For every small businesses selling to another country will cause some great challenges. It is important to understand the demographics of your foreign markets to help you make you more sales.
Often it is hard to get into the demographics of your international markets. It can be hard to stretch yourself to fully understand cultural differences and the consequences of those differences in your sales and marketing strategies.
This is also complicated by single language markets made up of many, many different cultures. You not only have one set of specific demographic characteristics. You can literally have dozens.
The best place to start is to determine specific demographic information for each of your target markets, and to move on from there. The process actually gets easier the more cultures you adapt to. Your company will get faster at understanding how to adapt to each different culture.
An interesting example was how MTV adapted its music to each country. There are two main factors that came in to play.
- Music is culturally different in each culture.
- MTV targets a younger audience and youth do not have the same lives in different cultures.
MTV realized early on that they needed to adapt their music to the culture in each country. This is fairly easy to understand.
What was interesting is that MTV realized that in some countries the vast majority of households only had one television set. Therefore their television shows would also have to be culturally acceptable to more than one generation. If an older generation was offended in any way, MTV would not be turned on.
Demographics do need to studied and defined for each culture. It is a very enriching experience. Fully understanding your international markets will show you the opportunities for your international business growth.
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This is part of the Get International Clients Business Guide 1 Discover Your International Business Be sure to check out the other useful tips to discover your international business. |
