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“Culture is only true when implicitly critical, and the mind which forgets this revenges itself in the critics it breeds. Criticism is an indispensable element of culture.” - Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969), German philosopher, sociologist, music critic.

In This Issue:

Regular Weekly Columns:

• Recent Get International Clients Blog Topics
• Foreign Trivia
• Example Of Websites With Global Business
• Q & A
• Are You Missing International Business Opportunities?

This Weeks Feature Article:

Online Marketing With 5 Different Cultural Behavior Values Masculinity Versus Femininity Part 4 of 5

Recent Get International Clients Blog Topics

• What Website Do You Need To Open For International Business
• Cross Cultural Communication Web Tools – Customer Service
• Cross Cultural Communication Web Tools – Company Hierarchy
• Cross Cultural Communication Web Tools – Soft Sale
• Cross Cultural Communication Web Tools – Polite Is An Indirect Approach

Read more on www.getinternationalclients.com

Foreign Trivia

Unasur was in the news this last week. Why? What is Unasur ?

Send your answers to cindy@cindyking.biz with “Foreign Trivia” in the subject line.

Answer to last week’s trivia question: What did the European Central Bank celebrate earlier this month? The European Central Bank was founded ten years ago on 1 June 1998: a crucial step in introducing the single European currency.

Feature Article

Online Marketing With 5 Different Cultural Behavior Values

Masculinity Versus Femininity

Part 4 of 5

This is the fourth out of 5 weeks on the five different ways to approach cultural marketing.The five different cultural behaviors will give you better insights into how you can integrate cross cultural marketing into your internet marketing practices to get more international sales.Here is a brief reminder of all of the different values:

The 5 Different Cultural Behavior Values

Different cultures can be measured 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 web marketers.

Inspiration To Market To Different Cultures

Marketing towards these behavioral needs gives internet marketers some ideas of the 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.

Only Inspiration

It is important to understand that these scales do not give you a cookie cutter strategy. Don’t stop all of your good marketing practices and start all over again with these tools.

Use these cultural tools in addition to your good web marketing practices. Use these guidelines to show you what you should try to emphasize on your website and in your web marketing. Test them. Find the right mix with all of the 5 different behavioral results.

If you think your cross cultural marketing is not speaking to your foreign market, or if you would like to improve your cross cultural communication, have a quick look at each of these behavioral traits to see the differences between you and your foreign market.

This week we will look at what is referred to as the Masculinity versus Femininity scale.

Masculinity Versus Femininity

On one end of the scale there are countries where the cultures tend towards a belief in achievement, assertiveness and ambition. These countries are at the masculinity end of the scale.

On the other end of the scale there are countries where people tend towards a belief in nurturing and caring. These countries are at the femininity end of the scale.

Masculinity End Of The Scale

Here are some countries considered to be at the masculinity end of the scale:

• Japan
• Hungary
• Austria
• Venezuela
• Switzerland
• Italy
• Mexico
• Jamaica
• Ireland
• U.K.
• Germany

Femininity End Of The Scale

Here are some countries considered to be at the femininity end of the scale:

• Sweden
• Norway
• Netherlands
• Denmark
• Costa Rica
• Finland
• Chile
• Portugal
• Thailand
• Guatemala
• Uruguay

Emphasize The Right Online Marketing Tools

Each country has a unique cultural blend of all five of the different cultural behaviors.

Study each one of these individual cultural behaviors to identify the right mixture of things to emphasize in the country you are targeting.

It is interesting to look at the differences in your cultural behaviors when developing your international internet marketing plan.

Examples Of Tools To Use

Remember it is not only having this tool on your website it is especially how this tool is emphasized on your website that counts.

Masculinity

Here is a list of tools you could use for countries at the masculinity end of the scale:

• Direct to the point information
• Product information on quality, durability, and features
• Traditional gender associations
• Games and quizzes
• Tips and tricks

Femininity

Here is a list of tools you could use for countries at the femininity end of the scale:

• A more entertaining sales approach
• Product associated with emotions
• Pleasing graphics
• Harmonious colors

Cultural Behavioral Research Helps Online Marketing

Use the research done in cultural behavioral values to improve your cross cultural web marketing.

It is often difficult to get out of our own cultural behaviors to see the different cultural behaviors in other cultures. The easiest way to do this is to browse around a variety of websites in your target culture. Don’t try to understand things, just sit back and see what impressions you pick up.

