The term “glocalization” is a term that comes from the combination of the words "globalization" and "localization.” Glocalization is when a company adopts the marketing of a product or service which is distributed on a global basis to fit a local consumer market. For example, if your company is selling web design services and is able to deliver to clients all over the world, you can also advertise to specifically target customers in Los Angeles and thus making your offer more specific to people in Los Angeles who are searching for web design services.
People are more likely to respond to marketing messages which they feel are specifically speaking to them and focusing on a local area also creates an impression of being more personal to someone in that area. In this article, we’ll be discussing some specific strategies for using glocalization to market your products and services.
Are You Ready for Glocalization?
Before using glocalization to market your business, it’s important to ask whether or not your business is ready for it. For example, if you will be competing with other local businesses in that area, it’s important that you have an advantage that will help you to compete with them and make glocalization worth your time. It’s also important to do your research and find out specifically which areas will be the most profitable for you to target.
For example, when building a PPC campaign with Google, you can find out where most of your search traffic is coming from and narrow it down to specific cities. Which cities hold the highest concentration of interested customers? You can also find out which local areas are bringing you the most customers by gathering physical addresses when your customers order products. These physical addresses can be acquired by offering them products that are sent to their home and used in direct mailings, which can be very effective in generating ongoing sales from your customer base.
Once you find these pockets, you can start using glocalization strategies to target the customers in those areas and maximizing your profits through specialized marketing.
How to Globalize Your Marketing
The secret to succeeding with glocalization is to tailor your message for a specific local area and thus build a stronger connection with the consumers in that area. The following are some simple methods that you can use to accomplish this:
#1: Building Optimized Mini-Sites
There are SEO companies that specialize in building mini-sites that are optimized for specific local keywords. A very good example of this is the way that dating service websites (which service people all over the nation of the world) target specific geographical locations. For example, if you have such a dating site, you could have mini-sites built which were optimized for the keywords: “dating in Los Angeles,” “dating in Tampa,” “dating services in New York” and all the other major cities in the US if you wanted. Many times, these mini-sites will use the locally optimized terms as domain names such as “datinginlosangeles.com” Some freelance service providers such as writers, web designers, accountants, marketing consultants or financial advisors can also benefit from having mini-sites built for them.
#2: Direct Mail Campaigns and Seminars
No matter how popular the internet becomes, direct mail will probably always be an effective means of marketing to customers. Once you’ve identified the places where you have a lot of interested customers, and gathered a lot of physical addresses in that area, you can create direct mail pieces that appeal to the local customs or consumer preferences. In some cases, if the product or service is successful enough and if there are enough interested candidates, you can have seminars which teach the people how to use the products more efficiently and where additional products are sold. Many information marketers such as Eban Pagan use this approach to sell more expensive information products and informational seminar tickets.
#3: Radio, TV and Other Local Media
If the local interest is strong enough in an area, you can expand advertising into that area using advertisements on local Radio stations and local television in order to sell products and services or seminar tickets as in the example above. Public attention can also be generated through the use of press releases that are submitted to local news entities or by teaming up with local non for profits and charitable agencies in order to draw attention to your company. These strategies can be used in conjunction with locally targeted and optimized mini-sites and direct mail campaigns in order to expand your influence in that area and to make the TV and radio advertising methods more effective.
If you feel that glocalization would be an effective strategy for drawing more profits out of specific local areas, try starting with just one city where you feel that your product or service has the best chance. This will help you to refine your glocalization strategies so that you can expand and duplicate them in other high-interest geographical areas.
