it's interesting, like seeing the
Speaker:stats on folks who purchase the course
Speaker:or check out or on the email list. It's a global world we're in,
Speaker:right? It's amazing to see that. So I'm interested, what
Speaker:are some of those key differences that we need to be thinking about as we're
Speaker:creating, sharing content, and knowing that it's global?
Speaker:Even if we wouldn't say like, yes, we have a marketing hub in
Speaker:Germany or we've got a dedicated us marketer, what
Speaker:are those things that we need to be thinking about? So the first thing that
Speaker:we all assume is that the English is readily understood everywhere. And yes, the
Speaker:majority of people on LinkedIn and in our audiences do
Speaker:speak English, but they don't prefer to do business in English. Something like
Speaker:75% of people prefer to do business in their own language.
Speaker:They read English, they understand English, but it's not theirs. It's not their
Speaker:culture, it's not their language. So there's this myth that content
Speaker:is global, that what you write will apply globally to people who
Speaker:speak the language. It's just not the case. The buyers are
Speaker:different. In every market, people believe different things. They
Speaker:behave in different ways, they have different preferences. So you literally
Speaker:have to do buyer personas for each market and step back and
Speaker:recognize that that buyer is literally different. It's not just about language. It's
Speaker:largely about language, but it's also about customs,
Speaker:culture, preferences, beliefs, values. So how would somebody start
Speaker:doing that then? How do you, if you come into a company or you're working
Speaker:with somebody and they've got multiple. You look at their sales and they've
Speaker:got multiple different countries or regions that they're
Speaker:selling into, how are you thinking about that as a content person? And how do
Speaker:you start to actually execute on some of that stuff? Exactly.
Speaker:You start by identifying where the biggest growth is going to be.
Speaker:Right. Because you can't approach all markets. You can't handle all
Speaker:markets, not when there's potentially hundreds out there. So you figure out
Speaker:where your biggest growth is, who are your biggest users, where's the biggest need,
Speaker:and then you look at that market, you do the buyer Persona, you
Speaker:conduct the research, you talk to customers in that market, and you build the buyer
Speaker:Persona for that market. And then that helps you shift
Speaker:what you're writing about, shifts how you're approaching it.
Speaker:It also gives you an indication that you may need to translate that content. That's
Speaker:one of the first things you do that's kind of like the lowest hanging fruit
Speaker:is get it translated. But there's a process beyond
Speaker:translation that's called trans creation. Trans, of course, means
Speaker:across. So you're crossing cultures by
Speaker:adapting that content, not just about the words. It's like you're changing
Speaker:the colors, you're changing the images. You're getting rid of all those
Speaker:american sports metaphors out of your content because people in
Speaker:India don't play baseball, so you're actually
Speaker:fully adapting the content. So it works for that audience, so it doesn't
Speaker:alienate them or frustrate them or just not connect with them at
Speaker:all. So it's kind of a dual process. It's like changing the words and
Speaker:that's translation, and then it's changing the emotion and the
Speaker:intent and the cultural aspects of it as
Speaker:well. That's not cheap. So is that something
Speaker:that, how do you even start thinking of a trans
Speaker:creation world if you have a big subset in Germany
Speaker:or Japan, for instance? Those are two very different
Speaker:environments. Are you hiring? I'm assuming there are probably
Speaker:agencies or people who help with this type of stuff. Yeah, there
Speaker:are. So you need a content strategist on the ground in
Speaker:each of your markets. Of course, depending on your volumes, you might
Speaker:not have the resources to hire somebody full time, but you need somebody who's a
Speaker:cultural expert, a researcher, a content strategist in
Speaker:that market. So that's kind of a satellite of your home office, and
Speaker:then that person can connect you with the market and help you with the
Speaker:adaptation of that content. Engage a translator
Speaker:or a linguist who can do that trans creation process.
