A Look Inside the Agency’s Newest Acquisition: Ireland’s IMS Marketing
As of October 4, 2023, LOCOMOTIVE Agency is officially an international company and full-service digital marketing agency. The agency’s newest acquisition, European digital marketing agency IMS Marketing, is an award-winning agency based in Ireland. In addition to the apparent benefits of welcoming an Irish company into the fold—the landscape, the accents, the fish and chips, the pints!—the acquisition brings plenty of marketing heft, including robust creative services and global go-to-market expertise for businesses looking to expand around the globe.
LOCOMOTIVE Agency: A Growing Company
This isn’t the first time LOCOMOTIVE has brought another company on board. In 2021, LOCOMOTIVE acquired Mad Leads, an addition that expanded LOCOMOTIVE’s offerings beyond SEO and content marketing to include paid-per-click, paid social, and other paid media offerings. A full-service paid media agency, Mad Leads offers comprehensive paid media management across the full spectrum of advertising channels, including Google, Bing, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more. After the acquisition, LOCOMOTIVE clients in need of paid media services immediately benefitted from the Mad Leads team’s deep knowledge and expertise in the paid ad landscape. Likewise, Mad Leads clients looking for assistance with SEO and content were able to benefit from LOCOMOTIVE’s storied and award-winning team.
Adding IMS Marketing to the LOCOMOTIVE family brings even more value to clients needing digital marketing services and assistance with expanding into international markets.
LOCOMOTIVE + Mad Leads + IMS Marketing = Good Times Ahead
In many ways, the timing of this acquisition couldn’t be better. Google’s Partner Hub recently selected Mad Leads as a Premier Partner, in addition to their distinction as a Google International Growth Partner. This honor and perk, combined with IMS’s expansion services, allow LOCOMOTIVE clients looking to do business in international markets exclusive access to global market data and insights, as well as:
- The capability to identify international markets to help make the business case for expansion.
- The ability to forecast potential performance in distinct markets.
- Culturally- and nation-specific persona data to ensure creative and messaging resonates with the right audience in the right ways.
- Access to Google’s Global Expansion Team (GET).
- Support for operational concerns like payment, shipping, etc.
- And more.
Here’s a bit more about some of IMS Marketing’s international expansion services, experience, and expertise.
International Expansion Opportunities
Expanding into new markets is no easy feat, especially when those new markets are in different countries, governed by different laws and regulations, and home to entirely different mores, customs, assumptions, and spellings of words you thought you knew how to spell. (Programme, anyone?) For companies looking to break into—and succeed—in international markets, LOCOMOTIVE + IMS offers complete and well-tested go-to-market (GTM) services.
Market Entry Plan
As any capable business executive knows, a market entry plan is a key part of a company’s entry and/or growth into a new market. What’s needed for it to work is deep and detailed knowledge of local customer needs and culture. Risk of failure is high without proper and data-centered guidance. For over a decade, IMS has assisted companies of all sizes in their development of successful market entry plans in more than 20 countries across the globe, including countries in Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
The IMS team works with up-to-the-minute and critical market data, such as:
- Market size and opportunity
- Competitor analysis
- Customer research
- Industry dynamics
- And more
Sales Channel Development
When trying to enter a brand-new market, knowing where to offer your products and/or services—and developing the proper relationships to do so—can be tricky. LOCOMOTIVE + IMS has vast experience assisting companies with channel strategy development, including identifying potential international partners, putting into place effective and scalable marketing and management processes, developing market-specific cost management plans, and more.
International Marketing Strategy
Selling internationally just can’t happen without a solid, executable international marketing strategy. With LOCOMOTIVE + IMS, it’s now possible for clients to achieve and activate a marketing strategy tailored to their specific business goals in whatever country they’re looking to expand into. IMS routinely develops unique plans that can include the following:
- Country- and region-specific market research
- Value prop redefinition
- Brand redevelopment for effective localization
- Robust digital marketing programs
- New product/service introductions and marketing
- And more
In addition to expansion capabilities and prowess, IMS brings a wealth of creative services to the LOCOMOTIVE family. Here’s a closer look at some of their creative know-how.
New Digitial Marketing Services
LOCOMOTIVE’s core competency has long been search engine optimization, that ever-changing process of optimizing clients’ websites to rank higher on search engines and convert more often. While an essential part of effective digital marketing, a robust SEO campaign still only represents part of what companies need to market and sell effectively.
With IMS Marketing, LOCOMOTIVE clients can receive graphic design, web development, branding, and other creative services. While LOCOMOTIVE has long offered some of these services through outside vendors, having these more creative marketing needs met in-house—and by an experienced team—will add efficiency and competitive advantage, thanks to the streamlining of services.
Graphic Design
Graphic design is a primary tool of contemporary digital communication. Even before reading or watching a video, how a company looks online gives potential customers an impression of its ethos, purpose, reliability, professionalism, culture, and more. LOCOMOTIVE + IMS brings expertise in everything from website design, social media graphics, infographics, and logos to display ads, landing pages, and email newsletters so clients can communicate exactly who they are and what they offer with clarity and accuracy.
Brand Development
The best brands stand out—not just because their logo and accompanying assets are eye-catching and memorable, but because the visual expression of the brand matches and conveys the company’s values and client offerings. IMS’s branding services begin with a deep dive into who a company is, not just what it does, to ensure branding strategy aligns with purpose, vision, and business goals.
Looking Ahead
In summary, working with LOCOMOTIVE just became a whole lot more lucrative, effective, efficient, and exciting. Whether you’re looking to capture more market share with better SEO, digital marketing, and creative services here in the U.S. or all the way over in Europe or the UK, LOCOMOTIVE Agency’s acquisition of IMS Marketing—and Mad Leads—can help you succeed.
These are just a few of the additional creative services LOCOMOTIVE can now offer clients in the U.S. and internationally, thanks to the IMS acquisition.
