Cindy King's International Business Blog » market segmentation

How to Market Your Business With Twitter Lists

Cindy King — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:00:48 +0000

Here is my article which was first published on Social Media Examiner:

Twitter is a networking haven for businesses. But is there an easy way to draw the right people to you with Twitter?

The answer is yes and there’s a great Twitter feature that can help you: Twitter lists. Twitter lists can grab the interest of people you most want to meet, help you make a great first impression and can help you with marketing segmentation.

Below I’ll show you some unique ways to use Twitter lists. But first…

How Do Twitter Lists Work?

Twitter lists creates separate lists of people. If you haven’t already used Twitter lists, watch this video to see how you can get started.

There are two interesting points to remember about Twitter lists:

You don’t need to “follow” people on Twitter to include them in your lists.
You can have both public and private lists.

Now here’s a look at what you can do with Twitter lists.

#1: Listen with Private Lists

Twitter lists are great to monitor and listen to different groups of people. No-one else can see your private lists, so this is a good place to start using the Twitter list feature. You can create private lists to:

Monitor your competitors
Carry out specific market research
Keep track of different networks of friends and colleagues

Private Twitter lists can help you segment the fire hose of information streaming in through your Twitter feed, according to Rohit Bhargava. Segmenting people into lists also helps you more effectively listen to and monitor your market.

John Jantsch says Twitter lists make it easier to listen to what others have to say.

And monitoring people without following them makes it easy to carry out specific market research or intelligence gathering. Once you’ve finished doing your market research, you can simply delete your list without making any changes to the people you usually follow.

#2: Craft Your Brand With Public Lists

There’s not much space to brand yourself on your Twitter profile page. You do have space for a few words in the bio box and you can add in background graphics. But you can also add another dimension to your branding by carefully crafting your public Twitter lists. Here’s how.

Choose appropriate names for your lists
Spend some time finding the best name for your list. There are a few things to keep in mind when naming your Twitter lists:

Engage the right people. You’ll get more people interested in looking at your list if the name sparks their interest.
Remember to communicate with everyone. Don’t limit your audience. The right name could help you reach more of the people you want to connect with.
The SEO bonus. Another reason to think about how you label your lists is for search engine optimization (SEO). Look at the screenshot below. This Twitter list is in a good position in Google search results for a competitive keyword.

The bad news is that if you change the name of your list, the URL of your Twitter list changes too and you’ll lose the people following that list. So take some time to get this right.

Choose appropriate Twitter lists for your public profile
When creating your Twitter lists, you want to think of how lists help you:

Connect with your Twitter followers
Achieve your main goal for using Twitter
Continue the story you began in your Twitter bio

As you build up a following on Twitter, your followers will be interested in your Twitter lists. The choice of Twitter lists found on your Twitter home page is important for engaging with people.

Choose the number of public lists
Remember, there’s a limited amount of space available for your Twitter lists on your home page. Although you can create a larger number of lists, only about 4 to 6 will appear on your home page depending on the character length of the names of your lists. Your audience will have to click on the “View all” link to see all of your lists if you have more than this.

So you may want to think carefully about the number of lists you want to create and the order in which you create them. Put your most relevant lists at the top.

Advertise your Twitter lists
Create Twitter widgets for specific Twitter lists and put them up on your blog or website to engage people and establish your areas of interest and expertise.

Better Marketing With Twitter Lists

Twitter’s list feature can add some extra marketing power to your Twitter strategy if you take some time to get it right. You also need to find the right way to make your lists work for you. This will depend on your goals for Twitter, your audience and how they like to connect with you.

A good Twitter list improves your visibility in your market. Here are a few more benefits:

The people you follow in your public lists will appreciate the recognition.
By providing a useful resource, you’ll increase your credibility in your market and attract more followers.
As you become more popular, you’ll be listed on other people’s lists. This is another way to measure your social media influence.

What are your thoughts about Twitter lists? How are you using them? Do you regularly follow other lists? Please share your thoughts and comments below.

More Segmentation = More International Sales

Cindy King — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 23:00:55 +0000

Marketers are on the path towards more segmentation. This is true today and it is also true for the years to come.

The Bad News

In an economy of downsizing and increasing job responsibilities, this is probably bad news for most marketers.

You see, segmentation means more number crunching. You know, the roll up your sleeves type of task.

Segmentation will involve number crunching even if your company invests in good software to track the numbers. These software solutions simply need to be used properly to get the right information out of them… and this also involves rolling up your sleeves.

Why Segmentation?

As a cross-cultural marketer segmentation is part of my world.

This is easy to understand. International marketing has always inherently involved market segmentation. The geographic segmentation is obvious and businesses rapidly understand the need for cultural segmentation.

But I also notice other marketing segmentation trends. And there are a few of them today.

Generational Marketing

The generational marketing trends in North America talk about Boomers, Generation X’ers, Generation Y’ers.

This generational marketing can be challenging for some marketing segments where Boomers are tech savvy for example. And it can be confusing for some international marketers where markets are not as clearly defined.

Segmentation can help you find the answers you need for effective marketing.

Ethnic Marketing

The election of President Obama has placed ethnic marketing in the limelight, even if this trend was well established prior to this.

Researchers have recently highlighted how several leading countries, including the US and France, will have ethnic majority populations in our lifetime.

This means that marketers will need segmentation to improve their ethnic marketing. Ethnic marketing will definitely be needed during this period of change.

And again segmentation is key to ethnic marketing.

More International Sales

The good news is that as marketers are being forced to the task of segmentation, budgets and processes will be aligned to meet these needs.

