Flexibility In Your International Marketing Plan
October 10, 2008 by 
cindy
Yesterday we looked at how it is important to incorporate flexibility into your international marketing plan. We also saw how you need feedback and the ability to maintain marketing accountability.
Incorporating flexibility into your international marketing plan will help you to:
- Adjust your marketing as you learn more about your foreign clients
- Avoid cultural blunders through feedback
- Avoid bad business decisions by listening to the feedback you get
Flexibility helps you change. It helps you to know when to respond. And, also how to respond.
But how can you include flexibility in your international marketing plan and still maintain marketing accountability?
This is where creating a process is important.
First let’s look at naming 4 steps in the process of incorporating flexibility into your marketing plan.
1 - Feedback
It all starts with feedback from your new foreign markets.
This is the process through which you acquire international business intelligence. This intelligence helps you improve all of your international business strategies.
The first step in to collect feedback from your international audience, prospects and clients. Everything counts.
2 - Assessment
Then you need to digest this information. It may not seem obvious, but you must not immediately make assumptions. Your assumptions will probably be culturally tainted… and they could be false.
You need to look at this information objectively.
3 - Understanding
This leads to the third step of understanding your international markets. This does not come from your own logic. It is almost like a light bulb going off. You need to meet your foreign markets outside of your own comfortable environment.
This is where you can understand the feedback you get from your foreign markets.
4 - Change
And once you understand the feedback you can look at your current marketing plan and make adjustments. You now have both the international business intelligence and the foreign market understanding.
Part Of Your Marketing Plan
By outlining these 4 steps you can plan for them. You can add them into your international marketing plan. And allow for the time and means necessary for required change.
How do you add them into your plan? Being aware of this process and these steps is already a good part of the process. A simple validation procedure or checking point is usually all you need.
- Does the feedback you have match your current international marketing plan?
- Do you need to take the time to assess this information?
- Is there any reason to dig deeper, to understand your feedback better?
And if you need to adjust your international marketing plan…
…then make the necessary changes as quickly as you can.
Better International Business Results
Effective cross-cultural marketing requires good right brain skills. This is why it can appear difficult to bring marketing accountability into your international marketing plan. But you simply need to identify the right process, and the right elements to measure.
Once you have established where you need to place these questions into your marketing plan, it becomes easy to evaluate and measure.
Many cultural blunders happen because businesses:
- Do not stimulate foreign market feedback enough.
- Do not take the time to assess and understand this feedback - they make their own assumptions too quickly.
- Do not make the changes their foreign market indicates they want.
If you do not have international business experience, you find this difficult to grasp fully. Simply ask yourself these questions at key moments, milestones, or when you take action in your foreign market.
Seasoned international business professionals use similar processes to maintain flexibility. But this process is often unconscious and they apply it continuously throughout all of their tasks.
Read The Whole Story
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This is part of the Core 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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And you can also use this as part of the Core Business Guide 6 Analyze Your International Viability Be sure to check out the other useful tips to analyze your international viability |
Need Help?
Need instructions?
Need to see where this fits in?
Still confused? Review your answers in the first Core Business Guide
Simply click on one of the 8 different color coded boxes immediately below to access other core business guides.
| 2.9 |
The 3 Differences In Your International Marketing Plan
October 9, 2008 by cindy
Do you already have a marketing plan for your domestic business? Do you need an international marketing plan too?
Of course you can guess that these 2 marketing plans will not be the same. There are 3 differences you need to incorporate into your international marketing plan.
Feedback
When marketing to different markets abroad you must stimulate market feedback. In fact this needs to be one of your top priorities right from the beginning.
When you first start targeting a foreign country you will need to adjust your communication and your marketing and sales strategies.
It is important to understand how your communication is received in a different culture. And this takes time to understand well.
As you get to know your foreign markets you still need to pay attention. In order to seize business opportunities, and avoid bad decisions, you need to know what is going on.
Place a high priority on stimulating feedback in your international marketing plan.
Flexibility
Again, it is all about getting to know markets that are different from your home market.
As you get to know and understand these new prospects better you will need to adjust your marketing. Simply put:
Your international prospects react differently to your products.
These differences may be very subtle. They can also appear at any stage of your international business. But if you stimulate feedback and listen for these differences you can:
- Improve your international results.
- Become present in your foreign markets.
A little time spent double checking your strategies can save you time, money and cultural blunders. So, plan for flexibility. Include a process of evaluations, and room for change, in your international marketing plan.
Viability
In an international marketing plan you need to include even more elements of marketing accountability. The viability of your international endeavors may depend on this.
What does this mean? Here is a simple action plan:
- Review your international marketing plan
- Create a process
- Include steps that can be measured
- Review these steps for relevancy
- Use this process to create accountability
- Review results for viability
This gives your business the tools to make the right decisions to grow in foreign markets. Include a process for marketing accountability in your international marketing plan.
Use Your International Marketing Plan
Incorporate these 3 elements in your international marketing plan and add one more. Next all you need is to:
- Put your international marketing plan into action.
Even if you start with the most basic marketing plan, all you really need is to take action and give priority to these 3 differences. Your market feedback, flexibility and viability analysis will guide you through the rest.
Read The Whole Story
|
This is part of the Core Business Guide 4 Build Your International Marketing Strategy Be sure to check out the other useful tips to build your international marketing strategy |
|
And this is also part of the Core Business Guide 6 Analyze Your International Viability Be sure to check out the other useful tips to analyze your international viability |
Need Help?
Need instructions?
Need to see where this fits in?
Still confused? Review your answers in the first Core Business Guide
Simply click on one of the 8 different color coded boxes immediately below to access other core business guides.
| 2.9 |
