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Introduction and Steps to Global Marketing and Branding

What has global marketing got to do with a small business owner? I don’t intend going global, why do I need to study global branding? What has global marketing and branding got to do with local businesses? Well, my answer to the first and last question asked above is everything.

                “If you are not a brand, you are a commodity.” – Robert Kiyosaki

Let me clear your mind on the issue of global marketing and branding; the fact that you are a small business owner does not mean you cannot grow to become a big business owner someday. All you have to do is dream about it, set the goal and get to work. Believe me, you will get there. For instance, Facebook was started by Mark Zuckerberg as a college affair; but it went global when the idea caught on like wild fire. Now let us go back to the business of the day.

                Definition of Global Marketing and Branding

 

What is global marketing and branding?

Global marketing is nothing but marketing done on a national and international level, which involves understanding the similarities, dissimilarities and taking advantage of the opportunities to attain the goal of doing business globally. Concentrating on global marketing and branding is as important as concentrating on domestic marketing if a company is aiming to increase sales and brand loyalty.

                The Future of Global Marketing and Branding

The domestic market has become saturated in most categories of products and services in all industrialized countries such as USA, Russia, Japan, China, Sweden, etc; hence the need to start dealing or exporting goods and services to other countries, all in a bid to either sustain or increase sales. Usually in such case, goods that are too expensive for the domestic customers to buy are exported to other well off countries.

When a company does marketing within the boundaries of a specific county, it has to compete with other domestic companies as well as international companies who are part of the market. The marketing steps taken by the big companies are based on the taste of a specific audience in that region.

Sometimes, a product might not suit the taste of customers at the domestic level; thus the need to go global. Almost all domestic companies plan to go global but they are often hindered by bigger companies. Thus, they become invisible at the international level as they are unable to cope with the growing stiff competition.

 

                How to take your company global in the face of stiff competition

When planning to take your business global, it is advisable to start exporting to a foreign client first for initial testing of the marketing. Note that the returns would not be encouraging in the beginning but with time, it will improve.

Global marketing and branding involves marketing in many countries. The marketing is based on the requirements of different countries and the returns are rewarding. Each region should be studied individually based on development, production, regional demographics, psychographics and marketing. Such kinds of markets are known as region centric.

Global marketing and marketing involves the whole globe. The entire world is summarized as a single market and the products that are released in the market should fit the needs of any regional marketplace. Marketers all over the world make the marketing decisions. Such a kind of market is known as geocentric.

                Global Marketing Opportunities

 

Companies that started local and successfully went global

The automotive industry is one such market that saw a global boost in sales during the last fifty years. Earlier on, only the local companies like Ford and General Motors used to produce cars in America, but today; other international competitors like Toyota and Honda are operating in the same market and have out done the local companies.

Examples of other companies that started locally and successfully went global include Coca Cola, Mc Donald’s, Virgin, Apple, Sony, LG, Dell, Pepsi, Heineken, Nestle, Cadbury, Microsoft, Adidas, Oracle, Nike, Dangote Group, Standard Bank Group, Etisalat Group, MTN, etc.

Another key factor to global marketing and branding is the Internet, which introduced e-commerce. Businesses are therefore going online and global. This encouraged and boosted the sales of the company and the figures are increasing because of ever increasing Internet users. The geographical location of customers is no longer a hindrance. Global marketing management and business to business e-commerce is growing rapidly.

Companies such as Amazon, Ebay, Dell, Cisco, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook are examples of pioneer companies that leveraged the internet in their global marketing effort.

                Elements of successful global marketing and Branding Strategies

 

                Global Marketing Strategies and Products

Just like every other form of marketing; product, price, placement and promotion are the elements of global marketing. All global marketing strategies are hinged on these four factors. When engaging in global marketing, ensure that the product created should be such that it can sell anywhere using the same method. Your product or service should consider the primary elements of all the markets. However, the language in which the product is named can be changed; whereas the content can remain the same.

