Culture + Content: How to successfully market your products overseas - Teacher: Lee Densmer

If your business is online, you have a global business. And if you plan to sell products or services in a different country, you have to know how to make content that is relevant to them. Today in our lesson, we're going to talk about culture, content and crafting a global content strategy. We talk about how you should enter an overseas market, how data helps you make important content decisions, and how do you transcreate for a place you've never sold in before. Here we go. 

Hello and welcome to the Useful Content Podcast and today we have a new teacher in the useful content classroom. Lee sma. Hi Lee,

Hello. Thanks for having me this morning.

it is great to have you on. because you are on LinkedIn, I've been tracking what you've been doing

and, um, how have things been in the last few months? I know you probably started to get serious on LinkedIn about nine months ago or so. How, how have things been?

Well, I have been LinkedIn on LinkedIn for what feels like 20 years, but I started a business eight months ago and then started posting content and developing ideas and gaining followers and enjoying, you know, the interaction. And mostly I've experienced a lot of really great connections with peers that, um, are helping me level my game with my craft. So it's, it's been a great experience.

So I've seen you gain the traction. It's been clear it's been from one level of engagement to the next, and you're refining your ideas. Is there anything you started at this, at the beginning of posting that has changed, that has really made a difference?

Topically in terms of strategy. Yes. My strategy and my thinking has evolved and I began posting, um, more for content marketers and now more for business owners. So, you know, your audience, who you're posting to. Evolves over time and your ideas evolve over time also.

Right. And has that change really made you consider how you will be creating new content going forward?

Um, yes. You know, it's an interesting question how your online brand and how the content you put out there evolves over time, because none of us have the answers when we start. And I'm not saying I have the answers now, but I get more confident in my answers and I start to understand. Based on interactions, what people want, you know, what kind of content they want.

Do they want templates? Do they want discussion, for example? So, uh, yes, it has been an evolution and you can't learn until you do it. You can study the LinkedIn Masters, you can read about hooks, but you can't understand your audience until you do it for six, seven months. It really doesn't click until the six or seven month part, despite what the gurus say.

Despite what the gurus say. Alright, so I want to get back to what you just said, but first, let me introduce you to the people. Can you tell the people, uh, what you do and how you help your clients make useful 

Absolutely. So I am a content marketer. And my thing is process. So I believe in keeping it simple. I believe that people can put together great content programs without a lot of fuss, without a lot of channels, without a lot of content types. I help put structure in place to do that, starting at the beginning with the buyers, who they are and what they care about, all the way through to promotion. I,

I'm all about simplicity.

right. All about Synthes. I like that. I like that. And so let me get back to what we were talking about before. And so you really believe in order for somebody to develop their content strategy properly and know what pleases the people and what works for them, obviously you're looking for revenue and leads and you're looking for a new place into business that you have to put your hands in the thing and actually.

Do it. You have to practice the thing first. Do you believe in that?

Uh, absolutely. I, yes, you have to test and you can test. LinkedIn is an awesome platform for testing. You have to test ideas, figure out what you wanna build out further, test your market. See who resonates. Um, and then double down on what works. And like I said, that doesn't happen overnight. You can do all the strategy you want, you can do all the planning that you want, but then you really, you just have to get out there and try it. And I think for a lot of people and a lot of brands, it feels uncertain or even cringey at first, but there's no, there's literally no other way than to test your market with ideas on social and ideas. On your website and then change it. Maybe that's a misperception, is that anything you put out there is permanent, not the case. You can update a blog post, you can revise your opinion.

It's totally okay to change and tweak and refine over time. I'm nowhere near where I was nine months ago in terms of my craft. In my opinions, I've evolved. An

individual should, and a brand should too.

And I love that. I love that as a case. It's, I, I saw the, the evolution. I saw that you were kind of doing this thing first, and then you, you began to, it's like a refining thing and, and you're allowed to evolve. You're allowed to change. You're allowed to change your opinion on things. And all good marketers do that.

As they discover what works in the market, they're allowed to say, okay, I used to think this nine months ago. Now I think this works better. Yeah.

Absolutely. It's true for individuals and for big brands. I think that if we went back and looked at the big brands 10, 15 years ago, we would see different marketing, different messaging. Everything would be different. Different content. 

Absolutely. Alright, and today we are gonna talk a bit about that, but we're gonna talk about it in the global context, how to have global content marketing and how to shift your mind from thinking local because many businesses I. Or all businesses start off local and then it's quite possible and maybe they're glowing global.

And that's part of what you do. You help, uh, businesses adapt to culture and to create content that is in alignment with, the culture inside of a particular region, country so that they could be successful. So explain a bit about how you do that and what, what is that about?

Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to give a counterpoint right off the bat. So you said that most companies start local, but if you are online, you're inherently starting global because everybody online can

access your content. And the statistic is that when you have 50 or more people, 90%. Those businesses are global.

They do business globally. They have global users, global wires. So it just goes without saying, I guess. Or it Or it, it isn't maybe intuitive or clear, but if you're online, you're global. Yeah. So what I do is I help shift the understanding from local to global. You're global at the start. You're creating content for your home market and your home language for your home culture. That content won't automatically resonate in Europe, in South Africa, in Asia, it won't, and it's not just about language. So I do counsel and advise my clients to shift their mindset and to start thinking about how to adapt their content for that new market. Of course, they have to figure out first where they wanna invest and who really is interested in their services. You don't just. You don't just adapt for the globe, you have to be strategic about it. And I help clients get there to understand where and how to approach, um, foreign markets.

Right, and so since. Everyone who is online is inherently automatically global, That means that they have to think in a different way. That means that they, if they have to have a content strategy and they have to be in particular markets, they have to develop a global content strategy.

Could you explain to us what a global content strategy is and how can one begin to craft a global content 

Yeah, a global content strategy, well, there's two ways you can do it. You can create a content strategy that is good globally without adaptation. So, and in a sense that means you're genericizing your strategy. So it will work abroad without a lot of adaptation. That means that you're removing local cultural idioms, references, stories, and creating a brand that neither offends nor really is specific to anyone. I don't recommend that approach, right? But if you're creating content for your home market, you're not even aware of all the references and idioms and even colors. You're using that are specific to your culture and your market? Let me, let me give a couple examples. I think that'll help people. So for example, content is about colors, it's about imagery, and it's also about words, right?

So let me give an example in each of those cases. So some images that you may be using in your content could be offensive or may not even work in another culture like, um, the color red. The color red in Africa can be troublesome because it's associated with mourning. And, and look at you, you're all about red. 

So this is your color, juma, but your color is a little bit tricky in Africa. And so brands need to have that awareness. Another thing is images. So, or, um, here's a fun example. This symbol, hand symbols and emojis are not good across cultures. This symbol can be vulgar, and so I risk, I risk using that in my content. And if I lack awareness about that, then I can get, you know, into some hot water in other countries. 

for those who are just hearing the podcast, um, Lee is putting up the okay symbol. What will we know in the Western world, what we know as the 

okay symbol. Mm-Hmm, that's right. Yeah. I forget that. We might have listeners, and a final example that is fun, especially as an American, is the baseball metaphor example. In the United States, we have 35 expressions. Are related to baseball.

Things like touching base, hitting a home run. Those are baseball metaphors.

And I, I laugh, I, I know some people who've learned English and they've learned those expressions and they use them, but they have no idea that they refer to baseball.

But there there plenty of cultures who don't, don't care about baseball. So when you're actually talking about sports and your content, it just, it kind of lands on deaf ears.

So those are some examples of how your content can. Be central to your culture, but not relevant to another culture. You don't even know, brands don't even know that you're so inside of it. It's like an echo chamber. It's like a cultural echo chamber, right? I'm inside my American mind, I write American content, yet, if I am online, I'm doing business globally, and there could be flaws in my content, in my approach. So creating a global content strategy is about finding who your foreign markets are and creating a, a, a version of your strategy for that market. And that involves defining things like, do we need to translate? That's, you know, a basic consideration is, let's put it in the language. Um, another item would be, how do we use imagery? How do we use color for that market? What's the tone? The vibe we need to use for that culture? Are they more formal people than we might be in the in North America? Do we need to change our tone? So there are all sorts of elements around the use of language, use of color, the use of images that have to be decided and defined so that your content can be appropriate for that audience.

And so it's not a translation issue, it is a, how do you understand the culture issue? Right. Uh, and I know there are many examples of this. Um, actually some time ago I was talking to a copyright lawyer, somebody out of the us uh, think she works in New York and she was talking about some of the copyright issues that.

I think Subway encountered in China and on China's like a mind feel in terms of how you translate things. And um, and the brand was translated in the incorrect way initially and some people picked up on it and they opened their own restaurants with the name and it may not have been Subway, made up another restaurant.

And so they kinda lost that for a while and they had to go through a long legal battle, uh, because they didn't have someone. Who's there actually translate the thing. They just assumed that it was word for word and it it, it wasn't, and I know you have examples of that too.

