standard, simple, global

Standard, simple, global: sounds impossible, doesn't it?

That's my take: there is no standardization in b2b when going global. Just to be clear from the start.

In regard to the global marketing strategies, there are two main questions a company has to answer:

• Will you standardize your product / service while extending your distribution market?
• Will you adapt your product / service to each new country? Even create new products, if that's the case, for new markets?

I'm extremely biased towards adaptation or even creating new service from scratch, in the right market circumstances. 

It's clear enough if you read this post about adapting your products for international markets or any other labeled under 'localization'.

But there are merits to the standardization, and I want this point of view present in my blog as well.

translation, let's not get lost in it

Google Chrome translate feature 

I totally have to praise Google Chrome and the huge progress they brought in overpassing language barriers.

I can't really imagine how things were done prior to this translation feature embedded in Chrome browser; much more expensively, I imagine.

On my side, I like to investigate on my own before committing resources to ordering a study. I couldn't really justify paying study after study just to tell my stakeholders: look, it's not worth pursuing this or that market. I could argue the savings done by not going into the wrong directions, but I actually prefer to pay for documented opinion to confirm my hunch that there's potential in a certain market.

trust me, I'm a marketer

Having worked in the credit risk management services, I've found out firsthand how difficult marketing of fiduciary services is and what it takes for the company you represent to be taken into consideration as possible supplier.

What I had in front of me was a highly specialized target market, of credit analysts, CFOs, risk managers, the professionals in financial services industry.

Being a start-up, our company was relying on marketing to initiate the conversation with our targeted, specialized audience. We eventually started a good one, after lots of trials and tunings.

cold calling: how to book no meetings

I'm sticking around the cold calling topic some more, on how NOT to set up a meeting.

It's verified that, in business-to-business, consultative sales, closing deals is a numbers game that starts with picking up the phone for setting up meetings.

So here is a list of mistakes I did when I started calling to schedule meetings, without any prior training:

localization in international marketing

The localization is defined, in marketing, as the process of making a product or service more suitable for a particular region or country.

It's important to know that there's more to localization than just the translation of the content and information about the company and its products.

Depending on the target market, localization can go as far as using a whole different marketing mix, e.g. having different positioning of the products.

how we made our product best on the market

This is a story about a B2B international company entering the Romanian market a while ago, finding a rocky territory, taking the challenge and achieving to produce and market the best product available in its sector - fiduciary B2B services.

You have to know that the raw "material" used by this int'l company to create its product - company data - is found, in Romania, in a diversity of sources, more or less known, accurate, concurring or updated. Ergo the difficulties, later turned opportunities, of creating a complete and coherent product to offer to the market. 

Initially, this company came with a product similar to what the competitors were offering, but soon it stepped out of this "safe" zone and steps were taken in the direction of leadership:

drivers in brands' internationalization

Today I'm writing about how and where to start developing an international brand from a strong local brand, and which are the main drivers for integrating the international attribute into the brand architecture.

opposable marketing

We were all taught manners in our commercial relationships; we should not speak badly about competition in front of our clients, but we should differentiate; we should not ransack for competition inside weaknesses, but we should monitor them and stay informed.

Competitive intelligence. Everybody does it, but only few talk about it.

Here's something nobody talks about: how to market substitute products. So I'll call it Opposable Marketing.

don't judge me [only] by my leads

As this Entrepreneur turned VP said it here, selling is about 3 essential questions:

• Why Buy Anything?
• Why Buy Mine?
• Why Buy Now?

I'd like to spend some time on the Why Buy Now, as I'd like to rehabilitate the shady side of marketing, the one that's not generating direct leads: brand awareness.

the silent victories

Legal Cartoon by Andertoons 

I was gonna wait and build more content before getting to the communication side of marketing, but today I figured out why some successes need to be silent.

I'm in the type of business where references help you sell: software. So I'm always looking to produce press releases announcing new clients, case studies, testimonials, clients' logos uploaded on our websites.

And there's often the opposition I encounter from the sales team: Don't say a word about this client yet. Do not mention this customer name anywhere.

competitiveness or why awards matter

Almost every medium and large company from relatively competitive industry have a section on their website called "Awards and Prizes".

Awards are a seriously exportable fact regarding the quality of your company & of its products and they can be leveraged in all kinds of marketing communication.

