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5 Steps for International Marketing

Go global - international
Modern B2B Marketing to fill up your sales funnel | Canada

Go International:
5 Steps for Effective International Marketing

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  • (Revised: 02/02/2023)
  • Reading time: 2 minutes

Are you planning to go international? Is your business ready for global markets? If your business is in the process of global expansion, or if you are considering entry to the US, you need to master essential global marketing strategies for expansion.

    1. Research the Targeted International Market
      Many companies skip this crucial step and jump right to market penetration. They open an office in their target market and hire a local salesperson. After a year, they find that this office still has more expenses than revenue. To protect yourself, we suggest carrying out brief research in order to identify the local market needs. This helps identify specific market trends, competitors, and ways the solution can be customized to meet demand.
      This step delivers a positioning strategy that enables you to refine your marketing messaging and define your potential client segments. For example, if you would like to enter the US market, you should first determine what states are a good fit for your solution and first focus your attention on these regions. This will lower your initial costs and enhance the likelihood of turning prospects into clients.
    2. Create an Actionable Marketing Plan
      In place of a short planning phase, most SMEs choose to respond to random opportunities. For example, a potential reseller contacts them and they say to themselves, “Sure, why not bring them onboard.” After two years,  they find out the reseller is not delivering results. By this point, the company has invested a lot of resources to train this reseller without seeing a return on that investment
      To avoid this scenario, we suggest building a marketing plan to generate demand based on the initial research (as described in Step 1) and the available budget for your targeted international market. Choose international marketing tactics that enable you to focus on the target market that best fits your product/service.  Encourage prospects to learn more about your offering while your sales team is still operating from your headquarters. If your company is looking to develop a distribution network, our plan will include a process to identify, validate, and monitor resellers.
    3. Adjust Branding/ Messaging
      International markets are different and there are many considerations to examine. Trade barriers, proximity, and currency are some of these. But what about cultural differences? How do you handle these?
      To this end, we implement the positioning strategy from Step 1 and make sure to adjust the website, sales and marketing material, in addition to other documents designed to reflect the localized message. After all, if your messaging does not match your target market, potential clients may overlook your solution.
    4. Customize the International Marketing Plan
      While executing the marketing plan, you want to make sure that you have someone on your team who understands the cultural or linguistic nuances. A lot of the time, companies assume that they can deploy marketing tactics the same way they do in their local market. This is not necessarily true. We have seen campaigns where the use of certain wording in a different context results in market rejection. Sometimes, colours in one culture drive a message that a company had no intention of conveying in another culture, negatively impacting the attractiveness of their solution. Thus, it is important for an expert in the targeted market to review the plan before it goes international.
    5. Measure Impact and Improve
      You need to measure each international marketing campaign on a regular basis to ensure the company is receiving the desired results in a timely manner. The assessment should concentrate on both quantitative and qualitative aspects of the marketing plan. For example, though the number of prospective clients is important, we highly suggest assessing the quality of the prospects and defining whether the potential clients meet the specific definition of the potential client base as defined in step 1.

Following the above steps will help you  go international safely.

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Do You Really Know Your Prospective Clients?

Prospective clients
Modern B2B Marketing to fill up your sales funnel | Canada

Do You Really Know Your Prospective Clients?

Prospective clients
  • (Revised: 02/02/2023)
  • Reading time: 2 minutes

Recently, a friend of mine returned from her summer vacation in Provence, France and, thoroughly enchanted with the place, she recommended I read Peter Mayle’s “Encore Provence”. The book, written by a British author who made his home in Provence, is most intriguing when he describes the cultural differences of the region. Through his anecdotes we come to appreciate that the differences are real and, though experienced immediately, they can only be understood with time and after many personal encounters.

When I started reading I was guilty, much as you probably are, of assuming that the only prominent cultural differences would come from an Anglophone living in a Francophone environment, but this was not the case. Peter Mayle elaborates on the beauty of Provence by contrasting its people’s ways with the Parisian way, with the British way, and with the American way. He even touches on the differences between Marseille and Avignon, both in Provence, and how the ways of carrying out business in one does not necessarily apply to the other.

Peter Mayle’s comparisons are useful in reminding organizations that when you first consider entering a new market, or you are about to launch a new product to a target market with which you are not fully familiar, it is instrumental that you ensure:

      1. You have identified the prospective market that would most benefit from your solution
      2. Your target market can afford your solution
      3. You understand how your target market operates and how your prospects expect to do business with you
      4. Your solution features are highlighted in a way that fits like a lock and key, allowing you to effortlessly open the door to your prospects

All the above is a result of:

    1. A well-thought marketing strategy
    2. Fine customization of your branding to the market that you are after
    3. Creative marketing campaigns that attract the attention of your specific target market
    4. Constant evaluation of your marketing results to ensure that you truly address your prospects’ needs
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The Summer Lull & Reassessing Your Marketing

Reassess marketing action plan
Modern B2B Marketing to fill up your sales funnel | Canada

Reassess Your Strategic Marketing Plan: Profit from the Summer Lull

Reassess marketing action plan
  • (Revised: 02/02/2023)
  • Reading time: 2 minutes

Most businesses tend to slow down in the summer months. Since everyone is on vacation, now is a key opportunity to generate or reassess your strategic marketing plan. Create an advantage for yourself by examining whether your existing marketing action plan will deliver the requested sales you need in the fall. Will you reach your goals by the end of this year?