Speaker:So, yeah, you need people on the ground who know the market. Yeah, I'm
Speaker:curious, is it better to do this
Speaker:poorly or to not do it at all? I love
Speaker:that question, and I'm not sure that I have a,
Speaker:yes, it's better to do it poorly than to not do it at all,
Speaker:with a lot of caveats. Because I'm going to give you a funny example. If
Speaker:you do it poorly, you can screw everything up. Example? So
Speaker:you remember the got milk campaign in the United States? Well, that was
Speaker:translated into Spanish by an agency in San
Speaker:Francisco. And the way that they translated it, it came out
Speaker:as. Are you lactating a
Speaker:little? Know, maybe not quite what the milk association was
Speaker:going after? No, not so much so
Speaker:offensive. I mean, funny maybe to us, but offensive in that
Speaker:market. And so that not only was that a waste of
Speaker:money and they fired the agency, but it alienated the market,
Speaker:it frustrated the market. So that is what happens when you do it
Speaker:wrong. There are pretty big consequences. But translation,
Speaker:doing something to help that market understand your content is better than
Speaker:ignoring that need completely. Because
Speaker:sometimes it's easy, especially now with some AI tools and
Speaker:things like that, to do translation probably pretty efficiently
Speaker:and pretty accurately. A little bit harder to go into that
Speaker:trans creation side where you're doing research, more in
Speaker:depth content changing tone, changing all of those type of
Speaker:things. Exactly. So would you say then that step one maybe, is that
Speaker:sort of translation like if you've got these
Speaker:things in here, maybe set up some landing pages, some web pages, et
Speaker:cetera, some other pieces of content for those markets
Speaker:as translated in that get those to be as good as you
Speaker:can before you worry about jumping into custom content across
Speaker:there. Right. So you would pick the most
Speaker:important pieces, your most important landing page, your
Speaker:best lead magnet, some blog posts that would be good for the market. And
Speaker:translate those, and translate those carefully. Be careful with AI
Speaker:translation. It's best for like a service manual or like
Speaker:faqs, but you should not translate anything that's highly branded
Speaker:with AI. I mean, you're going to get, are you lactating if you do
Speaker:that? Yeah. So don't do that. But I would pick the top pieces,
Speaker:the highest performing pieces, the most important pieces, and get those carefully
Speaker:translated and then you can go deeper when you get more
Speaker:traction in that market and create
Speaker:custom campaigns, adapt existing campaigns, go deeper once you
Speaker:get traction. But it's a step by step process. Is there
Speaker:a good sort of rule of thumb with the companies that you've
Speaker:worked with as far as timelines?
Speaker:How long does a process like this take? Right.
Speaker:If you're going to just. Translation can happen quickly. Translation
Speaker:doesn't take a long time in and of itself, but creating those buyer personas,
Speaker:creating a campaign for a specific market, understanding the
Speaker:distinct distribution channels. Social media is not the
Speaker:same world round. Facebook is used differently, LinkedIn is used
Speaker:differently world round. You have to decide which channels you're going to distribute on because
Speaker:it's different for each market. So translation is easy. But laying that
Speaker:strategy, that customized strategy, takes as much time as it
Speaker:does for the home market. You're leveraging from your home market
Speaker:strategy, but you're adapting it for that specific market, and
Speaker:that takes time and expertise to do that. Yeah, it feels like it might
Speaker:even take more time because at least for me, I feel
Speaker:like I would be second guessing a decent amount of things.
Speaker:Not knowing the market. I'm relying on that sort of boots on the ground
Speaker:person or some sort of advisor on
Speaker:the region or something to be able to actually pull that off in a coherent
Speaker:way to where we're not doing the got milk? Campaign, we're doing something that actually
Speaker:makes sense. And I have more crazy examples. It is
Speaker:iterative, just like with your home market, just as long as
Speaker:it took you to get it right in your home market, you do some tests,
Speaker:you try some things, you translate a landing page, you see how it does and
Speaker:then you tweak. That's the way we roll in content marketing.
Speaker:Try tweak. Try tweak. Put content out there, test
Speaker:concepts in the market and then change it if you need to. Yeah. So on
Speaker:these global scale, are we also then scaling
Speaker:the practitioners, like if we're
Speaker:doing paid ads, are we having a paid ads expert for a particular market
Speaker:or somebody who's in, or can it function as, oh no, your
Speaker:home team. Your home team can kind of manage that and they just
Speaker:have to get the right assets in place. Yeah. A mix. So
Speaker:if you're really big and you're a brand like Nike
Speaker:or like Nokia, then you're handing all of that
Speaker:off to a language services company. So they're big companies
Speaker:that handle multiple languages, multiple deliverables. They put technology
Speaker:in place. I mean, you can go from having a bilingual person translate a
Speaker:landing page to having a big company that
Speaker:serves 250 languages and as many markets
Speaker:doing all of your adaptation. So there's definitely a
Speaker:continuum, depending on your size, how much you want to
Speaker:double down in that market. Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense.
