Why Selling To Everyone Is Too Expensive

If this is your first expansion into an international market, you know you need an effective international marketing and communication strategy.

But there are often a few stumbling blocks you need to get past before you can find the right international business development strategy for your business.

• Small companies often assume that one website with one message will sell to different markets in different countries.
• Larger companies are often confused about whether they need foreign websites, localized websites, regional websites or even one international website.

You see, internet as an international platform can be misleading.

To respond to both of these questions, it is best to only consider the web as a communication platform.

And then take a step backwards and ask yourself why you need the communication platform…

…To sell your products and services.

And where does the confusion come in?

• Internet is an international communication platform, and not a sales strategy.

First Learn To Sell

Selling to international markets means you have to learn how to sell to them.

International markets are not big groups of people.  They are individuals.  And these individuals in foreign countries, will be different to the people who buy your products in your own country.

The thing is, you first need to learn how to sell to your new customers.  And you cannot do this if you try to sell to everyone in all of your foreign markets at the same time.

You have to learn how to sell one country at a time.

Yes, there is a learning curve…and you have to go through it.

This is how you will learn to sell to each of the countries you are targeting, one country at a time.

It is often similar to how you first had to learn how to sell to your domestic markets.

Craft The Right Message

Each culture responds to your message in a different way.  Ideally you have a strong marketing message for your domestic market.  This message works best in your domestic market.

For your foreign markets things are different…

Unfortunately there is a very high chance you will need to tweak your domestic message, or even change it radically, to get optimum results in the foreign cultures you sell to.

If you want to get more bucks out of your communication you need to adapt your communication to the cultural differences in each country you sell to.

Put out the the proper message for each different country you sell to.

…You might even need to target specific cultures in within each country.

Take Your Message Abroad

It is not only a question of finding the right message:

• For each of your foreign markets
• For each country or culture

You also need to take your message abroad.

This is where the rubber hits the road.

Will you be able to afford to put your message out to everyone in your target country?

This is where businesses can spend their money unwisely.  It can be difficult to determine how or where to give your message visibility in a foreign country that you do not understand.

Yes, internet can help you get your message abroad…

…but you need to think very carefully through this.

• Does your business rely heavily on offline communication?
• Can you leverage culture customized content on the web?  If so, how can you bring this online communication to life in your foreign markets?

Effective Messages = Targeted Messages

The questions above can seem daunting.

There is help…

Remember, when messages are not effective it is primarily because they are not targeted.  Culturally targeting your communication does part of your job.

The more targeted your messages are, the more effective they will be.  This is why it is critical to plan for culture customization — targeting — of all of your communication right from the start.

But visibility is also important and is also a key factor in effective communication.

This is where an integrated marketing strategy can help you.

Targeted online communication is easy to use in an effective integrated marketing strategy.  Integrated or multichannel marketing, puts your targeted messages in front of your foreign markets.

Culturally targeted communication makes sense in a foreign country based integrated marketing strategy.

Only large multinational companies, with extra large budgets, can afford to carry out an effective integrated marketing strategy without culturally targeted communication.

An integrated marketing strategy does not have to be huge.  For example, it can simply be comprised of:

• A website with regular communication
• A short monthly newsletter
• Weekly email marketing
• …and ads in relevant support

…All culturally customized to the market in one country gives you an effective communication tool.

Define Your International Business Development Strategy

If you try to sell to everyone with the same message it will:

• Be expensive to get in front of your foreign markets

AND your message has no chance of being good in any of your markets.

Culture customized communication + Consistent web content + Integrated Marketing =

Easy international business development leveraging online marketing

Now many mid-sized companies want to target 4-5 or even a dozen countries all at once.

This is where things get confusing.  Website localization and creating templates usually get placed on the to do list.  And confusion about where to start comes running back.

If this is the case, it may be a good idea to start off with one international website for one region. This give you the time to:

• Work on crafting your message, preferably in an International English, and using website templates.
• Get foreign market feedback to begin crafting messages for one specific country at a time.

Read The Whole Story

This is part of the Get International Clients Business Guide 2 - Plan Your International Sales Road Map This is where you can read more on how to connect with your international markets.

How To Run Your International Sales Strategy

Guide 7 - Run With Your International Sales Strategy • How do you sell to your foreign market once you who you are selling to? Read more about how to run your international sales strategy

Cindy King is a Cross-Cultural Marketer and International Sales Specialist, with over 25 years field experience in international business development. Learn how you can get more international sales