By Megan Thudium
Content matters in the American B2B market. The American ecosystem might feel cut-throat, fast-paced, and aggressive but one point remains: Humans are working in B2B American businesses. Humans have a hard time trusting brands that they aren’t familiar with. The solution is to leverage content marketing to build authenticity, trust, and brand recognition to help you successfully launch. You have to approach your cross-cultural marketing correctly by adapting your content to the culture, language, and needs of the market.
Why Launch in the American B2B market
The American market has a wealth of opportunities. The American mindset is innovative and adaptive to new solutions. It offers a large audience of potential buyers. By making the leap to the American B2B marketplace your startup can become a global brand.
In Europe, your potential market is limited by countries, languages, and borders. In the United States, a unified market exists, meaning that you have the potential to connect with B2B buyers that unify under a single language, cultural nuances, and buying mindset. Also, Americans traditionally have a more adaptive mindset. Entrepreneurship and innovation is part of the American lifestyle, and it’s highly recognizable in American personalities and media.
In this market, you will find that buyers are more receptive to change, interested in testing your product, and might move much quicker in their decision-making. Of course this observation is product and market-dependent, however many European startups will find that American mindsets are interested and positively receptive to innovative product ideas. Lastly, North America is a large and powerful market. As an emerging startup, saying that you have experience offering products and operating in this market will give your brand higher credentials.
The American B2B market offers countless opportunities, but many European startups struggle to enter that market successfully. This is often due to the lack of customer research and cultural knowledge. Content marketing has the potential to help you connect to this market, but it has to be approached respectfully. If done right, it’s a formidable tool to help you build authentic relationships, generate leads, and build awareness with your B2B audience.
Three Content Marketing Insights to Help You Launch Successfully
Content marketing will help you connect your innovative solution to interested North American buyers, but it has to be approached with the correct market knowledge.
Realize the basics. Rarely can you replace a native-English writer with a non-native English writer. Where your grammar and spelling might be correct, native-speakers have the ability to “feel” and “hear” why words are, or not, fitting the textual context. If you choose not to utilize native-English writers the content might appear good at first glance, but your American audience might disconnect from your content subconsciously. If this happens, you risk brand devalument and lost audience trust. The easiest solution is to work with native-English writers to create content for your North American market. In today’s economy, you can leverage affordable native-English writers in Europe. For example, Berlin is home to several North American writers.
Connect your content to culture. Buyers in the American market are keenly focused on brand connection. People want to feel connected to company brands and its employees. Where many European startups focus too much on their product, in the U.S., by focusing on your startup’s story, team, mission, and brand, you can go much further in connecting with potential customers.
Find the right style. European startups entering the American market are usually focused on selling. Leads are important to please stakeholders and validate your product, but you might not be getting the traction you need simply because of your writing style. Just like achieving native-English spelling and grammar, a writing style is everything. It sets the conversational tone and develops your brand. American messaging should be honest and straight-forward, but also focused on your product’s transformational potential. Lastly, Americans like stories, so give them a narrative that resonates and portrays your startup’s mission clearly and creatively. Don’t think dry, think approachable. Your American market content must resonate with the audience.
Leverage Content to Connect with Your Audience
Content is powerful. If it’s culturally tuned to your audience, it has the ability to capture attention, build relationships, and translate to a strong ROI for European startups entering the American market. Content should be set in a colloquial style and representing aspects that matter to a culture. If you take these three tips into account, you’re well on the way to successfully entering the North American market successfully.
Megan Thudium is the founder of MTC | The Content Agency, a content agency working with B2B German brands expanding globally into the native-English North American market. Her agency infuses content marketing, SEO, and thought-leadership best practices to drive awareness, credibility, and leads through content marketing. She’s an expert on all things B2B content marketing, and her strategic marketing insight has been featured in publications like Forbes, Business.com, Upwork.com, and Managers.org.uk. You can find Megan on LinkedIn actively sharing insight in B2B content marketing.