Speaker:So is there a good way to basically start
Speaker:thinking about distribution globally
Speaker:where we're not stuck on,
Speaker:you had the quote in the beginning of the episode, the stats that are sort
Speaker:of like. And how different the reality is
Speaker:probably to how people are currently thinking about it. So how should people be
Speaker:currently thinking about distribution for these global markets,
Speaker:especially if they don't have any resource in place right now to do
Speaker:any of that work? Yeah, I know. That's the question for startups and
Speaker:smaller companies who are selling online and they're like, oh crap, we might be global,
Speaker:right? So the first thing is to develop an
Speaker:awareness and to think about how their content may or may not
Speaker:be appropriate for all audiences. Gain an
Speaker:understanding of the nuances of
Speaker:culture and how cultures are different. So
Speaker:it's an awareness at the start, right? Like, not everybody
Speaker:responds to this content the same way as my american clients or my
Speaker:european clients do. Awareness of the differences and then an
Speaker:awareness of how content can be global. There is
Speaker:a way to create content in English that is
Speaker:suitable more or less for most markets. Unfortunately, that
Speaker:makes it more generic. But you can create
Speaker:content in a way that's suitable for most markets. What are some of those things,
Speaker:Lee? What are those things that we can do to make it, I mean, even
Speaker:if it does make it more generic, what are some of those things? Yeah, it's
Speaker:idioms, metaphors, jokes. Those things are not
Speaker:universal. They don't ever translate. Every culture has their own idioms,
Speaker:jokes, slogans, and then there's cultural and political
Speaker:references that you don't want to have in your content probably anyway, right?
Speaker:In this landscape. Right? Like, you need to be aware that those can be
Speaker:perceived as inappropriate or just baffling. In other
Speaker:countries, even the use of colors can be funky. Like the
Speaker:color red in Africa is troublesome. It's associated with
Speaker:mourning, with mourning and death. So you have to be aware that
Speaker:use of colors can be problematic. There's a lot there, Justin.
Speaker:It's all really interesting, but I get that it's maybe overwhelming. I
Speaker:mentioned sports metaphors. We have something like
Speaker:35 baseball metaphors in English, we say, I mean,
Speaker:touch base, hit, a home run. So many baseball
Speaker:metaphors. And I've come to understand that
Speaker:Europeans and bilinguals in other countries learn
Speaker:English and learn those metaphors, but often they don't know that they came from
Speaker:baseball. They don't even know. So sports metaphors,
Speaker:yeah, all those things. And even like, images and
Speaker:emojis are perceived differently in different countries.
Speaker:So if I can do anything through this podcast episode, it'd be to
Speaker:raise the awareness that there's all these elements of language that are
Speaker:specific to our culture that can
Speaker:offend or perplex people in another culture who might be reading your
Speaker:stuff. So this one I'm doing the hand symbol with the ok
Speaker:sign. This is something kind of off color in.
Speaker:I mean, why would an American know that unless you've traveled to China or have
Speaker:a chinese friend? Yeah, it's definitely
Speaker:feels like there's so many little pitfalls that
Speaker:you can fall into. It also feels like, to me, like when we did this
Speaker:at Techsmith, when we decided we were going to really
Speaker:outside of having a key marketer for our
Speaker:key regions, but really put emphasis on
Speaker:global content creation, we had
Speaker:somebody in house who basically took the reins
Speaker:with all things global and became the check
Speaker:person to me as leading content
Speaker:marketing. That was super helpful because even just
Speaker:listening to you, I'm having semi flashbacks of all the things that go
Speaker:into creating a true.
Speaker:When you are not a Nike and you don't
Speaker:just outsource every single thing to an agency or even
Speaker:when you're got milk and you just, we screwed up. We'll take the campaign.
