This document discusses how content marketing can help British companies build exports. It argues that content marketing is a proven technique that is more cost-effective than traditional marketing. While exporting poses challenges like language barriers and cultural differences, online content provides a relatively inexpensive way for companies to reach new markets. The document advocates using content marketing to understand different audience segments and develop content that meets their specific needs. By partnering locally and testing content in select markets, companies can use content marketing to effectively engage foreign audiences.

1. Can Content Marketing
Build Exports?
By Alan Boyce, Managing
Director, Axonn Media

2. Everyone’s heard of content marketing

3. Some of you are doing it, some are thinking about doing it
and others have written it off as a fad or the latest internet
hype story

4. Content marketing isn’t a fad. It’s a
proven technique

5. 62% cheaper than
conventional
marketing and
generates three
times as many
leads.*
* Demand Metric, November 2013

6. Conversion rates
average x6 higher
for content
marketing adopters
vs. non-adopters.*
* Kapost, November 2013

7. 78% of chief
marketing officers
believe custom
content is the future
of marketing.*
* Demand Metric, November 2013

8. Declaration of interest!
My company is a content marketing
agency and we provide outsourced
content marketing services and
expertise. So I would say all that,
wouldn’t I?

9. BUY OUR STUFF
I can’t deny it: I have a professional interest in convincing
people to do more content marketing. Specifically, to
outsource their content marketing.
Precisely, to outsource it to us.

10. BUY OUR STUFF
PLEASEHowever, everything in this presentation applies no matter who does your content marketing. This
technique appears to be simple and straightforward, but it’s notoriously tricky to get right. CMI research
found 58% of people doing content marketing believed it was not as effective as they had expected it to
be – so “how” remains a very important question to resolve.
So in this presentation I’ll cover:
•The case for content marketing
•The problems British companies often experience in beginning to export or in growing their export markets
•Why the opportunities online offers makes it worth overcoming those obstacles
•How content marketing approaches can make it, if not easy, then at least clear what needs to be done
•Examples from Axonn Media’s experience in selling our services abroad and in providing content marketing
services for businesses in the UK selling overseas, and for overseas businesses selling in the UK and in third
countries.

11. Content marketing treats its audience as an equal partner in a dialogue rather than a
passive “mark” to be taken advantage of.
Whether it’s paying Google to position your results prominently or trying to trick
Google into doing so (by cloaking ten years ago, by keyword stuffing five years ago or
by unnatural link building a couple of years ago) – it’s all essentially the pushy
salesman jamming his foot into the audience’s mental door; of getting the message
across whether it’s something the audience wants to hear or not.

12. Content Marketing vs Interruption Marketing
Interruption marketing says “you want what I’ve got? Well you can’t
have it, until you’ve done what I want” and it may or may not give you
what you were after, once it has pitched you.
Content marketing says “here is what you wanted. Now that I’ve given
that to you, will you do something for me?” It treats the audience as an
equal partner.
Content marketing is eclipsing
and will continue to eclipse
interruption marketing.

13. For example:
This poster on a bus stop has a
QR code. Viewers can choose
to interact with content that is
valuable to them. If they
choose to do this and the
content fulfils their needs, they
are better disposed towards
the business or product that
gave them something they
valued without insisting on
taking anything in return.

14. Be interesting
to make people like you
then they might
do what you want

15. We believe there are 3 factors every organisation needs to succeed in
content marketing.
Every organisation has some capacity for each of these already. The trick
is to get them into the right balance to achieve the results you want.

16. Getting
GREAT IDEAS
that
RESONATE WITH THE RIGHT PEOPLE
in front of
THOSE PEOPLE
leading them to
CHOOSE
to do
WHAT YOU WANT THEM TO DO

17. What does this have to do with exports?
The simple answer is that an online presence can be an incredibly effective and
relatively inexpensive bridgehead for taking a product or a service into a new
market. Online offers an incredibly powerful sales and marketing platform with
very low entry costs and unhampered by physical distance. And content marketing
is the most cost-effective way of getting the most out of that platform.

18. UK growth is projected to be below the
worldwide average in coming years –
although if you leave out China, Indonesia
and India, which distort the figures a lot, it
remains ahead of trend – for this one
segment (B2B ecommerce sales) at least.
Every country is adopting online as a
business platform at different rates, and
along different curves – curves that are the
products of history, technology, law,
domestic economics, and culture as well as
being affected by what everyone else is
doing.
Globalisation is not spreading evenly and it
doesn’t spread in a linear way and Western
European businesses are among the best-
positioned in the world to take advantage of
these disparities, thanks to the relative
maturity of our online economies, stability
of jurisprudence and more advanced
technical infrastructures and skills bases.

19. Less than a third of UK SMEs
are active in overseas
markets
Only a quarter plan to
increase their activities in
2014*
* Baker Tilly, January 2014

20. 58% of businesses say language is the
biggest barrier to exporting, according to
Global Lingo. An offshoot of this is
differences in “business culture”.

