How To Get Your International Sales Offer Right In Today’s Economy

Cindy King — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:00:23 +0000

A good Twitter friend Rajeev, also known as @mintblogger recently wrote about blogging in saturated niches.

Saturated Niche: Why You Should Brush Aside This Term

Rajeev says that blogs in highly competitive niches survive because they generate unique content and have an aggressive marketing strategy.

This reminds me of a common problem some people have with international marketing. And this problem seems to be omnipresent with businesses trying to sell to international markets online.

No Unique And Compelling Offer

There are a few harsh realities. Business is business everywhere.

If you are trying to sell something no one wants to buy, you will not succeed.
If you do not make your offer compelling you will not succeed.
If you have a great product, but your offers is not compelling, someone else will make it more compelling and “steal” your clients.

You simply must have a unique and compelling offer in today’s economy. There is no way around it.

As Rajeev pointed out, this is the reason why some blogs survive, and even do well, in highly competitive niches.

Make A Unique Offer To Your International Market

Of course, your offer must be of value to your international markets.

I have often tweeted this article by Apala Chavin, which gives a great description of how your offer needs to be adapted to your international markets:

The Washing Machine That Ate My Sari – Mistakes in Cross-Cultural Design

Please read this if you are interested in selling your products abroad.

But beyond the value people find in your offer…

In order to get ahead in tough sales situations, you also need to find an offer that is unique. And an offer that is unique in one country may not be so unique in another country.

This is part of your success.

A unique offer creates the demand.

Make A Compelling Offer To Each Cultural Market

The other part of your success depends on how compelling you make your offer.

A compelling offer gets you the sale.

For international sales, the difference is that you need to find out how to make your offer compelling to your different markets.

Yes, that’s right…

Different cultures have different emotion buttons. Something truly compelling is probably something different in each of your international markets.

Aggressive Marketing

When Rajeev mentioned aggressive marketing, I first thought of volume. Taking massive action is important. But I think that an aggressive marketing strategy today is one with a truly unique and compelling offer. This is what really separates the winners today. You either have an offer that works for your market today, or you don’t. Either you make the sales, or you don’t.

The problem is that to find the unique and compelling offer for your product, takes work. And this work is multiplied by the number of countries you want to sell to.

The good news is that if you are aggressive in carrying out different marketing tactics this can help you. You can usually incorporate part of the process of identifying the right offer for each country over a period of time using different marketing tactics.

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How To Get Your International Sales Offer Right In Today’s Economy

It’s All About The Offer – Let’s Refuel America!

Cindy King — Wed, 21 May 2008 23:00:54 +0000

Cross-Cultural Living

In the Get International Clients Sunday Blog Carnival last Sunday there is a post from Keith Goodrum about the new Chrysler advertising a new incentive program called Let’s Refuel America!

This is brilliant marketing to present a unique offer… but I made a mistake and read the fine print.

In a nutshell the program is like this: Fuel prices continue to rise. So the Let’s Refuel America Program helps their buyers stabilize the cost of fuel. With this offer the price of unleaded or diesel fuel is locked at $2.99/gallon for three years. The participants do this by using a special card linked to their MasterCard or Visa credit card account.

Participants use the card to purchase enough fuel at $2.99 per gallon to travel up to12,000 miles per year in each of the next 3 years. So no matter what the price at the pump says, you’ll never have to pay more than $2.99 per gallon for qualifying fuel.

At first glance, this is a great offer. Americans are ranting that gas will hit $10.00 or more a gallon in the US. This is similar to the prices currently paid in Europe.

The offer appears to be very appealing for anxious Americans.

But look at the fine print and there is another story. Each type of car has a maximum amount of gallons of gas allocated for the program.

If you buy the Dodge Caliber or Jeep Compass, which both average 24 miles per gallon, you can buy a maximum of 1500 gallons at the special price.
If you buy the Jeep Commander or Dodge Ram 1500, 2500 or 3500 Pickup, which average 15 miles per gallon you can buy a maximum of 2400 gallons at the special price.

It appears that the company is rewarding people who buy the cars that waste the most fuel. Those gas-guzzling cars are harder to sell when fuel costs are high.

At the same time the program offers a cash back program. You buy a car and they lower the price.

Of the 28 different vehicles listed, the biggest rebate and fuel allocation goes to those that waste the most. 7 of the 10 most fuel efficient vehicles give you $0.00 – nothing – back if you buy them. The inefficient cars average nearly $1000 cash back.

If you include the fuel efficient cars the average drops to just over $700 per car.

On paper it make better sense to just give $700 per car.

Another way to calculate in simple math: the 28 cars, pickups and jeeps listed average 18.6 miles a gallon and the average gas allocation is 1977 gallons.

On paper it makes better sense to just allocate 1900 gallons per car.

Those are the observations of North Americans living in Europe with different cultural outlooks on cars, the environment and what a good offer really is.

But Chrysler’s offer is made to a specific market. This whole campaign of refueling America is well targeted to its American market. It will be interesting to see how successful this marketing campaign turns out to be.

Read more about aligning your offer to your market here:

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