Written By: Shannon Briggs

One of my favorite parts of my job is working with a new client to determine their marketing strategy. Each aspect of the strategy is like a puzzle piece that forms into one beautiful finished product of an overall strategy. No strategy is ever exactly the same, nor should it ever be. This is especially true for strategies that tackle different community sizes: local, regional, national, or international. 

When determining marketing strategies of any size, my first two questions are always:

• Who is your audience?

• What are your goals?

Answering these questions will guide how you design each piece of the strategic puzzle next. 

Let’s start with audience. 

Your audience is going to vary between a local, state, national, and international marketing campaign. Each subset will have its own norms, traditions, preferences, and ways of living life. You’ll want to take a deep dive into your audience to ensure you resonate with them. Figure out what makes them tick and what makes them change behavior. What do they generally shy away from, and what draws them in?

Let’s take my beloved city of Memphis as an example. When our team develops campaigns geared toward the Memphis market, we can design that campaign to resonate with Memphians. We can make it gritty and soulful, and we can feature prominent spots around the city that draw in locals. However, this campaign would not be effective for our friends in Knoxville on the other side of the state. Memphians pride themselves on not being Tennesseeans, so a Memphis campaign and a Tennessee campaign would be very different. 

To take it a step further, a gritty and soulful campaign would also not resonate to a national or international audience. There are regional and national beliefs, values, characteristics, and traditions that would need to be taken into consideration. I don’t know that Vienna or the Phillipines would care about soulful, though I would have to do the research to find out for sure. 

Would you promote a 4th of July campaign in Italy? I don’t think so. (Possibly in England, if we’re feeling cheeky.)

Now goals. 

The action you want your audience to take will vary depending on the scope of your campaign as well. A local campaign may want to draw people into a brick and mortar store. If this store exists in only one town, then making it a statewide campaign would be ineffective and a waste of time and money. 

A voting campaign around state legislators would be targeted to specific states, and possibly even districts. Spending advertising dollars to market an Arizona election in Mississippi would be silly and also a waste. 

Furthermore, getting people to buy products online can be marketed anywhere. Unless you cannot ship outside of your home country. In that case, examine your shipping availability before asking Costa Ricans to buy your organic, homemade bar soap.

When it comes down to it, most questions about marketing strategy can be answered by defining your audience and your goals. My team and clients listen to me preach it regularly. It’s no different in this case. Answer these questions, and you’ll be well on your way to defining the region for your next campaign.