                Global Marketing Strategies and Pricing

 When marketing globally, the price of your product or service is never constant. It should be decided after reviewing the market and the currency of the country. The variables which affect prices are location where the product is being produced, cost of ingredients, transportation charges, labor charges and so on.

                Global Marketing Strategies and Placement

Placement is how the product is distributed and how it reaches the targeted market. For instance, in developing countries where there is lack of super stores; your products can be placed or sold at ordinary shops. After the product is developed and distributed, it should be promoted precisely.

Global Marketing Strategies and Promotion

Promotion is one of the major steps of marketing globally and it consumes a large chunk of the budget. If it is possible to send out the same message worldwide in a relevant and cost effective way, it must be put into practice but the challenge is really big.

As a final note, these are the fundamentals or basic facts you need to know about global marketing and branding. I will be exploring the subject of global marketing and branding critically in subsequent articles, so keep a date with us. Good luck.

How to Write a Charming Sales Letter that Increases Sales

Have you ever pondered about the magic words used by copywriting gurus that make absolutely no one able to resist their offer no matter the price? If I decide to reveal to you the exact step by step guide to writing a sales letter that attracts profit; will you be willing to learn? Do you want to improve your sales letter writing skills? If your answer to any of these questions is yes, then read on as I teach you how to write a charming sales letter that holds your prospect spell bound.

                How to Write a Charming Sales Letter that Increases Sales

 

Writing a sales letter is tough but writing a winning sales letter is tougher. Many sales professionals, even managers break their head thinking how to get it right. Well, the key to this puzzle is; they should put themselves in the customer's shoes and ask "what benefit would I receive by reading this sales letter? Remember the keyword “benefit,” it is going to be the backbone of this article. Many sales professionals pick bits and pieces of information from different places and develop a mess hoping they have developed a sales letter.

You should always bear in mind that a sales letter is only applicable when you have a product to sell and an offer to make. A sales letter should never be an introduction of your product or company. Take into account that every single word in a sales letter is important. Customers are not interested in the features of your product but the offer and benefit of the product to them. Analyze from the customer’s point of view and ask yourself "why should I read the letter? Is there any benefit or offer to me which I cannot refuse? Am I convinced that this offer is really a good one?

After considering these things, you should apply creativity in presenting the letter. The headline is very vital to the success of any sales letter. It should be aimed directly at the targeted prospects.

You also need to be tactful in the use of words. But if you are not good at the trade, do not attempt it. Rather, chose to be simple in writing. The heading should never be more than a line, so be specific as possible. Also take into consideration that customers don't read sales letters, they scan them. So if you are not able to deliver your message to the prospect in the stipulated time, then you have lost your chance. The headline should contain the ultimate benefit being offered to the customer. This will help direct the prospect to the body of the letter.

Now, having made a good attempt with the heading, let's now work on the body of the letter. This will deal strictly with how to maintain the level of enthusiasm you created in the prospect’s mind with the heading? Once again, don't focus on features of the product you are trying to sell. Instead, emphasize on the benefits and offer you are presenting to them. Benefits such as how much money it is going to save them and how it would affect their lives should be mentioned in the body of the letter. Make them give your product a second thought. Give them a reason to compare it to your competitor’s product.

Remember, the prospect reading your sales letter will constantly come up with questions as to how the product will benefit him or her. Your written sales letter must clear those doubts and answer the questions. Being a little informal in the presentation will not do any harm, so try to grab the prospect's attention by relating your product to real life things. You can add a little humor provided you are certain that it won’t offend the prospect. This is also the right place to bring in a few clients testimonial if you have one. Please keep the testimonials believable, don't exaggerate or hype. Customers are sick and tired of hype.

Once you have cleared the doubts about the product, you must ask your prospect to take action. If it is an email, request them to click on a link to act now.  But if it is a direct mail, then provide them with a contact number. Also emphasize that if they don’t act now, they will miss the offer as the offer is for limited time only.

Once you are done with the sales letter, one of the important parts of the sales letter is the P.S section. Many people simply read the beginning and end of the letter. So, try to add something that will force them to go back to the letter and read it. It will be a perfect end to your sales letter. If you can implement this strategy, you will see an increase in your business sales.

