The Art of Brand Localization

Annie Yau, Regional Digital Brand Marketing Manager, APAC,Shake Shack

Setting up your brand presence in a new market means myriad opportunities and challenges. There is no one formula for all, every brand needs to create its own strategy. Brand localization involves adapting brand elements such as company value, product and creatives, which can help your brand to communicate with your customers effectively. Especially in Asia, approaching the market without localization could result in losing foothold in the market. In the past years, through helping various international brands to enter the Asian market, here are some of the insights based on my experience.

1. Know your audiences well

Before launching your business in a new market, it is important to conduct qualitative market research to understand your target audience’s behaviors like motivation, values and expectations.So many brands are trying to replicate success from their home country, but they forget target audiences’ behavior and expectations vary across markets. Based on these market insights,brandscan craft localized brand positioning, pricing strategy, and market segmentation. Instead of launching your brand with full resources, you can do a test run to get real feedback from your potential customers. For example, before our brand officially opens in the Bahamas, the team ran a pop-up to boost the hype, learn our guests’ menu preferences and strategize the menu pricing. There is no better way to know your audience than doing a test run in the market.