Posts Tagged ‘International Marketing’

If you’re a small business owner you may have considered looking into exporting your goods and services overseas. Exporting is a billion dollar business – when it is done properly. As a small business you will have to rely on the help of a professional exporter to help you get your business up and running. Setting this up is a daunting prospect to say the least, but it can be done and you can turn a nice profit from an exporting business.

The biggest problem with turning your company into an exporter is understanding where to start. It is a very detailed business that requires patience and a lot of hard work to get off the ground. When you have a successful exporting business in place, you could earn a profit of 10% for every transaction that you make. While the process is considerably more complicated and detailed than what we present here, this quick guide will give you an idea of what you need to do to get started.

• In order to be successful in exporting you need to make contacts with manufacturers and distributors overseas that want to trade with you. The best way to do this is to make a list of everyone you know outside of your home country and asking them to aid you in finding partner companies. If you do not know anyone overseas, contact the foreign embassy of the country you want to export to and ask to speak with whoever is in charge of their global trade initiative.

• Once you have made your initial contact start researching the country you want to export to. You need to identify the market niche you are interested in exporting to and research the popular trends that are sweeping the country. This will give you a good look at the viability of the market you are interested in. Make sure you also research aspects of exporting that include any restrictions that are in place, tariffs that may need to be paid and any trade barriers you will have to overcome.

• After you have prepared all of your research and targeted the market you want to import to you can start contacting the list of people you made who could be interested in working with you to build your exporting business. Take your time talking to these people and get to know them well so that you are confident they are the right fit for your business and will make a viable selling partner. At this point you can put into place deals that are agreeable to both of you that include prices charged, the amount of goods to be delivered, distribution to the customers, letters of credits and shipping agreements.

• With an agreement in hand you will need to find a competent exporter to partner with in order to get your goods delivered to your overseas partner overseeing the selling and distribution of your exporting division. Research is key here and most exporters will be able to explain the intricacies of the business to you in order to develop a good working relationship that ensures your products are delivered on time.

Becoming a successful exporter requires more than just having a product or service you want to share with the world. It requires a lot of hard work and discipline to make the venture work. Many small businesses discover the hard way that exporting is more than just a matter of shipping things overseas. Exporting is, in a way, having a small business within a small business. In order to be successful, you need to run both businesses in tandem while still meeting the needs of your customers both at home and abroad.

New exporters make mistakes, that is true, but some mistakes are more costly than others and could seriously break the business. If you want to be successful in exporting then you need to know ahead of time what some of the most common exporting mistakes are so that you do not fall into the trap right as you get started. Here are the five most common mistakes many businesses make when they first start exporting their products and services. Pay close attention to them so that you do not fall into the same trap.

• Mistake #1: Your small business does not have an international marketing plan in place.
  If you have a marketing plan for your sales base at home, then it is important to have a marketing plan in place to sell abroad. There really is no difference in the actual selling part between the two except for the actual items or service. You need to develop a marketing plan that appeals to the customer abroad and you need to offer them the products they want, which could differ greatly from the products you are selling at home. Take the time to research what your customers overseas are looking for and develop your exporting marketing plan accordingly.

• Mistake #2: The overseas partners you are working with are inadequate.
  Once again it is important to stress that research is key to making your exporting business a success, especially when you are dealing with overseas partners. You need to make sure the companies you plan to partner with are reliable and are able to deliver your goods the way they say they will when you partner with them. If they cannot or do not deliver, you could be left with a mess on your hands.

• Mistake #3: You are not committed to the exporting cause.
  Exporting is not a way to make a quick profit. It is something that takes time. Just like building a reputation with your home clients, you need to do the same with your overseas clients. The same is true for the partnerships you develop with companies that are acting as your overseas representatives. Plan on taking your time and committing yourself and your business to exporting your goods and services. If you do, you will be successful in this aspect of your business.

• Mistake #4: You are catering to your home customers and ignoring your overseas market.
  This is the reason why you should have a good, comprehensive international marketing plan in place before you start exporting. You have to be set up to give both domestic and international customers the same attention and support. Yes, your home market is your profit base if exporting does not work out for your small business. But if you ignore your overseas market, you are going to short change yourself and people who are relying on your product.

• Mistake #5: You didn’t accommodate your oversea customers’ preferences.
  While this is less of an issue if you are exporting to a country that speaks the same language as your home market – for example, from the United States to Great Britain – you need to make sure that you cater to the preferences of your international customers. This includes modifying your product packaging to be appealing overseas, how you do business face to face to meet cultural acceptability and making sure you are selling your goods and services legally in the overseas market based on their rules. You may find it easier to change your domestic preferences as well to be successful in both markets.

