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Developing Sales & Marketing Materials for Overseas
| Guest post by: Carol B. Webster |
Article Overview: You’ve selected a target market overseas, and found a distribution partner, who has now asked you for some sales collateral materials to help him or her market your product or service successfully. As you put together your brochures and sales sheets, you’ll want to keep a few things in mind to ensure that your printed marketing materials are culturally and linguistically correct.
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Free Download - Finding and Managing Sales Agents and Distributors Overseas By Carol B. Webster |
Developing Sales & Marketing Materials for Overseas
1) Translation - It is of course important to provide materials in the language of the country. Be it French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic or Urdu, be sure you hire the right person to translate your literature. For example, the Spanish spoken in Chile varies widely from that spoken in Mexico, Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries.
2) Standards - Use the right system for any technical data or measurements (English vs. metric) included in your brochure. Using the metric system where required indicates that you have taken the time and effort to provide data that is immediately usable by your potential customers. It may even be necessary to have your product’s physical property tests performed overseas according to a specific standard, such as DIN (Germany), ISO (Europe), or BS (UK). Be sure to also check what size paper is the norm in your target country.
3) Graphics – Be sure to do some research on cultural issues in your new market. Certain colors may be considered offensive or have a particular meaning that may be counter to what your product is trying to portray. According to Jonathan Groucutt in his book Foundations of Marketing, almost every color can mean death or mourning in another country (for example purple in Brazil, black in much of the Western hemisphere, white in Japan, dark red in the Ivory Coast); either red (Asia) or green (Middle East) can stand for luck. Certain images or photos could also be considered offensive in other countries.
4) Purpose – How will your brochures or other marketing materials be distributed? Will they be explained by a salesperson during visits to potential clients? Will they be used in a direct mail campaign to spur initial interest in your product or service? Knowing exactly how you or your overseas partners will use the materials will help you determine how much detail needs to be included and what format the final product should take.
Good luck and good selling!
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USE LETTERS OF CREDIT (L/Cs) TO GET FINANCING
Article Tags: brochures, bs, direct mail, foundations of marketing, french spanish, good luck, initial interest, ivory coast, jonathan, jonathan groucutt, mail campaign, marketing materials, measurements, metric system, norm, overseas partners, salesperson, spanish speaking countries, target country, western hemisphere
Related Forum Posts
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional
- Hi Evan,
I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional
- [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan,
I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz]
I second the request...
niche forum categories
- I think Kevin just touched on the point that I was going make... and that is developing 'categories' that stick. Sales and Marketing may be too broad for example. However I can almost guarantee you that you would see many more sign-ups if you tailored a category to 'internet marketing' for newbies. I've seen this work on other forums, however, [i:1i903wkn]it can get a little frantic[/i:1i903wkn]...
Fine tuning the categories, or expanding the scope should be effective. I think a lot of IM folks are surfing right on by because they're not finding what they're looking for here...
Just a few thoughts:
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Another point is... a lot of people don't know that they can benefit from participating in forums. The signature links to their site - if they have one - can / should be motivation enough to get more involved. The more internet savvy members that have signatures seem to stick around more... Don't you think?
Different Hats
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Strategic Vision 10
Alliances & Growth Strategies 10
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Mentoring 8-9
Strategic Planning for Clients 10
Execution of Marketing Campaigns 9-10 (i have great people who do the nitty gritty)
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Great topic Kevin!!
Jude
Any ideas for potential partner sites?
- Hi Everyone,
I was wondering if any of you have any ideas on "potential partner sites" for our specific forum categories? For instance, is there a leading "Women Entrepreneur" or "Sales/Marketing" site you know of that doesn't have an existing online community of its own?
This could be a great way to help us attract more traffic.
Thanks
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