Speaker:There's enough dollars behind those type of things to where
Speaker:they're willing to probably just not dot every I and cross every t
Speaker:and all those type of things. So I am really interested
Speaker:in terms of, like, I like what you mentioned earlier with the baby steps and
Speaker:try to just go with maybe some of your best markets, some of your best
Speaker:pieces and then think about those
Speaker:and do those the best way you can for those markets,
Speaker:versus chomping off the entire bit
Speaker:of the pie and say, well, everything we're doing
Speaker:now is global focused. Everything we're doing now is going to
Speaker:be, if we're doing this campaign in English, we got to get it all
Speaker:translated for Germany and France.
Speaker:I like the way of approaching that. And then you can see what works and
Speaker:what doesn't. That's the only way to do it. Otherwise you're going to spend
Speaker:tens of thousands of dollars for uncertain ROI.
Speaker:Translating everything is not a strategy. So another thing
Speaker:that's interesting, and my expertise is in the latin american market.
Speaker:There are 26 countries that speak Latin, America that speak Spanish, and
Speaker:each of those countries is a different culture. You can loosely associate country with
Speaker:culture. Right. 26. So people ask
Speaker:me, do you translate in 26 different ways then? Because there's
Speaker:dialects involved. Spanish is not the same. The vocabulary is not the
Speaker:same, the syntax is not the same. And
Speaker:no, you don't. You don't need to translate Spanish 26 times
Speaker:if you've got latin american buyers. Spain and Latin
Speaker:America are quite a bit different from each other, but there's a way to
Speaker:translate into Spanish that reaches that market appropriately without doing
Speaker:it 26 times. So how would you go about that,
Speaker:then? Right again, you look at the
Speaker:markets where your product is being sold. You look at the markets where people are
Speaker:interested, is it predominantly Spain, or is it predominantly Latin or South
Speaker:America? And you choose a variety of Spanish
Speaker:that's regional enough for that market. There is
Speaker:a form of generic Spanish, which is actually kind of fascinating because
Speaker:it doesn't exist. It's a version of Spanish that doesn't exist,
Speaker:but it's used in literature and translation to appeal
Speaker:to all Spanish speakers. Nobody speaks
Speaker:interesting, but everybody understands it. Yeah. I love the idea
Speaker:of not translating everything for the sake of translation.
Speaker:I remember when I first took over running content at
Speaker:Techsmith, one of the initiatives was like, we were doing
Speaker:blogs, and we had obviously way less content on our
Speaker:german and I think japanese or french blogs at the
Speaker:time. But we were, in some ways, the strategy really wasn't a
Speaker:strategy. It was just a little bit of, well, we
Speaker:released this one in here, so we're going to go get it created over there.
Speaker:And especially at that time, it was like there was no way
Speaker:to cross check keywords or semantics
Speaker:or if this thing was going to rank or not, because once it went over,
Speaker:I could do that in English, but once it went over to translation.
Speaker:The translator is simply just trying to do their best to translate it at that
Speaker:point and get the thoughts across. At least in that case, they weren't
Speaker:necessarily a marketer. Right. So I'm curious, do you have any thoughts on that?
Speaker:Like, how could I have done that better? Or what are some of the pitfalls
Speaker:there? So you've made a couple interesting points. One is that a
Speaker:translator isn't a marketer, just like a copywriter isn't
Speaker:a marketer. It's the same. It's a parallel
Speaker:concept. So a translator can be excellent at their craft and really
Speaker:good at converting concepts from one language to another, but they don't
Speaker:understand the big picture of marketing in another country. So
Speaker:there is a specialization there. You talked about SEO,
Speaker:so multilingual SEO is a big deal and there are experts out there
Speaker:in that. And the main things to understand is that people do not search the
Speaker:same way in each country. So if you are
Speaker:doing an SEO play to drive traffic and to drive leads in another
Speaker:market, you need an SEO strategy that's appropriate for that market. It's
Speaker:another instance of something that you develop for your home market.
