Photo: Afonso Lima
International Business Development
Relying heavily on internet marketing to develop new foreign markets can reduce your international development costs. It is also quicker and generally involves less risk compared to opening a foreign office or a foreign sales team, for example.
What are the choices in internet marketing strategies when opening your business into a new foreign market?
What are companies doing now? Many companies are still using a traditional marketing mindset. Let’s look at the options a company has when solely using internet marketing to start out with. There are three main options for first implementing an e-marketing campaign to open a foreign market.
One social media
Relying solely on one social media, such as a blog. You can create one company blog in French and target it to the French market for example. This is what Abercrombie & Fitch is doing, without having a physical presence in France.
Remember the foreign market you are targeting may not be a foreign language market. It could be in English targeting the Australian market for example. In both cases, you will need to find a native person with blogging skills to write your blog for you.
Many internet and business experts agree that all companies need to have a blog in 2008. Some go so far as to say that any company without an interactive presence or a blog will lose its market share if they do not start an interactive internet communication campaign soon.
Several Communication Tools
You can develop an online communication strategy based on several internet communication tools in the foreign language: a monthly newsletter, email marketing, a blog, online videos, articles.
This is the ideal solution. The synergy that can be created using several tools will bring you more prospects and clients faster. It can also easily be adapted to traditional marketing or offline marketing and become even more effective.
Implementing one foreign language campaign using several internet communication media does not have to be much more expensive than using one communication medium. If well thought out, foreign language content can be re-purposed to keep monthly costs to a minimum and implemented in a integrated marketing campaign designed for foreign market interaction.
This may take a few months to adjust and some extra strategy planning, but you will create a powerful foreign lead generation system. The valuable knowledge you will get from your foreign market potential will be an added bonus.
Localized Company Website
Some companies start here. And this is where you will aim for. A localized website will provide a base for all of your communication, marketing and campaigns in that country.
But website localization can be the most demanding, time consuming and expensive option to use at this stage when just starting out. It involves localizing your website and incorporating various e-marketing and Search Engine Optimization efforts to create a foreign country specific website.
A localized website involves more than translation of your content and requires solid market research and a certain amount of time to achieve.
Remember to internationalize your website before thinking of creating a localized website. This will make your website localization go quicker and smoother.
Start Small And Grow With Your International Clientèle
If you do not have adequate knowledge of your foreign market to start with a localized foreign website, it would be best to hire a third party to do it. You can also ideally start off with an option requiring less investment.
As you can see, your e-marketing strategy can begin using with one communication tool in a foreign language and targeted to one country. You will then naturally develop your international communication with your international expansion.
Read The Whole Story
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This is part of the Get International Clients Business Guide 4 Build Your International Marketing Strategy Be sure to check out the other useful tips to build your international marketing strategy |
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