Laura Smith, Head of Client Strategy at ICS-digital, has one rule for international work: localize the campaign, don't just translate it. She also walks through her team's white paper, The Human-Machine Memory Gap. Read the full episode recap.

ICS-digital works in over 100 languages across digital and translation, and Laura leads strategy across SEO, digital PR, creative and translation. She has spent 15+ years in marketing, starting in traditional PR with B2B work, press office and restaurant launches. She says she didn't know what a link was until she moved into digital PR in 2017. Her recent article, The New Shelf Space, carries the same thinking into retail visibility and AI retrieval.

In this episode

  • Translate vs. localize: why a campaign that lands in the UK won't land the same way in the US, Europe or Asia.
  • The German Twitter lesson: experts in that market told her the words were literally too long for the character limit.
  • Reporting and red tape: focused reporting frameworks, fractured local teams, and getting ahead of red tape in months one to six.
  • Expat audiences: going back to basics with GWI audience analysis when you target UK people living in Paris.
  • AI search across markets: long-term strategy over hacky tricks, even where ChatGPT or AI Overviews aren't available.
  • The top technical pitfall: hreflang that exists but isn't configured for the best outcome.
  • Authenticity takes reps: why she started a TikTok this year to get comfortable hearing her own voice.
  • Digital PR's moment: brand entity, citations and brand mentions in AI search. For more on brand distinctiveness, hear Ross Hudgens on GEO.

Chapters

  • (00:00) Why trust an international marketing expert
  • (01:17) Translating a campaign vs. localizing it
  • (02:46) The German Twitter lesson
  • (03:53) Reporting frameworks and fractured teams
  • (05:55) Red tape in multi-market enterprises
  • (08:32) Reaching expat audiences
  • (10:44) AI search when markets move at different speeds
  • (13:40) The most common international SEO pitfalls
  • (16:42) The cobbler's children: agency marketing
  • (17:41) The press release that got deleted
  • (19:49) Is meme culture global, and is it cringe?
  • (22:33) Authenticity at scale and getting the reps in
  • (26:08) Her first podcast
  • (28:07) Digital PR's moment with SEOs
  • (31:08) The Human-Machine Memory Gap white paper

Notable quotes "The biggest pitfall is thinking, I've done this before, so I'll just do it the way I've always done it and not digging into the market." - Laura Smith "I think you have to be very honest with yourself when you don't know if you're trying to make things work internationally." - Laura Smith "...why a human is going to choose your brand, which is, you know, especially important when an AI might only recommend three brands compared to previously having the whole of the Google search to look through." - Laura Smith

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