Cindy King's International Business Blog » multichannel marketing

Cross-Cultural Communication Challenge Tip 11

Cindy King — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 23:00:43 +0000

Cross-Cultural Communication Challenge – Expand Your Mindset

Today’s Cross Cultural Communication Challenge Tip is something I often run across.

If you are trying to reach a new international market you need to use different communication channels.

Some people think everything can be done over the web.
Some people believe they must have a physical presence abroad.

The reality might not be so clearly defined. You need to find out what works best for you. Today “best” might mean a combination of channels.

Of course, your best marketing channels depend on your business and your markets.

Remember, the best way to reach your market in a foreign country might be different than in your own country.

Try different channels to see which one works best for you.

Cross-Cultural Communication Challenge Tip #11

Cross-cultural marketing together with multichannel marketing

can get you more international business

Your challenge to improve you cross-cultural mindset:

Read your daily tips every day during the challenge
Think about what this means to you
Reflect on how this could help you get more international clients

Suggested Reading:

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Mindset	Clarity	Trust

Expand Your Mindset	Get Extreme With Clarity	Build Trust

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.

Multichannel Marketing Helps You Make A Better Offer

Cindy King — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 23:00:18 +0000

Multichannel Marketing

One of the keys to international success is finding the right offer for your international clients.

This can be hard to do under ordinary circumstances. It can be a challenge when selling to a different culture.

The Right Offer

First let’s look at the different components of your offer.

Your product or service
Your price
How you deliver your product or service

What is the right offer?

The right offer for your international clients will have the right ingredients in these 3 elements.

Find The Right Elements

Businesses usually focus on their products or services and the price. Your international clients will pay just as much attention to how you deliver your product. You need to find the right elements for your best international offer.

How can you do this?

Simply let your foreign markets tell you. Well, it can be simple if you give your foreign markets the right communication channels to tell you.

Multiple Channels To Identify Your Market Needs

You need feedback from your foreign markets on three key components of your offer: your product, your price and your delivery.

If you rely heavily on international web marketing for your business expansion, you simply cannot get accurate information on all three of these components by using one communication channel.

Multichannel marketing gives you feedback from your foreign markets from several different view points. This makes it easier for you to identify your foreign market’s needs.

And it gives you valuable information to craft the offer you need to develop each of your specific international markets.

How can you afford not to do multichannel marketing if you have an online business?

Multichannel Marketing For International Audiences

Cindy King — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:00:47 +0000

Multichannel Marketing

A small online business owner recently told me he could not afford to do multichannel marketing. He said he did not have the time or the money

This surprised me.

Most businesses do not realize their business already does multichannel marketing. Just about every business today uses different channels to communicate their offer to their markets.

This reaction lead me to think more about the value of multichannel marketing.

You see, todays prospects receive your communication through different channels: your website, your emails, your newsletter, your ads, and whatever else you are using. Your markets are already responding to your multichannel marketing.

But if you are not putting any thought into how you use the various communication channels, how is your audience receiving your messages?

Are your prospects getting the right offer you want to make to them?

In international marketing every single point of communication is vital.

If international web marketing is an important part of your international business development strategy, you need to give thought to each time you touch your international audience.

Good cross cultural communication requires clarity and consistency. Different messages from different channels create confusion and stop your trust building process. This is why you need to look at your multichannel marketing.

Multichannel Marketing does not have to be complicated. It does not require a dozen different marketing channels. Most businesses use different channels for marketing to their clients already. Multichannel Marketing is getting all of your communication on all of the different channels to work together for your business.

Think strategically – What behaviors does your market have?
Create the communication your audience will respond to – What does your audience want to know with each communication channel?
Use different channels to continue your conversation – What does your audience want to know now?

You can easily do this with 3 different communication channels. It is important to think about the your audience.

Multichannel Marketing gives more relevance to each of your marketing touches. Increased relevance gives more value to your audience.

Now, what if the message you are conveying to your international audience is not quite right. What if your message is missing its mark? If you are new to your international markets, this is probably the case.

So what can you do? With Multichannel Marketing you find out sooner if your message is not quite right. Multichannel Marketing also helps you to refine your message until you get it right. With a careful choice of different channels and testing, you will learn how to improve your message and how you deliver it.

More about that later…

My response to the reader who questioned me earlier?

How can you not afford to do multichannel marketing if you want to develop your international business?