People often thinking of a brand as the symbol, name or logo associated with a product. In reality, branding involves far more. Branding is basically the process of creating a strong identity for an organization, and it applies to both product manufacturers and companies that provide a service. An organization’s brand identity drives the company as a whole by providing a framework through which the members of the organization can establish a memorable, active relationship with consumers. When a company brands itself successfully, people remember that organization and what it stands for, and they come to know exactly what to expect from interacting with its members or using its products.

In recent years, as marketing has shifted and become more about establishing a relationship with customers and less about bombarding them with names and logos, the role of branding has increased in scope and significance. Branding appeals to people’s memory of an experience with an organization. Clear and consistent messages about a company’s products or services, the experience of interacting with that company, and its appeal to the values and self-concept of consumers make for a successful branding campaign. A brand is, in effect, a company’s way of doing business, which develops as a result of its identity and its reputation. It is also the association that consumer’s have with its products or services. Customer service, or the way a company operates in relation to those it serves, is the action by which a brand is established and imprinted in the memory of a targeted market. Another way to say this is that a company’s brand is its way of standing out and separating itself from its competitors.

Though successful branding is often paramount to a company’s success, there are pitfalls and challenges that must be faced. A variety of common problems can stand in the way of a company’s efforts to brand itself effectively. One such barrier is not having a clear set of values with which to identify the brand. Without a clearly defined mission and vision that all employees share, a brand identity cannot be effectively established. An organization’s own members must connect to a brand identity before that identity can be communicated to consumers. Staff must be motivated to work together and act as representatives of the brand outside the walls of the organization. Management must be willing to make the changes necessary to accomplish this. Resources, processes and tools must exist to automate presentation of the brand to the marketplace, and the organization must stay connected to its customers and be willing to make adjustments dictated by feedback from them.

A brand name and logo are simply an association or way to identify the experience of the brand in its entirety, much like a person’s name or photograph evokes everything you know about who that person is, what he or she stands for, and how he or she behaves. Since all names and images carry associations, brand names and logos must be chosen with care. A good name is a positive influence on the way members of the organization identify themselves as well as how consumers view the product or service that carries that name. This is particularly relevant in cyberspace, where domain names need to be memorable on a global scale. Names that resonate across cultures and languages are crucial to branding success.

In addition to having a good name, a successful brand must be well positioned. The brand’s position is the place it has in the minds of those it aims to serve. A brand must be positioned in such a way that it’s uniqueness and value to the consumer is apparent. Since customers must feel connected to a brand, it not enough for the brand or logo to simply be recognized. Companies and consumers form an interactive relationship that involves an exchange between the organization’s offerings and the consumer’s needs and expectations. In this sense, brands are a form of communication, and a brand that communicates well in a way that is consistent with its actions gives consumers a deeper and more meaningful experience with the brand.

Companies can use any one of five strategies for branding, each with its own shortcomings and advantages. First, a company can develop line extensions, which new items are introduced within a product category, such as “all natural” or “organic” versions of a food product. While the brand may be in danger of losing its specific meaning in the minds of consumers, this strategy can also work well to attract new customers. Another strategy is brand extension. In this case, an existing brand name is used for a completely new kind of product. Using this strategy, a well-known apparel manufacturer may launch a line of perfumes or beauty products. As long as the new product is well received and the brand’s reputation is upheld, this strategy can help a company expand into new markets. A third strategy is multi-branding, which occurs when a company creates a variety of brands within a product category, each designed to appeal to a different audience. The danger here is that the brands may each compete with each other for small shares of the market with none of them doing particularly well on its own. Some companies create entirely new brands to launch products in new categories when existing brands and brand names do not fit the new product at all. There is also an emerging practice known as co-branding in which two well-known brands merge to create a new product that boasts both previously accepted brands.

For product manufactures, packaging is another key feature that affects how consumers view the brand. People often identify a brand by its packaging. Several elements are important here, including the “packaging concept,” which defines what the package should accomplish for the product. The package should be carefully designed with attention to size, shape, color, font and logo, as well as the type of material that should be used. Decisions about pricing, marketing and advertising are often dependent upon the type of packaging developed for the product, which may affect how it can be handled, distributed or displayed. The association that consumers make with a particular kind of packaging is as important as other features of the brand. For example, the Planters Lifesavers Company introduced vacuum-packed peanuts in 1992 to capitalize on the association that consumers already made between fresh coffee and vacuum packaging. Growing concerns about the environment make recycled packaging materials attractive to many people, and safety concerns have highlighted the importance of using “tamper-proof” packaging.

