Advertising in Social Media – Does It Work for Local Marketing?

Localization is one of the greatest ways to make your marketing efforts to reach the right audience. And content marketing is not the only smart approach on this matter, although it does contribute enormously. As of recently, social media advertising has gained a lot of traction when it comes to boosting localization success rates. And, to answer the question in our title succinctly, yes, social media advertising works wonders for local marketing. But the interesting part is how it works its magic. And even more interesting is how can you advertise on social media platforms for localization purposes.

Oh, you’re one of those business owners who claim social media campaigns are inefficient, time-consuming, and expensive? That’s because you are doing it wrong. To find out how can you use social media to reach your localization goals, and WHY you should do it, keep reading below.

Why Social Media Advertising?

Now, with so many types of advertising and marketing strategies at the top of your fingers, why should you invest in another one?

After all, social media ads marketing doesn’t even work that well. That’s a big fat lie, and your campaigns don’t bring good ROI to your business because you’re doing them wrong. And maybe the biggest pet peeve consumers today have is being bombarded with ads and marketing attempts all day long.

According to this study, over 40% of small business owners spend more than 6 hours daily on social media. This means they also post frequently. Big mistake. Your audience hates it.

If you do it right, however, advertising on social media will contribute to your localization efforts.

• There are well over 2 billion social media users around the world.
• Almost 85% of US citizens have at least a social media profile.
• Well over 95% of users aged 18 to 34 read online reviews before making a purchase.

So, obviously, you want to enjoy all those numbers. This is the simplest answer.

Create the Image of a Customer-Oriented Brand

While in the past, marketing departments worked tirelessly to create universal content, today, they have switched their goals to make it more customer-oriented. This is one of the reasons why big brands have started to create local Facebook pages for different countries. This way, brands can share content specifically developed for the audience there, which boosts their image as customer-focused brands.

When the content you share on social media is noticeably developed for the audience in a specific area, your audience’s perception of your brand changes.

One of the big names in the clothing industry, Uniqlo, has created different Facebook pages for different countries. How does this contribute to their marketing efforts?

Well, for one, they can advertise different clothing, depending on regional temperatures. When they advertise winter garments in Australia, they can show off the summer wear for the residents in Hong Kong.

Secondly, these small details make the difference between thoughtful and profit-motivated brands.

Engage with Your Audience in their Local Language

Since localization plays such a huge role in marketing efforts, your website is available in several languages, most probably. Well, the most obvious step now is to localize social media content and marketing efforts, too.

Consumers today, no matter the number of languages they speak, feel uncomfortable when they’re not offered native-language options.

This The Guardian article claims that more than 80% of Internet users today prefer to interact with online content in their native language. Letting your audience understand your social media posts allows them to react to those – thus, engage better with your brand.

The secret to spotless native-language social media posts? Translation services and editing tools. Forbes recommends using professional tools and services to create perfect social media content, such as Trust My Paper, Grammarly, Grab My Essay, the Hemingway Editor, Studicus, or ProWritingAid. After all, you want to make sure your band’s social media content follows all the grammatical rules and guidelines so your audience can also understand it. Needless to say, human translations are superior to machine-generated ones.

Higher Engagement Levels

Followers that are provided with local language updates and social media posts are more likely to engage with these better. They are more likely to share, comment, retweet, and pin to favorites. In this day and time, brands, regardless of their dimension and market share, want to stir the waters on social media.

Localization efforts when it comes to social media content can lead to overwhelming responses from the audience’s part, helping them increase the audience base. With a wider audience, brands have more chances to turn social media followers into loyal customers in the future.

Create a Cultural-Sensitive Image for your Brand

Social media post localization can make your brand appear more culturally-sensitive. Apart from localizing your posts by using local languages, you must be sensitive when it comes to religious and cultural manners.

Although traditionally, religion is a spiny topic that is rarely approached in marketing and advertising campaigns, Coca-Cola is a great example to follow.

The company realized how sensitive and culturally significant the Ramadan is for their Muslim audience so it created a series of commercials with a teenager, with obvious Indonesian features, who was tempted to break their fast before the evening. However, once he decided to do so, it was with his family, at the dinner table. The series was received with thousands of supportive likes, shares, comments, and retweets from the Indonesian and Muslim communities.

Coca-Cola’s religious and culturally-sensitive ads, paired with native-language social media content helped the brand overcome cultural differences and use a spiny topic, religion, here, to emphasize the care and attention to their customer, says Natalie Georgenes, head of the social media department at Best Essays writing company.

And it also showed that Coca-Cola is a brand that appreciates cultural and religious differences.

Boost Web Traffic

With the help of a smooth social media advertising campaign and localized website content, there are no limits when it comes to boosting on-site traffic. Ultimately, marketing efforts aim to generate sales. And localization can help if it is implemented both on-site and on social media accounts.

Social media outlets targeted at the audience in a certain area work like a charm in generating sales from relevant leads.

For instance, if you add links to your native-language posts to your native-language website or e-Shop, followers will feel more motivated to click on links and potentially purchase a product. If your native-language social media content sends users to a website page in another language, this creates a discordance in your marketing efforts and makes your brand look less reliable.

Reach the right people in the right place

New local activity or services can be easily promoted through local social media accounts. For instance, if you are a US company that plans to open an office in Germany, you can tell your customers everything about your intentions on your US social media accounts and then create specialized accounts for the German audience. Then use the German social media accounts to link to your native-language website version.

Although business owners generally think that local marketing can be mastered only through content and native-language website version, social media plays a huge role, when used correctly.

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About the author: Angela Baker is a self-driven specialist who is currently working as a freelance writer at WOWGrade and SupremeDissertations writing services and is trying to improve herself and her blogging career. She is always seeking to discover new ways for personal and professional growth and is convinced that it’s always important to broaden horizons. That’s why Angela develops and improves her skills throughout the writing process to help to inspire people. Also, she writes for LiveInspiredMagazine, rounding out her professional writing career.