Here are a few questions to ask yourself as you reevaluate your marketing action plan:

    1. Are you targeting the right market? Are there new niche markets you could, or should, be addressing?
    2. Have events in the past year impacted your business model viability? What new trends or changes in the marketplace may impact the effectiveness of your current marketing action plan?
    3. Has your website effectively generated leads? Are prospects able to easily find you on search engines? If you have invested in search engine optimization, have you targeted the right keywords that drive a high level of relevant traffic?
    4. Do you have any new avenues for bringing in clients? Have your past marketing lead generation activities been successful? Measuring the results of your marketing campaigns is crucial, and is an important benchmark for validating the effectiveness of your strategic marketing plan.
    5. Have you invested in social media marketing? Do you know what strategy you should employ
    6. What automation tools to use?

These are just a few of the questions you should be asking yourself as you begin to re-examine your marketing plan. Remember, your plan is the foundation of all of your campaigns, so it pays to use the summer to prepare for the fall—especially if you want to get ahead of the competition.

In September, people come back to work refreshed and ready to roll. With better strategic marketing plan, you’ll ensure your business comes out stronger than ever!

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Updating Your Strategic Marketing Plan

Update strategic marketing plan
Modern B2B Marketing to fill up your sales funnel | Canada

Is It Time to Update My Strategic Marketing Plan?

Update strategic marketing plan
  • (Revised: 02/02/2023)
  • Reading time: 2 minutes

Whoever saw the iPad launch recently will appreciate the critical role of Apple’s strategic marketing plan. In fact, Steve Jobs delivered a presentation so informal it seemed there was no marketing involved at all. He came onstage with jeans and spoke with a carefree, matter-of-fact attitude. And, frankly, that’s what was so effective about it.

So let’s see what was really going on behind the scenes with the effective marketing and business strategic planning for the iPad. First off, Apple performed a thorough competitive marketing analysis of the e-reader/netbook arena and concluded that there was room for something different. They also identified a need to adjust their positioning strategy and update their marketing plan from the “Think Different” slogan since the company had shifted to become the No. 1 provider for mobile computing.

For the iPad in particular, Apple focused on identifying the requirements of their target market with a thorough competitive marketing analysis and market research, which saw them developing a device that answers the dreams of a modern, on-the-go business people. They branded the product inline  with their other products (iPod, iMac, iPhone), giving it the same look and feel, and much of the same functionality.

In the presentation, you’ll see Steve Jobs demoing photo libraries which appear haphazardly arranged. This apparently random selection is anything but random, and is actually  part of an ingenious overarching marketing work that was prepared well before the launch of the iPad. The Web browsing demo and the iPad gaming capabilities are directly linked to deals with leading partners, book publishers, newspaper publishers, and leading mobile/gaming applications that were negotiated in advance. Such partnerships are, after all, part of good business strategic planning to block the competition.

But, during all of this, where was Amazon? The answer is nowhere. Amazon was not on guard to receive such a tremendously successful launch from Apple. While Amazon now holds 60% of the e-reader market share, they failed to leverage their existing relationships with those same publishers as part of their own strategic marketing plan before the launch of the iPad. Instead they butted heads with some associated companies, severing relationships.

Now that the ground is falling out from underneath Amazon, they have announced the purchase of a touch-screen company, clearly looking to update the Kindle with the same touch functionality as the iPad. They are also looking to tempt publishers with a higher commission percentage. Imagine how much damage might have been avoided had they employed this competitive marketing analysis last year, in preparation for the Apple launch.As today’s market evolves faster than ever, you don’t want to be left behind. Don’t risk losing market share! Conduct competitive marketing analysis well ahead of time to equip yourself with the proper strategic view, an effective product launch, and successful market penetration.

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New Rules for Effective Marketing

Effective marketing
Modern B2B Marketing to fill up your sales funnel | Canada

5 Rules for Developing a Business Growth Plan

Effective marketing
  • (Revised: 02/02/2023)
  • Reading time: 2 minutes

In the old days, marketing consultants would prepare a business growth plan as long as 500 pages, which covered every detail for the approaching five years. This used to be a good way to develop an effective marketing plan, but times have changed. Now, marketing tools have a lifespan of under two years (sorry, sometimes only two months!), and planning must be focused and efficient! To develop an effective plan, you must be open-minded  and prepared to make frequent adjustments according to what is happening on the market.

Don’t get me wrong—you still need to work on developing a plan! But you need a high-level go-to-market plan that draws on reliable, short-term research. So, what is the best way to develop such a plan?

1) Ask yourself, what is the best target market and why? In order to develop an effective business growth plan with focus, and with successful results, you need to define your audience.

2) Set yourself apart from competitors. You need to know how to successfully represent your company and product/service to make sure you stand out from the crowd.

3) Developing an effective marketing plan means establishing the best marketing tools to generate demand. Isolate which lead generation tools are best suited to sparking the interest in your product/service.

4) Determine what kind of alliances or partnerships would accelerate awareness and facilitate demand for your product/service. This would allow you to move beyond your company resources and have collaborators help push your offering. For a more healthy relationship, be prepared to help them push their solutions as well!

5) Determine how you will measure the effectiveness of your marketing activities. If you work on developing a strategic plan without being able to track results, you’re working in the dark.

Developing a plan is crucial to business success. Keep in mind that marketing has evolved incredibly over the years, and now you need to  combine traditional with digital marketing tools – it’s a whole new ball game. If you have questions regarding building a business growth plan, schedule a call with us to receive a free consultation.

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The above-mentioned marketing consulting and lead generation services are how our B2B marketing agency accompanies organizations in their quest to grow. Contact us today and allow us to look at your specific marketing challenges and suggest how we can assist you specifically.

Testimonials

“Ranking our Web site high on search engines results, designing a professional Web site look and developing engaging relevant content for a heavy technology company like us resulted in a dramatic increase in client leads that we receive from our Web site.”

Simon Robin CEO, Hardent
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