I do. Translation is a part of a global strategy. It is not the full strategy. Sometimes you need to translate and sometimes you don't. And it depends on how, if English is the language of culture, um, of commerce rather, I'm sorry, but the statistics say that 75% of consumers are more likely to buy products. Their own language. So that means the website is in their own language. The FAQs are in their own language, the reviews are, and so 75% are more likely to buy that way. So translation is, is foundational, however you just said it. If you go for a one to one translation, literal this word for that word, you can easily get it wrong.

And yes, there, there are some terrible and fun examples out there. I'll, I'll give you, I'll give you a couple if, if we're ready for it. Where the translation has just missed the mark. So, um, do you remember, this is completely American, um, the got milk campaign.

do

you know that one? So it

was a, 

the Mil Mil mustaches. Yeah, with the celebrities. Yeah.

yeah.

Got milk. So that was a very, uh, successful campaign in America for selling dairy products. Got milk. And so a San Francisco ad agency was asked to localize that. I'm using that word intentional, make it local for the Latin American audience. And they did just translate it. They didn't, they didn't go to any sort of cultural depth.

And what they got out of it was, are you lactating?

Uh, yes, problematic.

little bit problematic. So, um, they did not go to the depth of cultural understanding that they needed to have to launch a campaign in the, in the Latin American market. I'm sure they

got 

fired. well, I, I guess they only found out about this when they went to market.

Yeah. Right. So, so there's evidence your product doesn't sell in the market, you get complaints. Um, your bounce rate is really high. There's, there's evidence when you've done a poor job of translating, there's lots of customer support calls 'cause nobody understands your product or how to use it. So there's evidence of translations gone poorly in the market and there's evidence of a brand that doesn't resonate in your market. Um, and you could, you could just have a disaster. There have been disasters where brands have had to pull out of markets because they, they messed it up so badly. So the point is, is that your content strategy translation is a little part of it and an important part, but your content strategy has to be rooted in cultural understanding.

Um, What makes them tick? Buyer personas. You have to do buyer personas. Again, you cannot assume that the buyer that you focused on and researched for your home market is the same, not demographically the same, not psychographically the same, similar maybe because there's millennials all over the world, right? But do the millennials in China purchase in the same way that the millennials do in, in France? Probably not. They don't use the same social channels, they don't search with the same keywords, they don't buy the same products. Trends are different. So there's, there's a lot to know, and that can be overwhelming for brands. And so to make it less overwhelming, I encourage brands to pick the most prominent markets. The customers from X region that are buying from them the most, or coming to their website the most often. So. Pick one or two markets to do this for and test in that market and to do translate and adapt top content pieces, not all of them, but the top content pieces.

Is it your webpage maybe, or your best performing blog posts? Pick three or perhaps your best performing lead magnet. So start with that one market. Start with a few pieces and start with understanding that buyer and adapting that content. In a small way. And then as you see traffic grow and sales grow and interest and awareness grow, then you go deeper. So it's it's incremental step by step. Yeah.

So if someone comes to you and they have a product or service, or they're online, which makes 'em global automatically, and they, they say to you, we want to put more emphasis in this particular market, in this particular country, uh, for the next year, we're gonna explore that. We wanna put an emphasis on it.

Where is the exact first place that they should start? What is the process and where should they start? Where do you start them out? Starting to build out this global content strategy.

Um, if you're asking how to choose a market. To start with, there's a couple different ways to choose that first market. You can analyze your sales data, right? You can use tools to track where your customers are coming from. Like Google Analytics will show you. You can track what products they're buying, of course, and how much revenue those purchases are generating.

So there's data that you can look at to show that, hey, we've got an audience in France. People in France are buying our products. You can conduct market research. Um, social listening tools are another good way to understand where your customers are coming from, mentions of your product and such. Um, so there are, there are ways using data and tools that you can find out where your customers are coming from. And then as I mentioned, you know, you, you become immediately aware of, of the language that may be spoken in that region. And then you conduct some customer research so you can do a buyer persona. So you can begin to understand how to adapt that content beyond translation. Now, many companies don't do that on their own.

They engage in agency to help with that process of understanding the culture and adapting the content. So they may, you know, how to get this done is important for this audience. They may decide to hire a content marketer in the country. You know, full-time or part-time content marketer in the country.

Not a translator, but a content marketer, or they may choose to outsource to a, to an agency. I also wanna distinguish between the role of a translator and a transl creator Translation. Is, is one-to-one? You, you said that it's, it's faithfulness, it's translating the words, the structure, the sentence from one language to the next, but transcreation. Is the act of, um, creating for that market. So it's no longer one-to-One, it's the process by a linguist, by a professional of adapting the content so that person is aware of the idioms for that market. They're aware of the jokes, they're aware of the trends, and they're able to change the content. And sometimes it's completely changed. It's not just adapted. It's, it's rewritten for a new market. 'cause none of it works. so

so that craft is called transcreation, and it's distinct from translation and it's often, what's the end, you know, Juma, it's more expensive, but you wanna get it right, right? You don't want, are you lactating? You wanna, you

wanna get it Right,

before you go into Latin America?

