Never assume anything!
It’s rule ‘numero uno’ in international marketing, and the good news is you no longer have to. With an overwhelming amount of data available to global marketers to help guide everything from product development to digital communication strategies, the trick lies in leveraging this abundance of information to your advantage.
Ahead of his talk at the International Search Summit in San Jose in less than two weeks’ time, Jeremiah Andrick of Logitech shares a few insights into how and why data is an absolutely vital component in the shaping of the company’s global marketing strategy.
What do you most enjoy about working in international Search?
Two Reasons: One, I love the problem space as it is so much more complex than just a single country Search program. US centric Search has one set of problems that is constantly changing, but when you go international not only does the problem space get a lot larger, determining how to scale your Search program gets harder. I love the challenge of that complexity. Second reason is that it exposes me to different cultures and how they view our products and services. I love the aspect of language and the consumer journey.
What are the key fundamentals you think can make or break international search success?
I think the greatest challenges exist in the flexibility of your CMS. To scale we tend to take the US/english version of a site and just duplicate it. Our content management systems tend to put us in that box, when success may start with a global rollout of the fundamentals, but with significant changes in IA, Content and maybe even approach. So building flexibility over time to your CMS is part one. Part two is building an IA that makes sense for the audiences that you serve. After that it becomes a bit like every other program. How do you define success in each region/country/audience you work with? Do you have content that supports those goals, etc. etc.
The big fundamental that is often overlooked though is how you tie all this together which is with Data. Do you have the tools to know how you are doing and are you measuring things the right way to justify the efforts.
Which markets do you find particularly challenging or interesting to target? And why?
I know the right answer to this question should be Asia, but I am personally interested in Latin America. Often one challenge for SEOs is the misidentification of French or English content, but the problem seems even more complex when you look at spanish regions. The variations are subtle to a non-native speaker in one of those countries but important and the search engines don’t seem to do a great job of telling things apart without strong signals from Domain or other areas. This is a space that if you know how to adapt to could be profitable.
You’ve been working on making Logitech’s international presence responsive. What impact has mobile on your global activities and strategies?
So at Logitech we think a lot about the customer journey, we leverage lots of data, surveys and look and NPS analysis to try and create compelling and useful products. The website is no different, it is a product of our company and we look at the customer journey with same level of detail on concern. As mobile usage has gone up (we all knew it would) we don’t want to focus on redesign as a novel activity, creating a mobile experience as tactic but as a part of our larger goal of attracting and retaining customers. Users on mobile devices have different attention spans, different levels of patience. Testing to get the experience right is critical. As we consider and move forward we are thinking first about the content and the experience, second about the impacts on search. We believe if we get the first right the second will follow.
Why attend the International Search Summit?
ISS has some of the best speakers at any event, people who work in the trenches. There is honest, open discussion and the chance to ask real questions. You get deep dives into topics and hopefully you walk away better.
Check out the full agenda, and save 10% off registration with the code WS-ISS10
Gemma Houghton
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