Companies that are successful at branding are able to develop a “story” around a product or service that will create an affinity with customers. Since most businesses today are difficult to distinguish from one another, an intermediary is often called upon to help envision a fresh perspective that can be developed into a lucrative branding campaign. An intermediary with experience in branding can leverage a company’s uniqueness and help launch, build, evolve and grow a business. Branding is more than selecting the right language and packaging, and it requires dedicated personnel and budgets, as well as time and expertise. With already overburdened staff members who may lack the experience, skills and resources specific to branding, it often makes sense to hire an intermediary to manage the venture. In some cases, intermediaries can be brought in as temporary consultants to give specialized, expert attention to developing or improving a communications strategy.

Hiring an intermediary to develop brands can benefit two distinct types of client companies. In one case, a firm that has been victimized in the past by legal or linguistic issues can alleviate fears of future mistakes by bringing in an intermediary. In other cases, firms for which branding is more than an afterthought can become truly excited by the expanded possibilities inherent in bringing in experts in the branding arena. Though the two groups overlap, the decision to hire an intermediary often comes down to a combination of uncertainty and hope that exists for most companies considering brand development.

Essentials of Marketing

Too often, advertisements are created without clear goals! And a campaign without focus is not very effective. The key to deciding what the role of advertising should be is to understand what the advertising can do. Though you may already be familiar with the principles of advertising, a periodic review of them can be helpful as I see many instances where bad decisions have been made - this applies domestically and internationally.

It is useful to think of advertising in terms of three broad categories: Product, Promotion, and Brand.

Product Advertising
Advertising was invented to inform consumers about a product. As competition grew among creators of similar products, it became increasingly important to tell consumers about superior features or attributes of one product versus another. As products became more homogeneous, it became harder to differentiate between them on the basis of features and attributes, so advertisers were forced to uncover subtle “benefits” to differentiate their products or their clients’ products from the competition.

Understanding the difference between a feature, an attribute and a benefit is important because they are hierarchical in terms of their ability to communicate. A feature is something about the product (e.g. twin rear-view mirrors; a price of $100; Teflon coated). An attribute is the functional result of the feature (unobstructed rear view, priced lower than the competition, easy to clean) and a benefit clarifies how this is important to the consumer (safer driving means lower insurance rates; more money to spend on other things; more time to spend with the family). It is generally easiest to describe a feature; most consumers will understand what it is. While an attribute may be a stronger selling point, it may not be relevant to all consumers. A benefit may have even less universal significance, though it is the strongest selling point for consumers that can relate to it. Regardless of which of these is most likely to differentiate the product most clearly, features, attributes and benefits can all be described in both functional and emotional terms. The manner in which you advertise a product should depend largely on the consumers’ knowledge of the product’s features, understanding of its attributes, and insight into how those attributes can be beneficial to them personally.

Promotional Advertising
Promotional advertising is designed to support sales and distribution efforts. A promotion has the singular goal of getting consumers to buy something now, and it is always based on a limited time offer that gives consumers a distinct reason not to wait.

The strategy in promotional advertising is to give the consumer a continual set of exciting reasons to visit your location and/or buy your product. For this strategy to be effective in the long term, however, the inherent value of the product itself must be apparent. If it is not, consumers will see no ongoing reason to buy the product once the discount or premium expires, and you may end up with a “discount brand,” in spite of your best marketing efforts.

Brand Advertising
Brand advertising communicates the superiority of the makers or presenters of a product over all others with similar products. Brand advertising communicates something about what an organization stands for in terms that consumers judge to be important. This information (often called brand attributes) can be functional (i.e.. quality) or ethereal (i.e., trustworthiness) in nature. Again, any brand attribute can be framed in either functional or emotional terms depending on the consumer insights that dictate the creative development of the advertising.

While brand advertising does not result in immediate sales, it is essential to the long-term survival of a company for three reasons:

• A strong brand pre-empts competition. It may be possible to duplicate every aspect of the product, but it is never possible to duplicate the attributes of a well-established brand.

• It supports premium pricing. It is well documented that consumers are willing to pay more for the promise a brand brings to the purchase.

• It builds value for shareholders beyond immediate sales results. Companies are including the value of their brands on the balance sheet as a significant component of the corporate asset base. This valuation is depends directly on the effectiveness of brand development, which in turn depends on advertising investment.

While “rules” in general do not make for great advertising, it is a good idea to keep in mind the general dogma of advertising and what it can accomplish. Product advertising differentiates the product. Promotional advertising communicates a compelling reason to buy now. Brand advertising communicates brand attributes. With this foundation, advertising can be evaluated on its creative merits (likability, intrusiveness, impact, etc.), simple ideas about what should or should not be included in the copy.