Multichannel Marketing Is Key To Your International Business Success

Cindy King — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:28 +0000

Multichannel Marketing

Multichannel marketing is important for your international business success. Most businesses recognize this by using various channels to market to their foreign customers.

Budgets and translations often impose limits to using the number of marketing channels desired. Yet the use of multichannel marketing is often critical to your international business success.

Multichannel marketing will help you to:

Find the best communication channel for your international audiences
Create more visibility from a distance
Build trust through more active communication

When defining your multichannel marketing plan, it is important to:

Make the right choice of marketing channels
Track and test your multichannel results
Plan on a long term implementation of a multichannel marketing plan to get results

Multichannel marketing is key to your international business success. Don’t forget, the right multichannel marketing strategy is also key to all of your business success, both domestic and international business.

What Is Multichannel Marketing?

Cindy King — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:00:06 +0000

Multichannel Marketing

Yesterday I mentioned Akin Arikan’s book on Multichannel Marketing. Multichannel marketing is vital for international business development primarily based on web marketing. Many of you may not fully understand what multichannel marketing is.

It is really quite simple.

Just about every type of business today sells their products through multiple channels. As Akin Arikan says in his book, the only type of business today not using multichannel marketing might be the ice-cream man on the beach.

Multichannel marketing is when you use different channels to promote and sell your products. These channels include your:

Store
Catalog
Direct mail
Mobile phone advertising
Website
Email marketing
Online social marketing

This list could go on. If you are like most businesses today and are using more than one marketing channel to product your product, you are using multichannel marketing. Of course, businesses do not always use all of the channels available to them.

More and more new channels open all the time today.

There are two points to consider today:

Today’s consumers use multiple channels to make their buying decisions. The businesses that master multichannel marketing will have a significant head start over their competition.
The key is to choose the right multichannel mix to help your prospects and clients reach the best and the fastest buying decisions for your products.

Telesales, MultiChannel Marketing And International Business

Cindy King — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 23:00:14 +0000

Multichannel Marketing

My recent post on Cultural Blunders In Telesales inspired a few people to email me directly about this. Before I give further thoughts on this subject, I want to tell you where I stand.

Personal Opinion

Yes, as a person at home most of the time, with a phone number in the public phone book, I do experience all the down sides of Telesales.

My personal complaint is not to do with the bad timing and inappropriate sales pitches, which all of them are in my case. When my children have all left home I will probably get an unlisted number. This is my personal choice.

Cultural Blunders In Outsourced Business To Consumer Telesales

My personal complaint is the current trend I am experiencing with cultural differences leading to rudeness because of cultural miscommunication. There are days and weeks when it seems like all the companies actively practicing Telesales here in France have outsourced this interruption marketing practice to foreign countries unfamiliar with the basic culture here.

You can read more about this in my previous article on cultural blunders to find out why I think companies should think twice before buying this service, simply because of the cultural blunders it creates in Business to Consumer markets.

I will leave the discussion about all domestic market telesales and Business to Consumer interruption marketing practices to the experts. It just does not interest me.

An interruption marketing tactic alone will probably fail if you are in an Export Marketing phase. If your international business is only in export marketing you will probably not have enough cultural understanding of your foreign markets.

Read the Get International Client Business Guide 1 – Beginners Discover Your International Business.

You need to adapt telesales and integrate this interruption marketing tactic into a multichannel marketing strategy for it to be worthwhile in international sales.

TeleSales In A MultiChannel Marketing Strategy

What interests me is the international aspect of tele-sales.

In my business directory Get International Clients I help small businesses as they expand into foreign markets. Small businesses often ask about the use of telesales. This is why I want to address the question of international telesales.

First I have to say, I think small businesses need to spend much more time on the phone. Not to do telesales. Phone conversations are great for international market research. Most businesses rely very heavily on online research. There is so much more to gain if you do your international research through phone calls. So I actively push small businesses to pick up the phone.

If a small business has carried out most of its international market research through phone calls, then I think this business has a good chance of getting results using telesales. You pick up cross-cultural skills through practice. These cross-cultural skills will help you with your international telesales.

But, and this is a big but, most companies are still using outdated telesales practices.

I highly recommend Akin Arikan’s book Multichannel Marketing. Akin Arikan describes the problem of today’s telesales practices very clearly. Most consumer markets today make their buying decisions differently than 10 years ago. This is true throughout the world.

