Expat Marketing – Selling to The Home Crowd
Spain has had a rough ride from the British press over the last few years, but in 2014, the tide turned. We wouldn’t deny that a number of expats returned to the UK, or departed for Dubai, during the worst years of the recession, but we can see a marked reversal in that exodus; once again expats are flying in to boost the existing 297,000 British-born residents of Spain. And that is just the British; there are other expat communities to market to.
Expat marketing agency in Marbella (Costa del Sol)
Peppermint Marketing & Design has 11 years of experience in working with clients and their target audience on the Costa del Sol, so we’ve lived through all these changes. We’re all expats ourselves, so we understand what the rest of the expat community is looking for in terms of products and service experience.
We also understand the local Spanish community: how they think, and what they look for in products. We can demonstrate just how enthusiastic they are about foreign brands through our work with Dealz, the European arm of UK high street brand Poundland. Both Spanish customers and the expat community were thrilled that stores opened around Spain in 2014, and their response on social media provided marketing insights that supported the brand’s continued success.
Peppermint can offer overseas brands a marketing partnership based on our in-depth knowledge of the expat market. That market includes residents from other European countries who also tend to use English as their ‘lingua franca’, so it is entirely possible for UK brands, or ones from other English language countries, to reach customers beyond the British and Irish, and sell to the Scandinavian, Dutch, German and Belgian expats as well.
These days, expats love social media when they move abroad. That’s because it’s a way of keeping in touch with friends and family at home. So, a platform like Facebook is an excellent way of reaching them. Peppermint has successfully created social media communities for brands targeting the expat audience, plus we understand the needs of expats in different regions of Spain.
Expats love tips and advice, so we always aim to provide that in our social media messaging. We know that visual messages get a better response than words, and Peppermint’s designers are skilled at creating strong visuals: we designed a character called Freddie Fibre Fingers as the brand mascot of smartFIBRE, a fibre optics broadband provider, targeting expat communities.
At Peppermint, we know all about the local publications aimed at the various expat communities and how to use those to a brand’s best advantage, whether it is a press advertising campaign, or an advertorial. Buying media and getting the best prices for print jobs requires some negotiating skills with local suppliers, and with our years of experience, we can get very competitive prices on behalf of our clients.
Contact Jade Thompson, Managing Director at Peppermint to discuss how we can market your brand to expats. Phone +34 951 316 553 or email info@peppermintcreate.com