Basic Outline For Cross Cultural Online Marketing

Cross cultural researchers have studied different behavioral values in different cultures. Geert Hofstede researched this a few decades ago.

And these different behavioral values are outlined extensively in the book The Culturally Customized Web Site.

What Are The Different Cultural Behaviors You Can Market To?

Basically The Culturally Customized Web Site outlines that different cultures have different ways of behaving along 5 different scales.

• High Individualism versus High Collectivism Behavior
• High versus Low Uncertainty Avoidance Behavior
• High versus Low Power Distance Behavior
• High Masculinity versus High Femininity Behavior
• High versus Low Context Behavior

These different behavior scales can be used by international internet marketers. Marketing towards these behavioral needs gives internet marketers tools to play with and tweak to get better responses from different countries and cultures.

This is especially helpful, if you are marketing to another country at the opposite end of one or more of these scales to your country.

How Cross Cultural Study Can Help You? Read more

Tags: cross cultural marketing, international internet marketing, international marketing, Internet Marketing

The Impact Of Color And Its Different Associations In Multicultural Marketing

This weeks Get International Clients Newsletter starts a series of articles on how to culturally customize your website.

The feature article this week focuses on the choice of color and their different meanings in different cultures.

As this subject interests most readers, I have completed the list of colors here to keep as a reference in the Multicultural Marketing 101 Guide, which you can find in the list of other useful Guides to your right.

The use of color plays a role in cross cultural communication.

Some Cultures Have Richer Vocabularies For Colors

First let’s look at the different numbers of words in different vocabularies.

Some languages have a wider choice of words to describe certain colors. These words may actually refer to very different shades or variations of a color.

Different cultures pay more attention to the variations of certain colors. Here are some examples: Read more

Building Trust With These 3 Changes In Your Communication Will Get International Visitors To Listen To You

Building Trust With These 3 Tiny Changes In Your Communication Will Get International Visitors To Listen To You

It is often said that working in international business is like working in a minefield, where the mines are cross cultural communication blunders.

There are not really minefields online. It’s more like quicksand or a scene from a horror film where your friend, or in this case your international prospects or clients, just vanish without a trace.

Since the first time one culture tried to communicate with another there has always been at least one major stumbling block in cross cultural communication:

Trust

Trust is something businesses strive to create with Read more

Internationalize Your Website 6 - Publish A Glossary For Clarity And Consistency

This article is part of a series on how you can internationalize your current website. It also gives guidelines for creating an international website. This series can be found here in the Website Internationalization Guide.

Website internationalization is all about making your website easy for international visitors to understand.

Differences in vocabulary happens. It happens across different industries in the same country. And it happens often in cross cultural communication through translation.

One of the ways you can help your readers is to start a glossary.

When To Use A Glossary

You can create a glossary to list and explain: Read more

Internationalize Your Website 4 - Create Clarity With A Consistent Vocabulary

This article is part of a series on how you can internationalize your current website. It also gives guidelines for creating an international website. This series can be found here in the Website Internationalization Guide.

Internationalize your web site and improve your communication with all of your visitors: local, national, regional and international.

We tend to focus on the markets we know well.

We let certain habits install and we never question them.

We get used to talking to our prospects and clients in a certain vocabulary.

And this makes good marketing sense.

But sometimes we let little habits creep into how we use our vocabulary that can be real turn offs for international readers. These international readers may have to concentrate a little more to read your website. And any little inconsistency becomes a stumbling block. Read more

Culturally Customized Communication To Transition To A Global Market Internet Business

This is the third part of a series - Transition To A Global Market Internet Business. Read the other two parts here:
1 - Internationalize Your Website
2 - Localize Your Website

International Development With Internet Marketing In Three Easy Steps

Once you have a localized website adapted to each of your target markets you will want your international clients to feel more familiar with your products and services. You will want to improve the level of communication with your foreign markets.

Your website is now localized. It is already on their territory. The best way to deepen your relationship is to communicate with your foreign markets solely in their language, and to communicate exactly how you would if you were your local competitor. Read more

Internationalize Your Website 1 - Make Your Website Easy To Read For All Of Your Readers

This article is part of a series on how you can internationalize your current website. It also gives guidelines for creating an international website. This series can be found in the Website Internationalization Guide.

The majority of internet users world-wide are non-native English speakers. Even among native English speakers there is a wide variety of different vocabularies.

These visitors to your website may have more difficulty in reading English than you do.

First Steps To Website Internationalization

Your international visitors will probably not use the same every day vocabulary as you do. If a foreign visitor cannot understand your website easily he will not stay around long.

The question is whether your website is written for all of your international readers.

If your website is well targeted to your local domestic markets, the chances are it does not communicate well outside of that market. And even worse, it may even be pushing your international clients away.

There are things you can do to make your domestic website friendlier to everyone. This is called website internationalization. Read more

Internationalize Your Website 2 - Be Reachable By Phone To Everyone

This article is part of a series on how you can internationalize your current website. It also gives guidelines for creating an international website. This series can be found in the Website Internationalization Guide.

Can everyone reach you by phone?
Are you making the phone process easy so that everyone can actually call you?
Can your international clients reach you easily by phone?

First Steps To Website Internationalization

These questions may sound obvious. And you will probably say yes to all of them. Think again.

Calling from abroad is not always as easy as you imagine. Even today situations still arise often enough where people abroad desperately try to reach someone by phone and just cannot get through.

Cross cultural miscommunication happens often enough in all situations, including communication by phone.

Improve Your Reachability By Phone

When cultural miscommunication happens, you need to be reachable. Being reachable can help you to answer questions before they become issues of miscommunication.

The question is: Are you always reachable to your international clients? Read more

Internationalize Your Website 3 - Show The World Your Location

This article is part of a series on how you can internationalize your current website. It also gives guidelines for creating an international website. This series can be found in the Website Internationalization Guide.

Decent cross cultural communication depends on breaking down the natural barriers of mistrust inherent in all inter cultural relationships.

Good cross cultural communication is built once trust has been built between the two cultures.

First Steps To Website Internationalization

One of the key elements of internationalizing your website is trust.

First you have to look at all of the different barriers to trust on your website. One very simple barrier and very big barrier to trust in cross cultural communication is an absence of stating your location.

What is the one of the first things two people do when they meet each other? They ask where they are from. This question comes up even faster when you know you are speaking to someone from another country. The question is inevitable.

Tell The world Where You Are From

Some companies don’t put their address online. Some companies do not put it up clearly. Some companies think they have their address clearly indicated online, and yet their international readers don’t find it quickly enough.

Internationalizing your website means making your website friendlier to all international visitors. You need to put up your address and then need to find it when it suits them.

First let’s look at what not to do. Read more

Internet Strategies For French PME

Organic SEO To Give French Companies With An English Language Website The Visibility In American Markets To Compete With Anyone

As a French company targeting international markets you probably have a website in English.

Once you have had your business website up for a few months, you will be able to evaluate your results.

What can you do if you are not getting the prospects and leads you want from your website? How can a small French business gain any visibility in the huge American market? Do what the North American companies are doing.

Implement the right Search Engine Optimization campaign to get targeted visitors to your website. Read more

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