In today's interconnected world, businesses aiming for sustainable growth understand the importance of transcending geographical boundaries. This expansion, however, comes with its own set of challenges, particularly in the realm of marketing. Multilingual marketing, the practice of creating and adapting marketing strategies for different languages and cultures, has become a critical component of success in the global marketplace. To delve deeper into this topic, we turned to Nicoletta Dorizzi, Senior Manager of Global Campaigns at Inriver, for her invaluable insights on managing global marketing campaigns, navigating the challenges of localization, and harnessing the power of AI to drive marketing success across diverse geographic landscapes.
The Journey of a Multilingual Marketing Expert
Nicoletta Dorizzi's path to becoming a leading voice in multilingual marketing is a testament to her passion and expertise in the field. With over a decade of experience in marketing and communications, Nicoletta has honed her skills through collaborations with industry giants like Shell and Unilever. Her journey began in the EMEA region, where she served as a sales and marketing manager for a medical equipment manufacturer. This experience laid the foundation for her deep understanding of the intricacies of marketing in diverse cultural contexts.
Since joining Inriver in 2021, Nicoletta has been the driving force behind the company's global marketing efforts. As the Senior Manager of Global Campaigns, she oversees a wide range of critical functions, including demand generation, localization, market positioning, strategic planning, and data analysis. Her multifaceted role allows her to develop and implement comprehensive marketing strategies that resonate with audiences across different markets.
Deciphering Local Markets: A Strategic Approach
One of the key challenges in multilingual marketing is understanding and adapting to the unique characteristics of each local market. Nicoletta emphasizes the importance of conducting thorough market research when launching campaigns in new regions. This research goes beyond simple translation; it involves delving into customer preferences, cultural nuances, and the competitive landscape.
To gain a deep understanding of local markets, Nicoletta and her team at Inriver employ a multi-pronged approach. They begin by gathering valuable insights through surveys, focus groups, and direct interactions with customers. This feedback helps them gauge Inriver's performance within specific regions and identify areas for improvement. Additionally, localization success is hugely indebted to building partnerships with local experts who have a deep understanding of the market. These collaborations provide invaluable insights into the cultural and business dynamics at play while also lending credibility to the company.
Navigating the Challenges of Localization
While localization is essential for success in multilingual marketing, it is not without its challenges. Nicoletta highlights several key hurdles that marketers must navigate when adapting their strategies for different markets.
One of the primary challenges is ensuring that marketing messages resonate with diverse cultural values and communication styles. This is particularly important in regions like EMEA and Southeast Asia, where cultural differences can be significant. Marketers must strike a delicate balance between maintaining a consistent global brand identity and tailoring their content to the specific preferences and expectations of each market.
Another critical consideration is regulatory compliance. Different countries and regions have varying legal and regulatory landscapes that impact marketing activities. In EMEA, for example, marketers must navigate a complex web of regulations related to data privacy, advertising, and consumer protection. Failure to comply with these regulations can result in significant financial penalties and reputational damage.
Competitive analysis is also crucial when entering new markets. Local competitors often have a deep understanding of the market and may have already established strong relationships with customers. To succeed, marketers must carefully analyze the strategies of these local players, identify potential gaps or weaknesses, and develop differentiated offerings that resonate with the target audience. In other words, it’s about understanding the rules governing the context you want to enter and identifying the best way to become a relevant player.
To address these challenges, Inriver employs a range of strategic localization initiatives. These include:
Content translation: Ensuring that all marketing materials are accurately translated into the local language, while also considering cultural nuances and idiomatic expressions. This is largely helped by guidelines on style and tone of voice that ensure cohesiveness and the correct presentation of the content. This way, the brand maintains its corporate identity while getting its message to resonate globally.
Local events: Organizing events that are tailored to the interests and preferences of the local audience, recognizing that in-person engagement is still crucial in many markets. For instance, Nicoletta emphasizes this is the case for Germany.
Public relations: Building relationships with local media outlets, influencers, and thought leaders to enhance brand visibility and credibility in new markets.
Partnership with local experts: Collaborating closely with sales reps and local partners who have a deep understanding of the market to ensure that content and strategies align with the target audience's expectations.
By taking a comprehensive and strategic approach to localization, Inriver is able to effectively navigate the complexities of multilingual marketing and build strong connections with customers in diverse markets.
Localization: The Catalyst for Lead Generation
Beyond simply adapting to local markets, localization plays a critical role in driving lead generation and business growth. Nicoletta firmly believes that by understanding and catering to the specific needs and preferences of local audiences, companies can significantly enhance their ability to attract and engage potential customers whilst building trust and credibility.
One of the key tactics that Inriver employs is co-creating tailored content with local partners. For example, they might collaborate with a local thought leader to develop an eBook that addresses the specific challenges and opportunities facing businesses in that market. By leveraging the expertise and credibility of these partners in a specific region, Inriver is able to create content that truly strikes a chord with the target audience.
Another effective marketing strategy for B2B SaaS is incorporating testimonials and case studies from well-known local customers. In France, for instance, Inriver has successfully leveraged its partnership with Michelin to showcase the value of its solutions in the local context. These real-world examples help to build trust and demonstrate the relevance of Inriver's offerings to potential customers in the region.
The impact of localization on lead generation is clear. By creating targeted, culturally relevant content and leveraging local partnerships, Inriver has seen significant improvements in key metrics such as website traffic and engagement. In fact, the company reported a 62% increase in non-branded organic website clicks from 2022 to 2023, and a 42% year-over-year increase in website traffic for key markets like France and Germany.