How to Create a Targeted Viral Marketing Campaign that Attracts Potential Customers

Marketing campaigns can never stand the test of time if they are boring. More than three thousand marketing messages are sent out to customers on daily basis and the advent of the internet has even made it worst. So it is really a fierce competition out there especially if you are trying to make your brand stand out of the crowd.

                “Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park; aim for the company immortals.” – David Ogilvy

Today, I am going to teach you how to create a targeted viral marketing campaign for your business or product; I am talking about a targeted marketing campaign that sells itself and wins the heart of potential customers. I will be sharing with you components you can add to your marketing campaign to make it go viral. Before we proceed, please answer the following question:

                Have you ever come across a marketing campaign that stuck to your heart? You so adore the message that you hum its rhythm everywhere you go.

                Have you ever witnessed a situation where kids were thrown into frenzy simply because of an ongoing advert?

If you have experienced the two situations above, then I am going to teach you how to achieve the same result with your marketing campaign. My aim of writing this article is to show you practical ways to making your targeted marketing campaign go viral. My aim is to teach you how to create a viral marketing campaign that will win the heart of your customers; I am talking about a marketing campaign that will propel customers to help spread your message voluntarily. If you are ready to learn, then let’s proceed.

                How to Create a Viral Marketing Campaign that Attracts Potential Customers

1.            Design a Marketing Campaign that speaks directly to the customer

                “Stop talking about your products and services. Customers don’t care about products and services, they care about themselves.” – David Meerman Scott

 When designing a marketing campaign, your message should talk directly to the customer and influence his/her mind. Your message should be emotional and create the impression that you care about the customer. When designing a viral marketing campaign; be sure to use words such as strong, affordable, charming, fantastic, delicious, outstanding and exciting because they are keywords that are known to influence customers’ action so your marketing message should carry them. Your message must engage the subconscious mind of your customers because it is in your subconscious mind that the buying decision takes place. The customer should feel empowered and important simply by reading your marketing message and should think of taking some action right away.

                “The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.” – David Ogilvy

For instance, just check out Nike’s tag line "Just do it." It is a simple marketing message with a great impact on the minds of people. Nike's marketing campaign was so successful that customers use the word "Just do it" in almost everything they do. Customers also use the word to motivate themselves to action. Same goes with Adidas tagline “Impossible is nothing.” From the two illustrations mentioned above, it is obvious that by adding certain sleek features and emotional messages to your marketing campaign, the attractiveness and effectiveness can be multiplied. So learning from the Nike and Adidas experience; it is advisable to take your overall brand strategy into consideration before developing a marketing campaign.

 

How to Create a Viral Marketing Campaign that Attracts Potential Customers

2.            Use Visuals to Create an Impression

Marketing professionals attest to the fact that using visuals can make a person learn something faster than any other means. Just as a famous saying goes “a picture speaks a thousand words”. So when creating a viral marketing campaign, make sure you add visuals to the marketing message. Visuals can range from pictures and animations to graphics. Inserting visuals into marketing messages not only brings the customers close but also strengthens the bond and creates a lasting impression in the mind of the customer.

Another key point to note when developing a targeted marketing campaign is color representations, shapes and symbols. You must always remember that different colors depict different types of emotions and different symbols create different emotions.

Red and blue are colors liked by aggressive shoppers while yellow color can catch the attention of on lookers. Green denotes health, money and nourishment, so it is mainly used in food product advertisement. Black stands for strength and power; that is why it is used by Jaguar, on their website background and advertisement. Purple denotes wealth and royalty.

Your marketing campaign message should also reflect on your company’s materials; so your chosen colors must also be applied on business cards because your business card can be used to attract customers and increase emotional attachment. But colors should be used carefully as too much of it can ruin the campaign. Same goes with shapes and symbols.