The cultural differences will come through. You can often get a good idea of what to try on your own website afterwards.

Remember to track results and test any changes you make.

Next week we will look at the last behavioral trait: High Context versus Low Context Behavior.

Example Of Websites With Global Business

It can be daunting when starting out. How do you go about creating a good global website and then culturally customized websites?There are many steps a company takes to become totally international.To give you an idea of what is recognized as a global website, have a look at another company website:

www.ibm.comIBM is listed at 17th on John Yunker’s list of best global websites for 2008. I found this URL very interesting.I did not easily find a global website portal for IBM. A Google search had the US and the UK websites clearly listed, but not a specific international portal.
On a side note: I am located in France. There did not appear to be any country codes to automatically select the French website for me…the first website there was the US website. So I don’t believe they have one.

The US website is listed as www.ibm.com and automatically reverts to www.ibm.com/us. So this is where I went.

There is a clear tab on the top right hand to change countries. The pull down country menu is not as appealing as some of the others. The first country on the list is Bangladesh and this stays visible for each new country search.

Once you select the country you still need to click again to action the search. Other country selection tools have had one step less to go through.

There are obviously two different sets of templates. This is a trend we have seen before.

The bigger country markets have one template and the other smaller country markets have a second template.

This second template for smaller countries was flush to the left hand side of my screen and did not take up my entire screen. I wonder if this is on purpose to fit smaller local screens.

The first template for larger markets was centered, had more animation and often appeared more vibrant. These templates appear to be updated more often.

John Yunker researches and publishes a list of the best globalized websites.

Q And A

Question: How fast can you internationalize a website?

Answer: It depends on the extent to which you want to internationalize your website. First the long answer, and then the short one.

I need to begin by clarifying a key point. I refer to two different types of websites.

• An International Website
• An Internationalized Website

An international website, can be considered as a precursor to a global website. Its communication is targeted only to one wide international audience. This limits its marketing effectiveness. To get the best results you need to target your communication directly to each and every culture you sell to. This means several different websites. One localized website for each country you sell to.

An international website is useful in the interim period before you know where to create your localized websites. You can start international marketing efforts here. But again, those international marketing efforts will need to go local for best results.

An internationalized website sells primarily to a domestic audience and its communication is targeted to this audience. But, this communication is edited so it does not push international visitors away.

These edits are usually very subtle and the internationalized website continues to communicate well with its original market.

And this is why I answered, it depends. Sometimes all you need is to improve the level of good web marketing practices on your website and that’s all you need.

If the communication on your website is very strongly impregnated with your local culture, this may be a problem. It may not be. But your web content may need to be revised. You may also decide to keep your cultural content and create a second website for your international market.

You also have another option. If you know which foreign cultures you want to market to primarily, you can add a few further modifications to appeal more to those cultures. This does not necessarily take much time, but you do need to track results and test things to really get your website to work well.

Sometimes you will not be able to sell to your original domestic market and make the little modifications to appeal to your second foreign markets. The cultures just might not mix well on your website.

Your solution would be to create a second website for a broad international audience or to create localized websites for each foreign culture you are targeting.

That is it the long answer.

The short answer is:

It can take as little as a couple of days to have a small website “edited” to stop pushing away international visitors.

It can take several weeks to do a comparative analysis between your domestic market and one primary foreign culture, and to identify the small web tools and touches to test on your domestic website.

Read more on Get International Clients.

If you have a question on how to get more international clients, leave your question at cindy@cindyking.biz .

Are You Missing International Opportunities?

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Stop missing opportunities! King Business Tools’ Monthly International Content Creation Packages integrates Internet and Traditional Marketing Strategies for international lead generation. We provide companies like yours with an affordable way to create a business presence in foreign markets fast.

Or are you unsure of the opportunities you are missing? Do you need ideas? If you need help in defining how to focus your international business expansion, sign up for a 39 point international analysis of your current internet presence and get an hours live phone session with the King Business Tools Idea Factory.The International Business Idea Factory run by King Business Tools covers expertise in North American and European business expansion. Get started today — contact me at: cindy@cindyking.biz or +33 6 98 91 86 11 Contact me now to learn more about how I can help you Generate More International Leads For You Today.Cindy King is based just south of Paris, she runs King Business Tools, a French Company, to provide European and North American companies.

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