This last number highlights the profound impact of search engine optimization (SEO) in generating leads. Creating an SEO strategy that goes beyond the mere translation of keywords and benefits from continuous feedback loops allows to tailor content to the target language and search habits of local audiences, which ultimately helps companies drive traffic and can significantly improve their visibility in local search results. This, in turn, drives more organic traffic to their websites and increases the likelihood of converting visitors into leads and customers.
Lastly, it is important to highlight that localizing content from English and creating it from scratch are not to be considered as two opposites on a spectrum, but rather as complementary strategies. Nicoletta shares that, at Inriver, they often take an asset and leverage testimonials and customer cases within that asset. This allows them to rethink and redeploy the same asset for a number of specific markets, by simply picking testimonials and user stories that are more relevant to the local audience. As obvious as it might sound, strategic planning lies at the core of every localization workflow, and this requires time, local awareness and a workforce.
Is My Marketing Campaign Effective? Key Metrics
By definition, it’s impossible to forecast whether a marketing campaign will be successful or not. However, Inriver uses several indicators to help determine whether marketing efforts are fruitful, for which an engagement matrix is key. By checking the click-through rate and the time spent on specifically crafted content like landing pages, startups can get a good understanding of their performance, fine-tune their marketing strategies and keep adding value.
A cohesive, holistic localization campaign is a catalyst for higher engagement and conversion rates, although it should be reinforced by close and constant tracking of both sales and marketing pipelines.
The AI Revolution And Other Challenges: Reshaping Marketing Strategies For B2B SaaS
As the marketing landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace, one of the most significant trends shaping the future of the industry is the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). Nicoletta recognizes the transformative potential of AI and automation in making marketing strategies more efficient, data-driven, and personalized.
At Inriver, AI is already being leveraged in a variety of ways to streamline and optimize marketing efforts. For example, the company uses AI-powered tools to assist with video creation, allowing marketers to quickly generate short, engaging video snippets from longer pieces of content. This not only saves time but also enables the team to test and iterate on different video formats and styles to see what resonates best with the audience.
AI is also being used to review and optimize content for different channels and formats. By analyzing data on how users interact with different types of content, AI algorithms can provide recommendations on everything from the optimal length and structure of a blog post to the most effective subject lines for email campaigns. This data-driven approach helps to ensure that every piece of content is tailored to the preferences and behaviors of the target audience.
Another key area where AI is making a significant impact is in the realm of language and translation. Companies like Inriver combine advanced natural language processing (NLP) and machine translation technologies not to replace their content writers, but rather to help them create better copy in a shorter time. An AI-generated first draft that compiles the relevant information in an organized and concise manner goes a long way, allowing content writers to focus on the little details that make the biggest difference, those linguistic and cultural nuances that make the copy resonate with local audiences. This not only saves time and resources but also helps to ensure consistency and quality across all localized content.
Looking ahead, Nicoletta sees AI stretching beyond the execution field and playing an even more central role in shaping marketing strategies and tactics for B2B SaaS. As the technology continues to advance, it will enable marketers to invest time and thought to deliver increasingly personalized and relevant experiences to customers across all touchpoints. This could include everything from dynamically generated website content that adapts to each visitor's interests and behaviors to highly targeted advertising campaigns that leverage real-time data on customer preferences and intent.
One more touchpoint that companies need to focus their efforts on going forward is gearing their strategies with usability in mind. Coming back to Inriver, it is not just about creating a problem-specific tech solution, but acting on it, seeing where its users struggle and expanding its applications to tackle the growing challenges users might have to face.
Lastly, as Nicoletta points out, companies must maintain a human touch and ensure that their marketing efforts are grounded in genuine empathy and understanding of the customer. While AI can certainly help to automate and optimize certain tasks, it cannot replace the creativity, intuition, and emotional intelligence that are essential for building strong, lasting relationships with customers.
Final Thoughts: Embracing the Future of Multilingual Marketing
As the global marketplace continues to evolve and expand, the importance of effective multilingual marketing will only continue to grow. Companies that are able to successfully navigate the complexities of localization, leverage the power of AI and automation, and maintain a deep understanding of their customers' needs and preferences will be well-positioned to thrive in this new landscape.
For B2B SaaS companies like Inriver, this means embracing a customer-centric approach that puts the needs and experiences of the end-user at the center of all marketing efforts. It means investing in the digital maturity of the organization as a whole, ensuring that marketing teams have the skills, tools, and resources they need to effectively engage with customers across all channels and touchpoints. And it means being willing to experiment with new, composable technologies, that is, a modular and flexible tech stack that streamlines timings and applications while always staying grounded in the fundamentals of great storytelling, authentic communication, and genuine value creation.
Nicoletta Dorizzi's insights provide a valuable roadmap for navigating this complex and constantly evolving landscape. By combining a deep understanding of local markets with a strategic approach to localization, a willingness to embrace new technologies like AI, and an unwavering commitment to customer centricity and digital maturity, B2B SaaS companies can unlock new opportunities for growth and success in the global marketplace.
At Undertow, we guide B2B businesses towards global success through a holistic, effective multilingual marketing strategy that matches their needs in every stage of their scaling process. From personalized content to international SEO, from ensuring a smooth workflow integration into your tech stack to aligning your plan with every team in your organization, we help you understand your local markets, find the right leads, drive your global expansion and make sure you nurture lasting relationships with your customers that keep pulling them towards your brand.
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