Some certain shapes and symbols attract and influence customers more. From market research and analysis; a crest is the best marketing symbol, followed by circle or oval shape. Square and triangle has the least emotional impact. You can seek professional help when selecting colors and symbols for business cards, website font, background and logo.

 

How to Create a Viral Marketing Campaign that Attracts Potential Customers

3.            Use Technology to your advantage

When planning a viral marketing campaign, the application of technology can be an added advantage. The good news is that most of the technological options are cheap and easy to use. Examples are audios and videos which are now included in websites to gain extra attention. Just pay a visit to the Pepsi homepage and you will be greeted with energetic music, the type that attracts teenagers instantly. To make your message more effective, welcome messages, introduction videos, coupled with interviews can be added your website. Hearing a voice can be very touching and a feeling of attraction can immediately develop within your visitor. An example of this is Adidas’ website, which opens with a video that fits their tag line, "Impossible is nothing."

 

How to Create a Viral Marketing Campaign that Attracts Potential Customers

4.            Develop a Winning Unique Selling Proposition

Uniqueness is the ultimate key to making a targeted marketing campaign go viral. Not only should your products and services be unique, your marketing message and selling proposition should also be unique. Not only will the effect be felt by your targeted customers but the impression will also be lasting.

 Your marketing message should carry a unique promise to the customer; a unique promise or benefit will be your access route to the customer’s subconscious mind. A rule of thumb here is to sell benefits over features. Take a look at the following unique selling propositions and you will understand what I mean by selling benefits over features.

                “When you absolutely, positive have to have it overnight; use FedEx.” – Federal Express

                “Fresh hot pizzas in 30 minutes or less.” – Domino Pizza

                “Always low price.” – Wal Mart

Naturally, customers always want more. They want their needs to be met fast. For example, when sending out a marketing message about exercise equipments, don’t just say that the machine has display, automatic incline, internal cooling device, CD player, programs. Instead, say the machine has a program with audio instructions which encourages the customer to exercise and a CD player to make the exercise entertaining. This marketing approach will attract people who need real motivation to get out of their bed and start sweating out.

What I am saying in essence is this; when you are developing your marketing campaign, don't sell features, sell benefits. Tell the customer why they should use the product and be precise. Once the loyalty of customers is gained, they will be a free walking advertisement and will spread the word to their friends and acquaintances.

 

How to Create a Viral Marketing Campaign that Attracts Potential Customers

5.            Make it easy for your customers for customers to promote your business voluntarily

This is probably the most important key to creating a targeted viral marketing campaign. One attribute of a winning viral marketing campaign is its ability to spread itself like wild fire without any additional effort on the part of the marketer. Your aim is to give your viral marketing campaign wings; you have to make it easy for your customers to spread your message.

                “Ground your content in who you are. Don’t be afraid to have a point of view. But also give it wings to soar freely and be shared.” – Ann Handley

A good way to do this is to make your marketing message or sound bite interesting and memorable. Aside making your marketing message memorable, you have to back it up with business cards, brochures, eBooks, booklets, short videos and audios, souvenirs or anything that can help the customer spread your message voluntarily. If your targeted marketing campaign is to be done online; then you must encourage your customers to help you spread the word in social media such as twitter and facebook.

                “We use other people’s stuff or other people’s content to socialize and your stuff’s either a social object or it’s not.” – Hugh Macleod

As a final note, these are the five exact keys to creating a winning targeted viral marketing that attracts potential customers. Apply them tactically and I will see you at the top.

How to Create a Successful Marketing Strategy that Suits Your Budget

How much should a small business owner spend on marketing? How do I position my small business against giant competitors using my lean budget? How do I create a successful marketing campaign that suits my small budget? Well, I will advice you read on to find the marketing answers you need.

The aim of a good marketing strategy is to help focus your business attention to the complete resource utilization with the goal of increasing sales and defeating your competitors. Every company applies some kind of marketing strategies to retain existing customers, attract new customers and also to sustain and improve their reputation in the market.