These corporate competitions are typically organized by research companies, media groups, event organizers, non-profit associations or various other organizations.

where to track b2b events

The sales force we [marketing] serve is asking for our help to set a foot in the client’s door: bring me face to face with a potential client, they say, and I will do all the heavy lifting. 

To do: bring sales guy in front of potential client. Or even better, in front of several prospects, which can be found in clusters at industry events.

Working from the headquarters to discover the interesting events in another country is part of the initial research that models your marketing decisions for the respective market: participation, sponsorships, product showcasing, exhibiting your company products, giving a speech.

recipe for: direct emailing

Email marketing is increasingly challenging as lead generation method, as more and more email services seem built to reject approach attempts and protect the account holder from the thousand random spam messages landing in inboxes.

In case you're cooking (or overcooking, like me) a B2B direct emailing campaing with the purpose to generate leads, here are the ingredients you should have on the table before geting your hands into the task:

international professional groups

Interacting via LinkedIn is part of my daily marketing activities, since I can reach some of my international audience with no cost.

I got very excited about having professionals reunited on criteria of industry, job title or target segment. I started joining one group after another, until I've reached the 50 groups limit. Seeing there's a limit, I started withdrawing requests, studied little bit better the groups profile and how active they really were; eventually I somehow stabilized a list.

the smart starter

I’m coming back to my favorite subject - the one about market education & start-up offices abroad.

Bringing a new service into an emerging market, while being very well established into its home market, means that the company has to spend a lot of marketing effort communicating the benefits of using that generic category of service, before actually mentioning its own brand name, proving its competencies in delivering that service and promoting itself as reliable vendor of that service.

leads, actually

This is a post on why I consider events to be one of the most lucrative methods to generate leads, on the condition that they are well chosen and the participation & involved staff are very well prepared and coherent with the overall brand image of your company.

yes, outsource

By all means, outsource. I did.
But choose the right provider. I didn't.

This is a short, measurable story about call centers. One of my most solid presumptions was shattered: that English will take you anywhere.

When planning campaigns / events abroad and approaching companies, you might have the illusion that English works everywhere. It doesn't. You might even think that, if you're calling medium & large companies,  English is sufficient.

But if you imagine this will not affect your success rate, you are wrong.

I've measured the difference.

I've worked with an English-speaking call center for a project addressing companies in a German-speaking country, calling multinationals. In the database qualification phase, their success rate was 35%.  Most of the rejections sounded like:
- we're not interested
- we can't provide any information over the phone
- we don't speak English
- they hung up / transfer failed.

Taking the same project to a native call center made the difference. 96% completion rate. Where the companies were previously rejecting any form of collaboration, now they provided the requested data.

So there you have my conclusion, in measurable form: use native speakers when cold calling the companies.

foreign direct investments: Austria -> Romania

This is one of those posts with statistics about Romania's commercial relationships with other CEE countries - Austria, to be more specific.

The source for this statistics is this study released by the Commercial Service of the Austrian Embassy in Romania:

• Austria is the second foreign investor in Romania, after The Netherlands
• more than 1,000 active Austrian investors are present in Romania
• Austrian investment amounts for 9.35 BLN Eur and represents 18% of the FDI in Romania
• more than 6,100 companies with Austrian equity are established in Romania
• these companies employ over 100,000 people
• main sectors are: Resources | Agriculture | Industry | Services
• Austria is market leader in Banking and Insurance
• Austria is Top Investor in CEE: Romania, Croatia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia.

local offices - autonomy vs. control

I always wondered what's the healthiest amount of control Headquarters should exert over their offices abroad.

I'm not talking legal or administrative; I'm not debating branch vs. subsidiary as incorporation form; I'm wondering about the intricacies of headquarters' control over the local offices - how much freedom should the latter have in terms of market strategy?

Working in subsidiaries, I sought independence in some marketing decisions and had to fight for it; working in Headquarters, I'm looking for absolute control over the communication and actions, although I'm fully aware of how important local business culture knowledge is.

estranged press releases?

This post is about my experience with how to improve your chances for the publication of press releases when you're sending them to foreign publications.

Say your company Headquarters is located in some country in CEE.

Say your company has commercial interests in other European countries, without having established a direct presence. So you have no local staff.

Say your marketing actions are handled centrally from your company's headquarters.

Say you've done your homework and built a list of relevant publications from the targeted countries.

How do you get these media channels to support you and publish your releases?