Consumer-Driven Marketing

Product-driven marketing needs to evolve in order to get sales results in a market demanding consumer-driven marketing.

Akin Arikan tells a story of the day he moved into a new house. The telesales marketers had done a good job at identifying his new telephone number and flooded his telephone line with calls as soon as it was hooked up. Imagine the situation. You are just moving in, trying to sort out boxes and where things should go. Your new is ringing constantly. You have to keep trying to find the phone in all the boxes. Interruption marketing rapidly becomes unwanted.

What did the Arikan family do? Just like anyone today. They sorted out their important boxes first. And as soon as they got their computer up and running they did comparison shopping online. Then went to the stores down the road to buy what they needed. Of course, they did not feel obliged to buy from the same company online where they found the most useful information. They simply went to the most convenient place for them.

Evolution In The World Of TeleSales

Here are 3 thoughts on how to improve telesales marketing:

The telesales scripts need to change to fit into today’s consumer habits. The telephone marketers would probably have gained more if they linked their telesales pitch to their online marketing.
Online marketing also needs to change to get consumers to buy from them. Imagine if the website that provided the most useful information also provided directions to the local store with a housewarming special for new people in the area.
Successful telesales marketing needs effective multichannel marketing today.

The bad news: Small businesses that rely heavily on international web marketing need to create good multichannel marketing if they want international success.

The good news: It is easier to get it right when starting from scratch.

Of course you can include telesales as part of your multichannel mix. Do your own telesales in-house. Even if this method is not culturally well adapted to your specific foreign market, you will gain valuable insights into your international markets. Telesales is a great international market research tool if you take the time to use it.

3 Ways To Improve Your International Marketing Plan

Cindy King — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:00:04 +0000

International Web Marketing Mix

There are three decisions you need to make before creating your international marketing plan. Use these three criteria to identify your international marketing needs.

The Difference With Your Domestic Product

Will you be selling a domestic product or a product specific to your international market?
How will your sales pitch be different?
How will you need to adapt your product and your sales pitch to a different market and culture?

There are seven different stages to international business development. Identify exactly what you are selling to your international clients and use the appropriate international marketing strategy.

Cross-Cultural Marketing or Multicultural Marketing

Are marketing your product to a wide range of cultures, on the web for example, with one marketing plan?

If so, use a Multicultural Marketing approach.

Are you marketing your product to one specific country?

Then you need to use more specific Cross-Cultural Marketing strategies.

Single Channel Marketing Or Multi-Channel Marketing

The type of marketing strategy you use will effect your entire international marketing plan.

Will you only use one single channel to market your product abroad?

Or will you use a variety of channels?

What works in your domestic market may be different elsewhere. Your market research will tell you where you should be putting your efforts. Some cultures will respond better to different channels of communication.

If you are relying heavily on web marketing for your International Marketing strategy, try to add in some other channels. At the very minimum, adjust your web marketing using Cultural Web Tools to get better results.

Effective International Marketing

An effective International Marketing Plan is based on identifying the right mix for your business, products and international markets.

Cindy King's International Business Blog » multichannel marketing

Cross-Cultural Communication Challenge Tip 11

Cross-Cultural Communication Challenge Tip #11

Get All Cross-Cultural Communication Tips:

Free Mini-Posters With Monthly Calenders

Marketing Segmentation

Web Marketing

Email Marketing

Multichannel Marketing

International Marketing

Is Marketing Segmentation Easy?

More On International Web Marketing

Multichannel Marketing Helps You Make A Better Offer

The Right Offer

Find The Right Elements

Multiple Channels To Identify Your Market Needs

More On Multichannel Marketing

Multichannel Marketing For International Audiences

More On Multichannel Marketing

Multichannel Marketing Is Key To Your International Business Success

More On Multichannel Marketing

What Is Multichannel Marketing?

More On Multichannel Marketing

Telesales, MultiChannel Marketing And International Business

Personal Opinion

Cultural Blunders In Outsourced Business To Consumer Telesales

TeleSales In A MultiChannel Marketing Strategy

Consumer-Driven Marketing

Evolution In The World Of TeleSales

More On Multichannel Marketing

3 Ways To Improve Your International Marketing Plan

The Difference With Your Domestic Product

Cross-Cultural Marketing or Multicultural Marketing

Single Channel Marketing Or Multi-Channel Marketing

Effective International Marketing

More On International Web Marketing Mix:

Business Guides On Get International Clients