Today, I will be using this article as a medium to teach you how to create a successful marketing strategy that suits your budget. This marketing article was specifically written for entrepreneurs and small business owners who are running on a lean budget; I mean entrepreneurs who are bootstrap financing their businesses. If you are such an entrepreneur with a desire to build a successful business or you are just starting a business newly, then it will be in your business interest if you read on.

                How to Create a Successful Marketing Strategy that Suits Your Budget

 

Before you commence the development of a marketing plan, it’s advisable you first determine how much your business will be able to spend on marketing. Secondly, you must identify your major competitors and highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each of them. Only after taking these two steps should you proceed to fashion out a marketing strategy for your business.

                Developing a Marketing Plan and Strategy

When developing a marketing plan, a marketing strategy is first taken into account. A marketing plan consists of strategic moves to be taken, so as to achieve success in the execution of the chosen marketing strategy. Just as a battle plan involves selection of different strategies at different levels and situations, so also is a marketing plan full of strategies. A marketing strategy consists of well designed tactics, which are created to help the business meet the needs of the customers and finally reach marketing objectives of the company.

Each marketing strategy has a pre-calculated result. This is so because when a particular strategy is chosen in a particular situation, its result becomes the goal of that particular situation. If a well thought strategy is lacking in a marketing plan, it means the marketing plan lacks good foundation. A realistic marketing strategy should speed up your marketing goal especially when you are running on a limited budget; you just can’t afford to waste resources.

                Using the 3C’s Strategic Model to Create a Successful Marketing Strategy

Once your marketing campaign is up and running, it’s advisable that at regular time intervals; your business management team should analyze the marketing decision. This is carried out with the help of strategic models and most preferably, the 3C’s model is deemed fit for this purpose.

To calculate your company’s strategic position in the market place, an off matrix is applied. The 3C’s model controls the factors that lead to the success of any marketing campaign. There are 3 key parties involved in this model includes the corporation, the customer and the competitors. The involvement of all the 3 key parties’ leads to positive outstanding results and these key parties are known as the 3C’s or Strategic Triangle.

The function of the corporation is to increase the strength and dominance of the company in critical areas, when compared to that its competitor's. The customer and his interest form the basis of any marketing strategy. The competitor also plays a crucial role. The competitor based strategies are based on the performance of business competitors in areas such as design and engineering, sales and servicing and so on.

                Creating a Successful Marketing Strategy on the 4P’s Model

When creating a marketing plan, you will be laying emphasis on some particular strategies known as mix marketing strategies because they are going to be used more often. The 4P’s model is used to calculate if the plan is aligning with the strategies or not. The four Ps stand for product, price, place and promotion.

Products are goods produced by your company with the aim of selling them and making profit. Price is the perceived value in terms of money or better still, the money paid by the customer for your product. The price is based on many key issues such as competition, market share, customer perception and product identity. Place is where your product is sold. It can be either a physical store or an internet store. It is also called a distribution channel. To make the prospect knowledgeable about your product, you will have to carry out massive promotion which will involve advertising, public relation and point of sale. 

                The Different Types of Marketing Strategies

There are different types of marketing strategies you can implement based on some criteria.  Challenger, Leader and Follower are forms of market dominance strategies. Market dominance strategies are employed to dominate either a mass market or a niche market. Cost leadership, Market segmentation and Product differentiation are classes of porter generic strategies.

Porter generic strategies are developed based on the strategic strength of your company, its competing abilities, its strategic scope or its market penetration. Close followers, late follower and Pioneers are styles of innovation strategies. Innovation strategies are developed to increase the rate of product development and model innovation. It will help your company align quickly with trend and incorporate latest technologies.

Intensification, Diversification, Vertical integration and Horizontal integration are classes of business growth strategies. Business growth strategies make the expansion and growth of your company easy. A successful marketing strategy is therefore a mixture of marketing strategies and military strategies. A marketing strategy is chosen only after thorough market research and before implementing your marketing plan, you must always be ready to face a reprisal attack from competitors.

As a final note, these are my exact steps to creating a successful marketing strategy. So go ahead and implementing these marketing strategies; I will see your business at the top.