Mm-Hmm.

That's excellent. So trans,

you, uh, you find some, um, what'd you say? You said you find, the region that, that has the most amount of promise based on the data. Right. And then if you say, I'm going into this particular region, then you can find, you could either hire agency there or, or you could, um, I mean, I guess they, they're freelancers there as well.

You could hire maybe,

you know, or maybe you employ someone from the country to have on your team. That's, that's a thing too.

Mm-Hmm. 

And then, uh, you, you start to transcreate, not translate, but transcreate. So after you begin to transcreate some of this content, what is the, is the next step in terms of getting your content into this, into this place now?

Right. So let's say that you've transc created a blog post and a lead magnet in the webpage. You've chosen some, you know, uh, of your key pieces to transcreate, then it's a matter of distributing it and promoting it in that market. So again, an understanding of how content is consumed in that market is important. Does this, um. Culture, does your target market in that culture go to industry publications? Do they use, um, Instagram more than Facebook? Do they use Pinterest more than x or whatever? So understanding the channels and then distributing appropriately on those channels is, is important. Um, as it is in your home market.

It's important for your, for your target market and it's different. And then promoting, so. Again, as in your home market, it is for your target foreign market. You need to promote, you need to put your content out there, multiple posts on social, multiple emails, um, different ways of promoting your content so it gets in front of eyes in that market. You know, overall, a large mistake that I see, and I'm sure that you do too in content marketing is creating content, great content, and then letting it sit there. So, you know, you've got a blog posted on your website, but it's sitting there. Maybe you've keyword optimized it, but you're not promoting it.

You're not sending it out in a newsletter, you're not posting it on social, you're not chunking it up and sharing it in different ways. So you like for your home market, you have to do that for your foreign markets. Mm-Hmm

Exactly. Okay. I have a, I have a question. 'cause this is something that I've noticed, right? So, um, last, a couple of years ago, I did some testing up to last year, I think I stopped doing it on TikTok, right? So, TikTok, as we know, is the, the notable, social media platform. Of now and mostly used by, uh, gen Z, gen Alpha, and, uh, it's, it's really, uh, risen to the top in terms of short form content, right?

It's made its mark. When I started to use TikTok, what I noticed, and this has been corroborated by other people, I. Is that TikTok is very, uh, geo locked. Your content goes local first and then it goes out. What can someone do if they're in a particular country and they want to, let's say, say, share content on a platform that is like that, uh, but it only goes to the, their local market first before it goes out.

How come you overcome challenges like that?

I'm too old for TikTok. This is what my son tells me, and I'm, I'm convinced. But, so it sounds like that's a function of the algorithm, that the algorithm in TikTok promotes content in your region and then

maybe depending on traction, it goes more broadly.

Um. 

Yeah, that's interesting.

And I wonder if the algorithm does the same thing. I don't think it does the same thing on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn does not constrain your content based on location. That might even cause me to think of Defocusing on a platform like TikTok, you know? Unless you've got a team who's doing the posting and then promoting in-country.

Right. We were talking about in-country teams. So that's how you get around it with a local handle, A handle in Spain or a handle in Mexico, and a local content marketer doing that promotion. That's how you get around it. You have a handle for each country. Yeah.

Right, and you focus on giving them the content. And of course, you know, so you have a team that is, has a central understanding of the brand, but then they have parameters in transcreation to produce content. On their side. Uh, well, how do one, how does one manage all that? That seems like a lot,

you know, how, how, how could you manage all those different things all at the same time?

Especially there's, just, suppose there are three or four regions that you're creating content for.

So often what I see is companies start with a fairly junior content marketer, maybe a senior level writer who's, who's a fairly junior content marketer. Then as they start going to other countries, they need to elevate that person to be more of a global content strategist. And some will rise to the challenge that global content strategist will manage the in-country efforts.

So it may be a global content strategist in Chicago managing, uh, content marketer in Mexico City, and a content marketer in Paris. So on. So over time, the roles of those people elevate into more and more senior roles with more and more capability. Either they're growing on their own through courses and learning, or you need to bring in a person who understands global marketing at a more, um, uh, at a deeper level. Or you're outsourcing the whole thing,

oh, you, oh, you could outsource the whole thing. 

Mm-Hmm. Right. 

Yeah. And so I would say just like how you over the last few months have started, uh, 'cause I guess the same process would apply except as in a different region with a different culture, different language. You should have to test as usual and then find out what works and then begin to adapt your content strategy.

