Cindy King's International Business Blog » French market

Sophisticated Marketing Methods And International Sales

Cindy King — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 23:00:34 +0000

Last week I witnessed another clash between American marketing methods and common French perception. At first I simply turned away. After living in France for over 20 years, this did not surprise me.

But when thinking about the incident, I realized that I had noticed the continued sophistication of North American marketing methods while sitting here in Europe. Of course the French marketing methods can be sophisticated too. But they are not the same style of marketing methods.

The American marketing methods have reached a level of sophistication that is indeed impressive.

And there are some very interesting insults that can start flying when the two worlds meet through people that are unfamiliar with… well… marketing.

As an international sales specialist, I spend much of my cross-cultural adaptation in simplifying the sales process to its most basic form. You see, when you sell to different cultures, you need to do this in order to:

Find the right way to offer your product to your international client.
Make the offer as your international client wants it.
Ask for the sale in the way your international client wants to be asked.

If you come in with any assumptions you open yourself to risk. Risk in getting your most basic sales elements wrong.

Sometimes your assumptions can appear to be right, but they are slightly off key and can cost you potential sales. This is a common scenario in international sales. It is hard to realize your offer is not perfect if it still brings in sales.

Established sophisticated marketing methods can get in the way. Some can call it a cultural clash. As I did in the incident that I witnessed last week.

Overall market sophistication also appears comes into play in cultural clashes with country specific sophisticated marketing practices.

If the person who reacted badly had more marketing experience and an international business background I do not think there would have been so many insults and bad attitudes.

Here is another example.

Last year I approached a North American company I liked with a joint venture offer. This was a much juicier opportunity for the company I approached. But I would have found it fun to do.

The senior executive was very interested, but she wanted to bring her marketing manager in the loop.

The result:

A 7 a.m. meeting where I listened to sophisticated marketing gobbledygook for an hour.

The only 7 a.m. meetings I have had were with Americans, and in North America. This is actually interesting, because the only business phone calls I have had after 10 p.m. were also from Americans.

Did the person just come out of school? I don’t know. But I evaluated that it would take too much of my time to bring this person’s marketing to a level of simplicity that would be easy to work with for European development.

Do you really need sophisticated marketing methods to support your international sales team?

And if you want your international marketing to actually make sales for you, do you want to have marketing methods that appear sophisticated… and, well, foreign to your international clients?

I definitely see the advantage of sophisticated international web marketing methods. But only if you start from square one and build upwards.

Otherwise…

You run the risk of getting your international offer wrong.
You could run into a few cultural clashes.

If getting back to very basic sales practices is the best way to approach new international markets, then what about getting back to very basic marketing practices? And building up from a solid base of international business intelligence for your business?

Something else happened a couple of weeks ago.

I received feedback that others around me here in France had caught on to the value of information products. They call them “web products” and not information products.

When I attended the Ebusiness exhibition in Paris in the autumn of 2007, no one had a clue what I was talking about.

And no one had any idea of the value behind copywriting for an e-business.

At the time I estimated the French would take 12 months to understand the value in web copy. And another 12 months for a more general audience.

It looks like my predictions were right on target.

And another piece of good news. One of the French subscribers to my basic copywriting course in French was interviewed for a large copywriting assignment. But not with a French company… with another European company.

It will be interesting to watch for changes in web marketing once French companies see the value of copywriting through improved sales. Yes, even if they have different marketing practices, the basics of good marketing remain the same.

Choice Of Internet Marketing Methods

Cindy King — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 18:27:31 +0000

International Web Marketing Mix

Relying heavily on internet marketing to develop new foreign markets can reduce your international development costs. It is also quicker and generally involves less risk compared to opening a foreign office or a foreign sales team, for example.

What are the choices in internet marketing strategies when opening your business into a new foreign market?

What are companies doing now? Many companies are still using a traditional marketing mindset. Let’s look at the options a company has when solely using internet marketing to start out with. There are three main options for first implementing an e-marketing campaign to open a foreign market.

One Social Media

Relying solely on one social media, such as a blog. You can create one company blog in French and target it to the French market for example. This is what Abercrombie & Fitch is doing, without having a physical presence in France.

Remember the foreign market you are targeting may not be a foreign language market. It could be in English targeting the Australian market for example. In both cases, you will need to find a native person with blogging skills to write your blog for you.

Many internet and business experts agree that all companies need to have a blog in 2008. Some go so far as to say that any company without an interactive presence or a blog will lose its market share if they do not start an interactive internet communication campaign soon.

Several Communication Tools

You can develop an online communication strategy based on several internet communication tools in the foreign language: a monthly newsletter, email marketing, a blog, online videos, articles.

This is the ideal solution. The synergy that can be created using several tools will bring you more prospects and clients faster. It can also easily be adapted to traditional marketing or offline marketing and become even more effective.

Implementing one foreign language campaign using several internet communication media does not have to be much more expensive than using one communication medium. If well thought out, foreign language content can be re-purposed to keep monthly costs to a minimum and implemented in a integrated marketing campaign designed for foreign market interaction.

This may take a few months to adjust and some extra strategy planning, but you will create a powerful foreign lead generation system. The valuable knowledge you will get from your foreign market potential will be an added bonus.

Localized Company Website

Some companies start here. And this is where you will aim for. A localized website will provide a base for all of your communication, marketing and campaigns in that country.

But website localization can be the most demanding, time consuming and expensive option to use at this stage when just starting out. It involves localizing your website and incorporating various e-marketing and Search Engine Optimization efforts to create a foreign country specific website.

A localized website involves more than translation of your content and requires solid market research and a certain amount of time to achieve.

Remember to internationalize your website before thinking of creating a localized website. This will make your website localization go quicker and smoother.

Start Small And Grow With Your International Clientèle

If you do not have adequate knowledge of your foreign market to start with a localized foreign website, it would be best to hire a third party to do it. You can also ideally start off with an option requiring less investment.

As you can see, your e-marketing strategy can begin using with one communication tool in a foreign language and targeted to one country. You will then naturally develop your international communication with your international expansion.

If you follow these tips your web site will be friendlier for all of your international visitors.