Global Digital Marketing and Cultural Dimensions - Part Two

Cultural differences pose challenges for international marketing as companies strive to acquire and retain customers.  An understanding and implementation of local needs is essential for success.

China

As a long-term oriented culture, long term relationship building is essential to building trust. Also as a collectivist culture, the influence of the group on consumer decision should not be underestimated. Friends and colleagues have more influence than advertisements or sales people. For younger Chinese, this influence is channeled through social networks. For western companies it could be very advantageous to engage with Chinese consumers in the Sina Weibo and Tencent QQ networks, building trust.  This is particularly pertinent to rolling out to mobile devices. Minimize existing customer attrition and contribute to increase the customer LTV through the use of contests, frequent giveaways etc, all targeting the Chinese customer base.

Brazil

As a collectivist and polychromic culture, social network exposure is high and is often live concurrent with other media.  Brazilians unsurprisingly claim a high number of online friends. Communication is subdued and works on likability. Engagement and entertainment with these consumers is key.

Turkey

Turkey ranks highly on both uncertainty avoidance and power distance.  The country also has one of the highest cross-segment internet usage penetrations in Europe although digital marketing activity often tends to be rudimentary but there are some brilliant campaigns happening. Clear but sophisticatedly-planned use of PPC around a broad keyword portfolio will reap rewards. 

Russia

Russia is high in uncertainty avoidance and power distance. Performance marketing needs to focus on broad keyword portfolio within key players Yandex and vKontakte while organic SEO remains  challenging with regional-specific search the norm.