How To Connect With Your International Clients

Are you ready to create stronger relationships with your international audiences? Then maybe you are experiencing a common problem.

When small companies set out to create stronger relationships within their foreign markets they feel confronted with two conflicting challenges:

* One of the challenges is how to keep foreign content creation manageable and affordable.
* The other challenge is to create a multichannel marketing to leverage more.

There is no easy answer to this.

You Need Communication

You will always need to initiate contact with your foreign prospects if you want to develop these markets.

You cannot sit back, do nothing and hope foreign clients find your products. If you want to make sales in different cultures you need to communicate with these cultures.

* The better you connect with a specific foreign culture the deeper relationships you create.
* The more you understand your foreign markets, the better your offer will be for that particular culture.
* The more relevant your international offer, the more international sales you will make.

So, how can you get the most value out of your foreign language content?

You Need The Right Communication

First, you must carefully select the ways you touch and make contact with your foreign markets.

Is this the content you need to connect with this particular foreign market?

It is not always easy to find the right communication format for each of the countries you are selling to.

You Need Telephone Marketing

In todays world, you need to get the most out of internet based communication. But before looking into web marketing, remember :

• Do not forget telephone marketing!

Telephone marketing is not expensive today. There is no excuse not to include some telephone marketing in your international marketing strategy. Telephone marketing is the ideal way to keep your finger on the live wire of how your international marketing needs to be focused.

The most valuable information you will get from your international markets will probably come from your telephone contacts.

Telephone marketing does not need to take up much of your time.

• One phone call every couple of days, consistently over time can move your business into an international business.
• If you have a slow month where you are able to be on the phone for an hour every day, this time can put your international business development on the right track.

What is important is to keep a regularly in touch with your foreign markets over the phone.

Start with using the phone for your international market research. This will get you in the habit of grabbing for the phone.

Continue to grab for the phone as often as you can throughout all of your international marketing.

You Need Value Communication

Your international communication is easy to deliver over the web. But you still need to create targeted communication.

Creating communication targeted to a specific culture requires a little effort. This is complicated by the fact that when you first start, you will not know how you need to target your communication.

If you are making the effort to create targeted communication and want to learn more about your international markets, it makes good sense to use the best web marketing tools to help you.

• Choose your communication strategically.
• Use your communication strategically within a multichannel strategy
• Use web statistics to help you monitor results and give you the information you need to adapt your aim to improve your communication.

This is how you will learn to create valuable communication for each of your international markets

You Need To Get More Out Of Your Communication

If you are just beginning to develop your international markets, you will need to test which communication methods work best in your foreign markets. Different cultures respond differently.

• Do not make any assumptions.
• Take things one step at a time.
• Test different communication formats on a small scale.
• Adjust and adapt your international communication to your foreign markets.

Connecting with foreign markets through targeted foreign content is information marketing. One of the fundamental principals of information marketing is to re-purpose your content.

You can easily use the basics of re-purposing your foreign language content to leverage your investment and test different communication formats.

Example With A Culture Customized 2 Page Newsletter

For example, one of the easiest ways is to start with creating a short 2 page newsletter, with 4 short articles, targeted to one country.

• The 4 short articles can easily be re-purposed into 4 emails, 4 blog posts and 4 articles on your website under a country sub domain.
• The 2 page newsletter can easily be printed on one piece of paper and mailed or handed out at an event.
• You can include a different call to action on each communication format, and track results. For example, surveys, games or special report download.
• You can include links to your other marketing activities to integrate your international prospects into a wider sphere if this is appropriate, a general product information event for example.

Of course you should aim to write your culture customized content in the appropriate foreign language.

But do not let this stop or delay your international marketing for months.

The feedback you can get is often worth it and delays do not bring you anything of value.

If most of your foreign prospects usually speak English well enough to read in English, start your newsletter in English. Be proactive in cultivating feedback.  Begin the process of learning about your foreign markets.  Then you will know how to create a foreign language newsletter much better when you are ready to do it.

Your Other Options

The benefits of writing a monthly newsletter targeted to one country audience are important in cross-cultural communication:

• A monthly newsletter provides consistency, essential in building trust across cultures.

It also provides a good multichannel marketing element.

As you can see from the example above:

• A little thought and strategy into your foreign content creation can give you real international marketing tools.
• A little monitoring and analysis helps you to find the right communication for your markets.

A culture customized 2 page newsletter is not the only option for beginners. A country targeted blog is also a good starting point for some businesses.

How you integrate your first culture customized communication tool into your international marketing strategy is more important than your first choice. Where you start is simply your starting point.

Yes, it is better to identify your best communication tool right from the start, but not if this means you delay starting your communication for months or never get started.

Remember: your first priority is to stimulate foreign market feedback so you can learn more about your market and adapt your communication for more effective results.

The right communication will connect you with your international clients.