Bonnie Moss, President and Founder, Moss Networks
As the U.S. economy continues to recover from the impact of the pandemic, businesses in other regions are considering U.S. as a valuable market for expansion and growth. With a domestic software as a service market worth $145 billion, per Statista, the U.S. is especially appealing for software and technology companies that have built successful businesses abroad.
Establishing your brand in the U.S. market requires a cohesive plan that includes the right partners, dedicated thought leaders, and a team that can guide your brand through the nuances, quirks and hard work of building trust and authority in this dynamic and competitive market.
Find the right US-based partners to build connections and a market presence
Even if your in-house marketing team is excellent, it’s wise to consider adding a U.S.-based team to help you tailor your marketing to your new market. These experts will be able to help you identify the right opportunities quickly and they can help you scale up and refine your marketing efforts as your U.S. presence grows.
Other partnerships can be valuable in your new market, too. Referral partners can promote your brand to their American customers. Technology partners can offer additional services your U.S. customers may need—and add their brand’s trust and authority to yours by association.
Build a PR plan
With your PR and marketing team, research and define your brand’s competitive advantage in the U.S. For example, one Moss Networks client brought to the U.S. the expertise of the largest staff of dedicated eCommerce fraud analysts in the world, plus a proprietary AI-driven process for separating good orders from fraud. Their vast quantity of experts and advanced technology set them apart from other players in the market.
Understand your U.S. customer personas. They may have different pain points, customer journeys and decision-making criteria than personas in other markets. Identify the outlets where your U.S. target audience gets their industry news, so you can look for opportunities to contribute expertise to these media outlets, apply to speak at events your audience attends, and participate in industry roundtable discussions.
Set benchmarks and KPIs for lead generation, lead conversion, share of voice, earned media and other performance indicators that matter to you and your executives. Consult with your marketing and PR team to build a realistic budget and timeline for content creation and advertising campaigns.
Identify the faces of your brand for the U.S. market
Effective thought leadership development requires subject matter experts and executives who make time to share what they know through media interviews, articles and conference appearances. It’s also critical that the team members you choose to serve as thought leaders have the time to keep in contact with your marketing and PR team about current events and topics of interest to your target audience.
These discussions can help you and your team come up with fresh insights and perspectives that they can pitch to media outlets and trade publications or turn into marketing content. For example, a software consultancy that sees more clients adopting immersive technology might share that with their PR team, leading to interviews on the topic for an industry podcast.
Build a content marketing plan
Depending on what your brand’s target audience consumes as part of their decision-making process and purchasing cycle, your brand may need to produce many types of content. For a B2B brand, this may include thought-leadership articles, whitepapers, webinars, eBooks, case studies and blog posts—as well as social media posts to promote each new piece of content and to engage with your audience.
Managing even one content channel, such as a company blog, requires resources that an expanding brand’s marketing team may not be able to provide in-house. Developing an entire content marketing plan for a new region requires expertise in how to speak to your U.S. audience, an understanding of how they use content to make buying decisions and data on where they find the content they prefer. Because of the complexities of setting up, managing and maintaining an effective content marketing program, many brands from outside the U.S. opt to work with a U.S.-based agency to handle localized content marketing.
Leverage opportunities with your partners
As you build trusted partnerships with complementary technology providers in your space, you have the potential to work with them to produce thought-leadership content and events that increase the scope and authority of your marketing efforts.
For example, an eCommerce prevention brand that partners with an eCommerce platform to produce a webinar for merchants on preventing holiday fraud while offering a great customer experience tips gets to show the eCommerce platform’s audience how it adds value, shares an eCommerce option with its current audience, and offers social proof that it’s working with major service providers that are already well-known in the U.S. eCommerce space.
Build your brand in the U.S. market
Establishing your brand as an authority in a market as large and competitive as the U.S. takes time, planning and a commitment to finding the right opportunities and making the most of them. It also requires experienced partners who can help your brand build a roadmap and connect with the media outlets, trade publications and audiences you need for a successful expansion.
Ready to start planning your brand’s move into the U.S. market? Contact Moss Networks to discuss how we can help you establish your brand as a trusted authority in this region.