The improvement and development of segmentation will benefit international sales. Businesses will be able to apply these processes to developing international sales more effectively.

And this is something I am looking forward to. Several current marketing trends will help businesses in developing their international sales.

Earlier this week I wrote about the similarities between good international communicators and good social media communicators. With the rise of customer-centric marketing and social media, this also means that more people will have the soft skills needed for international business development.

With soft skills and good measurement processes international sales will be easier to target.

Marketing Segmentation Grows Both Sides Of Your International Business

Cindy King — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:00:42 +0000

Cross-Cultural Marketing

Yesterday I showed you how studying human behaviors is inevitable if you want your business to be competitive today. And how this current best practice also has a direct impact on your international sales success.

Today I am going to show you how another current business best practice can grow your international business.

Competitive Business Today

There is a very similar parallel with the evolution in the need for market segmentation to be competitive in the business world today, and the skills you need to build an international business.

Market Segmentation

Market segmentation used to be easier. You only had a few criteria: products, distinct communications channels and locations. Businesses had control of how their clients heard about their products.

Today, customers have control. And they initiate contact with businesses at varying stages of buyer readiness. As a business today, if you do not increase your marketing segmentation your customers know it. And you can appear totally out of synch with their needs.

Segmentation gives you more effective multichannel marketing to get your message right when it matters most.

Some people may think this only concerns web marketing. But don’t forget, your customers use the web to look up more information.

All online statistics also come from segmentation. If you want to get any benefit out of this you need to be able to take action… in segments. This is how web statistics can help you make more sales.

International Business Today

Market segmentation has always played an inherent part of international business development.

International business development always starts with one country. And you need to adapt your marketing, communication and sales to this one country.

Have a look at The 7 Traditional Paths To International Business Development.

After you know how to do this in one country, you go into another country.

Prior to internet, international business development often meant opening offices in different countries. A visual example of segmentation.

And today? With international web marketing?

A few years ago international web marketing followed the traditional international business development paths. It was all about:

Localized websites – websites with top level domains in each different country.
Local language websites as soon as possible, often before getting to know foreign markets well enough to write culture-customized content.

Today the improvements in search engine algorithms give more reason towards creating a “first step” or “initial phase”:

Country-specific categories or sub-domains on your main website or an international website.
Creating the connection, mainly with English language content that you progressively culture-customize as you learn more from you web statistics.
Using web statistic analysis to improve your international marketing, communication and sales and investing in translations once you have the viability statistics.

Where Current Marketing And International Best Practices Meet

Can you see how there is even more segmentation in international business development today?

The evolution of consumer practices today means that businesses need segmentation to get the right marketing message across at the right time.

And these skills of knowing how to segment your marketing efforts are the same skills you need to carry out effective international marketing today.

Brush up your international skills…
Read more on Cross-Cultural Marketing:

A Future For Ethnic Marketing
Cross-Cultural Web
How Cultural Differences Influence Marketing Segmentation
Marketing Segmentation Grows Both Sides Of Your International Business
Sophisticated Marketing Methods And International Sales
Why International Marketing Needs To Do More

Use these skills in your international tactics on the…
Get International Clients International Sales Road Map:

Multicultural Marketing

• Do you know the difference between Multicultural Marketing and Cross-Cultural Marketing… and when to use them? Find out more in Step 4 on Get International Clients

Step 5 – Connect With Your International Markets

Connect…
• With culture customized content
• With trust and empathy
• With strong cross-cultural communication

Culture Customized Content

• How can culture-customized content increase your international sales? Find out more in Step 5 on Get International Clients

Cultural Web Tools

• How can you tweak your web site to improve your cross-cultural communication? Find out more in Step 8 on Get International Clients

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

Marketing Segmentation Grows Both Sides Of Your International Business

Marketing Segmentation

Cindy King — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 23:00:35 +0000

International Marketing Basics

The need for marketing segmentation is all around us. Here are several examples of segmentation in marketing:

Web Marketing

To get the full value out of your web marketing you need to test and track your results.

A/B testing is simple enough to put in place. In fact, pay attention and you will notice that all of the most successful web marketers test their marketing results. This is how they learn how to sell to their markets online.

A testing strategy helps you learn more about your markets. It also shows you how to sell to your markets.

Just starting an international marketing campaign? Imagine starting your week with this question:

What am I going to test this week?

And if you have more than one product to promote online, you can easily begin every day with:

What am I going to test today?

The secret is learning more and adjusting your web marketing step-by-step. This is how small companies take the online advantage over big companies.

Email Marketing

Effective email marketing also involves testing and tracking results.

Direct response marketers are now testing their campaigns online first. Before investing in mailing their direct mail packages, they want to know what works best.

This is another example of segmentation for testing.

Multichannel Marketing

Today’s marketer has markets using different communication platforms, or channels. Communication through different marketing channels is an obvious necessity.

But how do you choose which channel? Well, you need to:

Pick up the conversation with your market at the right spot.
Or, continue the conversation further down the road.

This is more of a market segmentation.

International Marketing

For successful international business development you need country-specific marketing. And even culture-specific marketing.

This is also involves segmenting your marketing.

Is Marketing Segmentation Easy?

Segmentation certainly appears to be a necessity. But there is a slight barrier to segmentation. It appears to multiply the work.

It is also interesting to note the trend to avoid extra work and look for easy solutions.

Does segmentation offer an easy business advantage for the businesses that make the effort?

You can also think of segmentation as bringing more clarity. And clarity makes business easier.