Improve Your International Marketing Strategy – Expanding your business internationally is no small feat. It requires investing in many resources, such as finance and personnel. Marketing is a key contributor to your company’s success. It gives your brand visibility, increasing the population that knows about its existence.
Successful marketing strategies aim to convert the population into long-term customers. This results in an increase in your sales. In turn, your profits will increase, which is likely the main aim of starting your business.
Coming up with marketing strategies isn’t easy; some will work, and others won’t. Suppose your international marketing strategy has failed or your business has outgrown it. It’s time you improved your marketing strategy. Here’s how to:
1. Assess Your Current Situation
Knowing where your business’s marketing stands now is a good place to start. When implementing your previous marketing strategy, there’s a high likelihood you developed performance standards. It’s time you brought them to the table with your marketing team for analysis.
Based on the standards you set, has the marketing strategy attained them? If not, what is the margin?
Besides performance standards, seek insight from your marketing team and discover why you aren’t attaining your marketing goals. It could be limited finances, technology, human resources, etc. Suppose there’s a language barrier. There are tools you can adopt to help you with this, such as the WordPress translation plugin.
Additionally, consider adopting an analytical tool like Google to assess your marketing strategy. It’ll highlight areas doing well and those that are lacking.
With all this insight, you’ll know what you need to work on for an improved marketing strategy.
2. Learn The Current Trends
One of the reasons your international marketing strategy isn’t working is if you’re still utilizing outdated techniques. Times are ever-evolving, and you must stay ahead to be relevant in your business niche.
In this case, you want to study the international industry. Are there political or social trends you can take advantage of and adopt in your marketing strategy? Are analysts forecasting a given issue in the near future? How will this prediction affect your business? If negatively, you want to implement strategies that will work even during these times, so you aren’t caught off-guard.
By staying ahead of current international trends through marketing, your business will thrive, likely increasing loyal customers. It’d help to read the news and blogs of the said state daily and make adjustments you deem necessary.
3. Seek Customer Feedback
Customers are the main reason for your business’s existence. You’d have no one to sell your goods and services without them. Therefore, they should be part of your marketing improvement strategy. This population will contribute adequately by availing feedback regarding your goods and services.
You can find feedback by sending out surveys to this international audience, having them write honest reviews, or sending out a team to where they are to get this information. Suppose you have long-term customers. Please make a point of personally reaching out to them and asking for their feedback.
Besides telling you how good or bad your business is, have them give you insight into how to meet their needs better.
Once you have all the information, do away with any negative services your team has been offering them. If it’s related to poor customer service, re-train your team in this for them to better interact with your clients without them emanating negative emotions.
So, be sure to implement insight from your customers. In addition to improving your marketing and customer service, you’ll make the customers feel valued, which is important if you’re looking to retain customers.
4. Study Your Competitors
Twisted as it may sound, your competitors can be the make or break for your business. If you don’t outperform them by adopting smart ways of work execution, you’ll lose customers to them. As a result, your sales will drop, reducing the money available to keep your business afloat. Therefore, you must be cautious about your competitors. One way of doing this is by studying them. In this case, you want to study their marketing strategies.
There are various spy tools you can use for studying. As you do this, it’s important to point out that it might be legal to spy on competitors in your state, but it might be illegal in your company’s international location. Hence, it’s best to do your due diligence beforehand.
Alternatively, consider studying their website. Where do your competitors appear in search engine results? If they’re higher than you, pinpoint the keywords they use.
Keywords will increase the success of your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy, giving you visibility. Adopting them in your business will likely give you a higher ranking upon identification.
As you study competitors, you should acknowledge that you don’t have to do as they do. Instead, find better ways of executing their marketing strategies. You want to be above them to gain more clients and not at the same status quo. Being on the same status quo takes competition a notch higher. You want to look at their social media pages, advertisements, etc.
Conclusion
Your international business is as important as a local one. You can ensure its success by adopting the right marketing approach to increase visibility. The discussion above highlights tips to assist you in improving your international marketing strategy. Be sure to implement them, and your international business will thank you years later.
