The importance of culture in marketing for global expansion

As companies expand into new regions, they face the challenge of connecting with audiences who have distinct values, behaviors, and communication styles. To earn trust and build lasting relationships, brands must align their messages with the cultural realities of each market.

A culturally relevant brand can create campaigns that resonate emotionally, avoid missteps, and embed themselves in the local conversation. To achieve this, you must understand culture marketing, its importance, and the best strategies to implement it across markets. Whether you’re launching in one new country or all across the globe, these insights will help your brand engage more meaningfully on the international stage.

What is culture marketing?

Culture marketing is a strategy that aligns brand messaging, campaigns, and customer experiences with the cultural context of the target audience.

What resonates in one culture may fall flat or even offend in another. Brands can avoid mishaps and promote successful marketing localization by studying and reflecting the unique lived experiences of target audiences. This may require adjusting a slogan, revising imagery, or even changing product features to better suit cultural preferences.

Culture marketing considers a locale’s shared beliefs, values, and humor to craft campaigns that resonate emotionally and authentically. The best culture marketing strategies are built on five key pillars:

• Creativity: Think beyond slogans and images to deliver locally relevant storytelling.
• Authenticity: Speak with sincerity, not stereotypes.
• Relevance: Tailor content to reflect local issues, trends, and values.
• Inclusivity: Acknowledge and embrace diverse identities and voices.
• Cultural respect: Honor local customs while avoiding appropriation.

A culturally relevant global marketing strategy is essential for companies aiming to grow their audience and promote lasting, trustworthy relationships in international markets.

8 strategies for culture advertising at a global scale

To succeed in culture marketing, global companies must think beyond translations and explore culturally relevant topics. Here are eight actionable strategies to help your brand create globally aware and impactful marketing campaigns.

1. Conduct cultural research before entering new markets

Marketers must understand the region they’re entering, including cultural traditions and taboos. This information informs what content is acceptable and what could carry negative connotations.

Everything from symbols and numbers to colors and clothing choices can have cultural significance that informs your global marketing strategy. For instance, some East Asian cultures consider the number 4 unlucky and associate it with death, a superstition that influences how some brands choose to display advertisements or package products.

2. Collaborate with local experts and influencers

Partnerships with local businesses and content creators in the target region, especially during cultural events, help marketers shape their message in a way that feels organic rather than imposed. Involving local voices shows respect and fosters community buy-in, which is invaluable for long-term brand equity. Endorsements from respected community members are a great way to boost a brand’s reputation.

3. Use data to track cultural trends

Cultural preferences evolve quickly. Analyze online behavior, keyword searches, and social engagement patterns to uncover what’s currently resonating—or falling out of favor—with your target audience. Consider sentiment analysis tools that track trends in the audience’s native language, as these can reveal insights that English-language tools might miss.

4. Customize content through localization and transcreation

Language is more than words; it’s context, tone, and emotion. A campaign might translate accurately but miss the mark emotionally if it doesn’t match local sensibilities. Transcreation tackles this issue by reimagining content to preserve the desired tone. In addition to messaging adjustments, marketers may need to adapt colors and imagery, units of measurement, and UI elements to match cultural expectations.

Marketing teams often need expert assistance to guide their linguistic and cultural localization efforts. Smartling’s translation services ensure your messaging aligns with audience expectations while preserving your brand’s original intent. Smartling also integrates with popular marketing automation platforms to help your team handle these adaptations within your existing tech stack and without disrupting existing workflows.

5. Celebrate regional events

Participation in local holidays and cultural celebrations shows audiences that your brand is invested in their culture. It’s also an excellent opportunity for timely promotions and collaborations.

Go beyond the surface by tailoring your messaging, visuals, and promotions to reflect the spirit of the occasion. When done authentically, this kind of engagement increases visibility and builds emotional resonance.

6. Engage in social conversations

Social media is more than a broadcasting tool. It’s where cultural conversations happen in real time. Brands should actively participate in local discussions to connect with the community. This means sharing content, engaging thoughtfully with trending topics, responding to comments, and joining discussions that are relevant to your target audience.

This type of engagement requires you to meet consumers on their own terms. Find out which social media platforms are most relevant to your customers. The answer may vary by region.

7. Leverage user-generated content

Boosting user-generated content helps you show cultural alignment. It promotes inclusivity in advertising by reflecting authentic local voices and signaling that your company values customers as contributors to its brand story. Ask local customers to share their experiences with your brand through videos, reviews, and social posts so you can feature this content in your marketing campaigns.

8. Test and iterate with feedback

Even with research and preparation, you might miss the mark. However, consumers will respect a brand that’s open to feedback. Encourage customers to share their thoughts through surveys and focus groups, use A/B testing to refine marketing campaigns, and leverage social listening tools to gather data regarding online conversations about your brand.

3 tips for successful multicultural marketing

These three tips will help your culture marketing campaigns connect globally and avoid common pitfalls.

1. Localize, don't just translat

Localization is essential because it accounts for imagery and cultural context in addition to language. Failure to account for these nuances can damage a brand’s credibility and reputation, so global brands often maintain regionally specific web pages, automatically directing visitors to the appropriate version as they navigate the site.

Managing a distinct online presence in each region can be overwhelming. Fortunately, Smartling’s Global Delivery Network (GDN) helps international brands deploy localized web experiences in every market. This website translation proxy enables your content to flow continuously from your website into Smartling for translation, so you can effortlessly adapt your marketing materials, landing pages, product descriptions, and thousands of SKUs for any language or region. Any request for a localized version of your site will instantly deliver results in your customer’s native language. Plus, as you make updates to your site in your source language, the GDN automatically routes this new content for translation in Smartling, so that all your localized pages stay up-to-date without added manual effort.  

2. Avoid cultural clichés and stereotypes

Marketing that relies on clichés and tokenism can appear lazy or offensive. Cultural symbols alone won’t produce authentic, localized storytelling; you need to tell culturally relevant stories. Elevate local voices and portray people as multidimensional individuals—not archetypes. Good culture marketing reflects lived experiences.

For a real-life example, consider Nike’s diverse, hyper-local campaigns. Nike highlights regional athletes with sponsorship deals, often connecting their struggles and victories to its brand messaging about overcoming adversity.

3. Make cultural sensitivity a core brand principle

A brand with a thoughtful internal culture is better equipped to extend that ethos to customers. Incorporate cultural review stages into your content production cycle and promote cross-cultural team collaboration. These efforts tell a brand story that is globally inclusive and locally relevant.

Language barriers present an additional challenge that can slow down this delicate process. Global brands need tools to codify approved translations so they can maintain a consistent, respectful, and effective brand voice across multilingual marketing campaigns without wasting time and money on repetitive review processes. That’s why Smartling’s comprehensive translation management system incorporates style guides, translation memory, and glossaries to organize your linguistic assets.

Reach audiences worldwide with Smartling’s localization platform

Even a well-researched culture marketing strategy will struggle to succeed without the right tools to bring it to life. That’s where Smartling comes in. Our localization expertise and robust translation management system empower marketers to maintain brand consistency and cultural sensitivity across every region.

With Smartling, your team can:

• Translate marketing content faster and at higher volumes with AI 
• Collaborate across global teams in one platform
• Preserve intent, tone, and emotion in every market
• Customize workflows for specific regions, languages, or content types

No matter where your global expansion takes you, Smartling provides the tools and insights to meet your audience where they are—culturally, linguistically, and emotionally.

Ready to take the first step toward building impactful culture marketing campaigns at scale? Download Smartling’s Localization Style Guide Template to maintain your brand voice across multilingual campaigns in each cultural market.