Cindy King's International Business Blog » information products

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.

Why I Am Creating An Information Product On Website Internationalization

Cindy King — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 23:00:24 +0000

How To Internationalize Your Website

I have just been reviewing and updating all of my articles on Website Internationalization on Get International Clients.

Get International Clients is a business directory. I use this website as both:

A live portfolio of the services I offer. An example of how I can help companies create a series of information products from a website or blog content, and specifically for efficient culturally customized content re-purposing.
A source for my own information products upstream.

Companies interested in using the internet to develop their international markets need to create content that is culturally customized to each country they are targeting.

This can work.

You can get international leads for your business using internet marketing techniques.

The key is getting the right “content” to communicate with each of your foreign markets. And that can get expensive.

This is where you need two things:

You must be able to re-purpose your culturally customized content. You need to get good exposure and good mileage out of foreign content created for international business development.
You also need to combine both internet and traditional marketing methods to get real international expansion as soon as you are able to.

After 5 months of adding one article every week day on to Get International Clients I’m now ready to start producing information products of my own. It is very easy now. Simply because I have written several articles on the same subject.

My first information product will be the “traditional” e-book. And I’ve chosen to start with a freebie e-book on the first steps in Website Internationalization. It will describe actions to implement on all websites to make them communicate better across all cultures.

Why did I choose this subject?

Simply because this is an easy one to start with and there is a logical follow up information product just as easy to create.

The follow-up information product will probably be another e-book combined with an e-course on the tools to use to adapt your website to different cultures. This time I will expand on content in the weekly Get International Clients Newsletter to provide some more fun information on cross cultural web communication.

Let’s get back to companies needing an efficient use of all of their culturally customized content.

The idea is to create a steady flow of culturally customized content for each foreign country you are targeting, and to re-use the same content you already have in different ways your audience appreciates.

You can also start by creating content for a broad international market like I do at Get International Clients. And am I glad I started with a broad international target audience. I found different markets I had never suspected.

But you cannot stay with a broad international audience. You need to go deeper. You need to target individual countries and adapt your communication for each specific culture. This is how you will truly develop your business internationally.

And this is why creating a good strategy for creating foreign content is important.

It is important to:

Give your information in formats your audience will want to use.
Communicate regularly and in a variety of different formats.
Re-purpose as much as you can to keep costs down.
Create information products to bring credibility and create trust in your business

Information products are easy to create through re-purposing.

So this first e-book on Website Internationalization will start a regular program of delivering free e-books on Get International Clients. I just have not decided on a schedule. One free e-book a month sounds reasonable right now, but I will need to review this later on.

In addition to e-books there are a great many other types of information products. The next on my schedule are

a free e-course on copywriting in French
a free e-course on article marketing in French
a regular series of online marketing videos
a white paper

Thanks to 5 months of article writing, I already have all of this material. It is simply a question of re-packaging it and updating it a little bit more.

Get International Clients will then truly become a live portfolio of the services I offer to help businesses target international sales through international internet marketing.

Don’t Miss…

Website Internationalization

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Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

Why I Am Creating An Information Product On Website Internationalization

International Lead Generation With An Information Product Strategy

Cindy King — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 06:00:03 +0000

International Lead Generation

Developing an international business or getting more international clients has never been easier with international internet marketing. And yet so few companies are using the tools they have available to them.
One of these tools is Information Products. Companies have always used information products. In their printed versions and even PowerPoint versions.

Maybe companies are stuck in the old way of using information. Information tools in the past were used as a static form of sharing information. The sales team did almost all of the leg work. The main exception being the use of printed coupons to incite readers to come into your store.

Today information products also provide a platform to send your readers to the next step in the dialog you want to have with them. Hyperlinks embedded in your information products are a little like the printed coupons, except they are much, much more versatile.

The selection of information products has also more than doubled with the internet. This also gives greater capacity to steer your prospects along and gives them the opportunity of getting to know you better.

This change in the function of information products explains why so few companies are taking advantage of the internet marketing possibilities.

There are more types of information products available today, both online and offline. Combined with a little internet marketing and a little market research, you can create effective international lead generation strategies.

Information products used strategically throughout an international lead generation program cuts out a large portion of the work normally done by an international sales team. This gives small businesses the possibility of expanding internationally without the travel, without hiring overseas staff and limits much of the risk.