Right. That's right. Exactly. It's the same. So you test, you iterate, you hope you're not getting things terribly wrong in the gut milk example. Um, and you, and you keep pressing forward. You do it with. Research and expertise behind you. It's not random. Plenty of research and expertise and strategy goes behind. I would never tell a brand to just go for it. It needs to be backed by some planning and some strategy and uh, and an expert. So, um, the type of business to whom you outsource this work is called a language services provider,

and there are many, many of them out there. It's a billion dollar industry, and these. Companies, small or large, um, help identify which countries to go into, what content to adapt. They help with product adaptation because a product differs by market. I have an interesting example of that. Um, and they help you promote and distribute your content globally. So it's language services and the industry is the localization industry.

Right.

Yeah.

I have a question. It might seem strange. Have you found that adapting to a totally different language is more difficult than adapting to someone who speaks English but has local vernacular and things that they use,

or they both equally as difficult?

That's a great question. And um, so, and in an example, there are. Many varieties of English around the world, right? There's Indian English, there's your English, there's my English, there's Australian English. Um, it's another thing where there's not great awareness that the culture, even though we all speak English, the culture behind the language is different.

And culture and language are like this. Your culture influences your language, and your language influences your culture. So again, I'm, I'm all American, a hundred percent. I've traveled extensively. You know, this is my business, but I'm American. I talk like an American. I use American references. So even I have to be aware that what I'm talking about, what content I'm putting out there might not make sense to an Australian or a British person that is also localization.

It's an adaptation among the flavors, the varieties, the dialects of English. It's the same thing, so it's as important as translating from English to Spanish. It's an adaptation from American English to British English that sometimes needs to happen depending on your brand. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I would say so. And I think for people who are, let's just say from smaller countries, smaller populations, less known cultures that are going out into the world, into larger countries, larger populations, more well-known cultures that they themselves sometimes have to adapt and, um, use language that is more neutral.

Yeah. You know, like people would consider that I may have a more neutral Trinidadian accent. Uh, you know, if I get around some of my friends, then we, we start to go into the kind of localized talking and use terms that maybe you, you know, some people get confused when they hear us talking together. So we have the, uh, the local lance, we have the vernacular, we use those different things.

And, um. And so what you're saying is that it's very important to, to recognize and to take that into strong consideration when you're creating content for these different places.

if I could leave anybody with a parting thought, um, it would be the awareness I would want to impart today. The need to be aware that you are creating content that's specific to your language and your culture and your buyer. But yet, if you're online, you're automatically global. And so you need to start thinking about what that means in terms of language, images, colors. Start educating yourself. Start, start being aware. Start understanding where your buyers may be coming from. You are global. I am global. You know, a lot of my followers are not from America. And so if you want to grow your business globally, you're following your business, you need to be aware of. The nature of your content, you need to be aware of the impact of culture on buying, behavior on perception, and be willing to adapt your content for those specific markets in a structured, strategic way.

Excellent, excellent. And that's a great way for us to wrap up the conversation. You need to adapt it, be aware, have strong awareness about these different cultures and the way that people perceive content, and then you'll be able to be more, more successful as you grow your global business online. So Lee, could you tell the people where to find you because they may want to talk to you more about global content.

of course. The best place is on LinkedIn and, um, I post every day. I have a newsletter that you can subscribe to. I, I reply when people direct message me, so I'm thrilled to have conversations online on LinkedIn.

suggest Lee

Yeah.

Lee. Lee Desme. That's right. 

Mm-Hmm. 

how do you spell the last name?

D-E-N-S-M-E-R. And it's Lee, LEE? No, no. Fancy spelling with my first name.

And not L-E-I-G-H or anything like that.

LEA. Just L two E. Mm-Hmm.

Beautiful, beautiful. So it's great having this conversation with you today, Lee, in the useful content classroom and uh, we'll be back again 'cause I know we have to have a different conversation very, very soon and we'll be back again to talk about different stuff very soon.

So thanks everyone for joining us. Useful Content classroom dismissed.

Thank you.

And we're clear. We are clear. We are clear. Clear, clear. That's good stuff.

I had a lot more of, of terrible examples, but the got milk one is fun. And in your, um, prep work you said nothing sexual or political or religious. So

Yeah, I say that. I mean, there's some leeway to that. It ha It has to be, it has to be. Um, I, I said that unless it's germane to a content story, so I gave a qualifier for it. So if it, it could be sexual, but, or, or political, that's no problem. It has to make sense in the context of what you're saying, not just randomness, you know.

Okay. Let we stop this recording here.

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