21. Law and how it works in other
countries is another big concern

22. Was Pepsi’s 1960s
slogan “Come
alive with the
Pepsi Generation”
really translated
into Chinese as
“Pepsi brings your
ancestors back
from the grave”?

24. And how did Coca-Cola
become “Bite the Wax
Tadpole” in China?

25. The problem goes deeper than language. there is the problem of
speaking clearly to another culture, of which a foreign language is just
a very prominent but partial expression.

26. Something to consider...
“Merry Christmas” is easy to translate, but did you know
for Orthodox Christian countries like Russia, Christmas is
on January 7 not December 25? So what happens if all
your customer service operators disappear on holiday just
when the local shopping season hits its peak?
The number of English speakers online has grown by
300% in the last ten years – but the number of Spanish
speakers has grown by 800%, the number of Chinese
speakers by 1500% and the number of Arabic speakers by
2500%.

27. There are 2.4 billion web
users worldwide.
English is the native
language of just 26% of
them. *
* NewsReach, 2013

28. http://www.newsreach.co.uk/ho
w-far-does-your-content-reach/

29. Access the interactive infographic by NewsReach here
http://www.newsreach.co.uk/how-far-does-your-content-reach/
It shows how far various languages reach worldwide.
English and Chinese can reach more than half of the
world’s web users. These two, plus the next 8 most-
spoken languages, give you access to 81% of them.
But does that matter? Don’t all foreigners speak
English anyway?

30. Only 18% of web users
would be comfortable
purchasing in a non-native
language.
42% would NEVER buy in
any language other than
their own. *
* European Union, 2013

31. Being understood isn’t the same as
doing business!
85% of people are more likely to buy
from a site in their local language
54% deem localisation more
important than price
[CSA Research]

32. Welcome tomy
Lebenswelt

33. Only 18% of web users
would be comfortable
purchasing in a non-native
language.
42% would NEVER buy in
any language other than
their own. *
* European Union, 2013
Edmund Husserl’s Lebenswelt (“lifeworld”)
The set of intersubjective rules and norms that exist between people
who understand each other. It’s more than just a language and includes
cultural norms, etiquette, expectations of behaviour etc.
To market to somebody in
the most effective way, you
have to be seek admission
to their lifeworld.

34. - More than 85 localised websites
- More than 35 different languages
- More than 75 different currencies
Source: A Christmas Story: Content Marketing for Ecommerce Success in a Multicultural World
Download here: http://bit.ly/HOdVUS

35. And then: the law

36. Some considerations
- Taxation
- Consumer protection regimes
- Freedom of speech
- Privacy
- Cookies
- Personal data
- Cultural attitudes to law and arbitration
- Business culture

37. And not all products and services lend themselves to exporting

38. SO WHY
BOTHER?

39. FINEST ONLINE MARKETING EXPERTISE
Online marketing is one of the few sectors where we can truly
say that British businesses have a real competitive advantage

40. English is the lingua franca of the int
even if that doesn’t translate into sal
That means the English language inte
is far more advanced and far more
competitive than its equivalent in an
other language. We have a big advan
and a finite window of opportunity.

41. Content marketers should hardly be intimidated
by exporting at all, because successful content
marketing is about building pathways to
engagement and interaction that recognise the
differences between the needs of different
audience segments.

42. Most content marketing is premised on catering
for the needs of multiple audience personas.
Your online presence exists to facilitate a
desired range of interactions between you and
your audience, which are stereotyped to a
degree.

43. Online
Presence

44. But your audience is not a monolith, just as
there is no “rest of the world”.
You must segment your audience to address
different needs and desires.
If you try to speak to everyone, you’ll end up
speaking to no one.

45. Sales
Lead Gen
Brand
Awareness
Customer
Service

46. And having done so, approach the segments
that are most likely undertake and complete
your desired tasks in ways that encourage those
desired behaviours in people like that.

47. Sales
Lead Gen
Brand
Awareness
Customer
Service

48. For good content marketers, a foreign audience
is just another segment, and a new set of
personas to develop and serve – it’s a difference
of degree, not of kind.

50. Content marketers already think like this and so are better positioned
to help exporters than other kinds of marketer, online or offline.
:

51. In summary:
1. Partner locally to transcreate, not
translate
2. Restrict the number of markets you
enter at once
3. Test the waters, adapt
4. Don’t be afraid to communicate

52. Partner locally to transcreate –
not translate
Restrict the number of markets
you enter at once

53. Partner locally to transcreate –
not translate
Restrict the number of markets
you enter at once
Test the waters, adapt...and
don’t be afraid to communicate

54. COINCIDENCE!
New eBook on Persona Development
out June 16th from
Sign up for our newsletter at
www.axonn.co.uk

55. ANOTHER COINCIDENCE!
August 14 webinar: “Think Local, Act
Global: How To Implement A
Multilingual Content Strategy” from
Sign up at
https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/43/114303

56. ALAN BOYCE, AXONN MEDIA
• Twitter - @boycealan
• LinkedIn -
linkedin.com/pub/alan-
boyce/9/298/538
• Web - axonn.co.uk
• Email –
alan.boyce@axonn.co.uk