The other good reason to use an international lead generation program based on information products and an international internet marketing plan, is it allows businesses to start developing internationally on the smallest of budgets. International budgets can grow as your international market knowledge grows.

International business promotion can be created to fit your budget.

Start with free online promotion for your international markets. Add some offline promotion wisely, during one international event for example and increase your promotion budget as your international sales increase.

More In These Get International Clients Business Guides:

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

International Lead Generation With An Information Product Strategy

The Business Of Content

Cindy King — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 06:00:40 +0000

Information Products To Open International Markets

One of internet’s primary definitions is a source of content. Yes it is a great big contact book too. But once you get the contact you are looking for, it usually boils down to content next.

All traditional offline businesses need to jump into the business of content online. When you look around you, there are not many local businesses doing any real content business online.

A website gives a traditional offline business little more than a directory listing in the phone book.

Internet is a source of information. Everyone everywhere wants that information for free online now.

But that’s fine. There is still a way for offline businesses to use this to their advantage.

Because people are still willing to pay for other things you have.

Start With The Information First:

Use your website to provide information online. Great a name for yourself. Create desire for your other products and services. Create such a interest that you create a community feeling amongst your readers.

Next Logical Step

People are lazy. Or they don’t have time. And they will pay for you to provide them with services and products to help them.

Content online is a business.

Brick And Mortar Companies Use Information Products For International Business Development

Cindy King — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 06:00:10 +0000

Information Products To Open International Markets

How can businesses use the internet for international sales and lead generation?

Brick and mortar companies often do not take the time to study how they can create their own international business from their home office. It is important to review certain basic sales functions on the internet.

Internet is an information source. It has been widely commented on that people do not want to pay for information any more. Seth Godin’s books and blog to cite just one source.

The first reflex when you need information is to go online. This is true in many, many countries. You can get information for free on the Internet. Why pay for it?

Here are the two main categories of information available on the internet:

General online content – also providing excellent organic SEO value for the publisher
Information products, give away for free, as an incentive to subscribe to something, or for sale online.

General online content can be put online in websites, blogs, forums, directories and social media places such as YouTube or DailyMotion, Wikipedia.

Information products come in various formats:

EBooks,
Teleseminars,
Video training in online format or on DVD
E-Courses delivered automatically by email in text, audio or video formats,
Membership sites in various formats
Subscription based online training

Infopreneurs use these information products to create product funnels of varying price points, from free incentives, low priced front end products through to packages sold at thousands of dollars. Infopreneurs use information products as a business on its own. There are several online business models that create an automatic stream of income once in place.

Other offline businesses typically use front end information products to either

Create an online lead generation tool for their offline business
Create a new stand alone business model

These information products have been sold on the internet for a while now.

There is a decrease in the price of eBooks, and infopreneurs are using low priced incentives to get people to sign up on forced continuity membership programs.

Does this trend in the online information market affect businesses actively seeking international development? You must not forget the first points made above.

People all over the world expect free information on the web. And when they need information they look for it on the web.

People will spend money to implement this knowledge, learn skills, get ideas, and for quick solutions on how to use this information.

In international business development information products are used as:

An effective tool for international market research – creating authority, online visibility, inciting feedback – when used with the right online channel, and with the right content.
An international lead generation tool – in an integrated marketing strategy, and with the right content.

This is the reason why brick and mortar businesses interested in international development need to implement an online content and information product creation plan.

You can have your own international market research tool right in your domestic location. An online information strategy gives you:

Flexibility on your own international market development.
Control over risks in traditional international business development
Control over the pace at which you want to expand

An international lead generation tool which you can tweak real time, at no cost.

Brick and mortar businesses need to look at how they create their online presence. Providing content in the right format and within the right strategy gets you more international clients.

More In These Get International Clients Business Guides:

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

Brick And Mortar Companies Use Information Products For International Business Development

Cindy King's International Business Blog » information products

Sophisticated Marketing Methods And International Sales

More On Cross-Cultural Marketing

Why I Am Creating An Information Product On Website Internationalization

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International Lead Generation With An Information Product Strategy

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The Business Of Content

Start With The Information First:

Next Logical Step

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Brick And Mortar Companies Use Information Products For International Business Development

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