Speaker:It just doesn't work. So often the mistake is to just
Speaker:translate keywords and it doesn't work. They are new,
Speaker:they are different. You have to research the keywords for every single market and then
Speaker:of course, use those keywords in that content. So
Speaker:translating is a first step. Yes, but I think I'm characterizing for you how quickly
Speaker:it can go wrong. Yeah, it's a huge undertaking. I think that's the biggest
Speaker:thing that I'm coming across from this conversation
Speaker:is it's just like a remembrance of
Speaker:how a daunting that it truly can be. Because content
Speaker:marketing, all that, it's daunting doing it once, trying
Speaker:to do it across multiple languages, multiple dialects,
Speaker:multiple countries, it all just adds more and more
Speaker:complexity. But I think the moral of this episode
Speaker:is, I think for a lot of content marketers, maybe just
Speaker:check, see where outside of
Speaker:your home market, like where are sales coming from, where are website traffic
Speaker:at those type of things. Those are easy sort of first steps for content
Speaker:marketers to be able to see, oh, we do have a global brand, look at
Speaker:that. There are visits from X, Y and Z country. So I
Speaker:think that is step one. And then two is like, yeah,
Speaker:planning. Just start small, like your two best pieces, your
Speaker:three best pieces across maybe a little bit of the funnel or a little bit
Speaker:of the plan, or what's your best email series?
Speaker:Start slowly working those things
Speaker:across, and then by the time you know it, you've got a little bit more
Speaker:traction, a little bit more learnings, and you don't have to feel
Speaker:so overwhelmed. Absolutely. That's the only way to
Speaker:do it. And then, as I mentioned, the awareness, the cultural awareness of
Speaker:the differences in cultures, and then the awareness
Speaker:of what you're writing and how you're writing it and how specific. You don't
Speaker:even know that what you're writing is so specific to your culture until you start
Speaker:studying it. And you realize, I am uniquely
Speaker:american. Everything I write is so american, and
Speaker:you can't take that out. You shouldn't take that out.
Speaker:But american content marketers are writing american
Speaker:content. I mean, we have some peers who are european,
Speaker:and their content is slightly different. The words they use, the way they
Speaker:explain things. Yeah, super interesting.
Speaker:Anything before we wrap, Lee, anything you would need to get out to the world
Speaker:here before we close out? I
Speaker:think I want to give one more terrible. Absolutely. Let's do it. That'll be a
Speaker:good way. Let's see. So there is an
Speaker:airlines called Branif Airlines, and they were
Speaker:promoting leather seats. They have leather seats, so it's a
Speaker:differentiator. And their campaign was fly
Speaker:in leather. Right. But in Spanish. Again, problems with
Speaker:Spanish. They translated that as fly naked. So, I mean,
Speaker:it could be appealing to a specific target audience, but it probably wasn't what they
Speaker:meant. So now everybody's goal is to go look up translation
Speaker:miscues in marketing, and you'll get a whole list.
Speaker:That's hilarious. Between lactation and
Speaker:naked, we've got quite the translation faux pause here.
Speaker:That's right. It can go really wrong. Yep. Awesome.
Speaker:Well, Lee, it was super fun to chat a little bit about the global side.
Speaker:I think people will get an idea of a how complex
Speaker:a global content marketing strategy, kind of what that entails,
Speaker:but also the steps that they can take to not have to dive all the
Speaker:way in, but get a little bit here and there to make their marketing better
Speaker:on a global scale. Absolutely. People are welcome to follow me on
Speaker:LinkedIn and reach out. I love talking about this stuff. Awesome. Culture and language
Speaker:is super interesting. That's awesome. So thanks, Lee. Appreciate it. Thank you,
Speaker:Justin.
Speaker:All right, I hope you enjoyed this episode of Distribution
Speaker:first, and thank you for listening all the way through. I appreciate you
Speaker:so, so much, and I hope you're able to apply what you learned in
Speaker:this episode one way or another, into your content strategy as
Speaker:well. Speaking of strategy, we have a lot of things going on this year. That
Speaker:are going to help you build your brand, ten x your content and transform
Speaker:the way you do content marketing. Make sure to subscribe to the show and sign
Speaker:up for my newsletter at Justinsimon Co. So you don't miss
Speaker:a thing. I look forward to serving you in the next episode as well. And
Speaker:until then, take care and I'll see you next time.
