In today’s digitally empowered world, global brands face constant scrutiny. Customers can easily point out inconsistencies in messaging or criticize a company’s take on a particularly sensitive political issue. With information traveling faster than ever, small errors can snowball into lost opportunities or even damaged reputations.

Injecting a “glocal” mindset into marketing strategy and individual campaigns can help prevent such a scenario from happening.

Say goodbye to the old ways

In the past, companies would stick to just one marketing strategy all throughout. Regardless if a campaign was aimed at several different countries or markets, messaging would be rigid.

If that approach were implemented today, brands could quickly incur the wrath of consumers. What is humorous in an American context may not be the case in a market with mostly European audiences. Companies could find themselves being accused of cultural inappropriateness and suffer the consequences for years to come.

This is where the concept of glocal comes in.

Companies can embrace a globally conscious mindset while still accommodating the varying cultures of local markets. What this means is that your usual marketing strategy would have to be regularly revisited and optimized for each different market. Target audience, competitors, and product offerings would all have to be reviewed and understood carefully.

But it’s important that brands never shun their identity and original purpose. What a glocal mindset encourages is merging your purpose with intended customer values.

How is this applied in practice?

Steps to take in merging global and local

1. Empower your local staff

For any marketing campaign to succeed in local markets, you need people who are in tune with local dialects, colloquialisms, and little cultural nuances. No matter how successful a company has been, without local teams with access to the right resources, campaigns won’t generate results.

Provide your local teams with constant access to sell sheets, brochures, and other collateral materials.

In addition, empower staff to make the necessary adjustments to effectively communicate with target audiences. You can maintain fundamental components of the brand, but allow some leeway for staff to inject a fresh new take on messaging or visuals.

2. Educate teams about your mission

As mentioned earlier, don’t neglect to communicate what your brand stands for. While local staff have the prerogative to craft marketing messages that truly resonate, your mission and core values must still be heard.

To that end, it’s important to regularly check in with all teams and educate them about why the company was founded in the first place. This is also a chance to inspire your staff to commit themselves to your company values.

Establish clear brand guidelines. From logos and colors to mission statements and boilerplate product descriptions, everything has to align.

If applicable, realign with consultants providing website SEO services or strategic marketing advice. Don’t be afraid to push back on aspects that you deem as non-negotiable.

Final thoughts

Ultimately, it all boils down to using ideas, words, and visuals to provoke audience interest or excitement. To get the desired emotional reaction from people, companies need to adjust to a specific cultural context while still maintaining brand identity.