How to Successfully Promote your Business to an International Audience
Breaking into the international marketplace can catapult a company into increased
profitability and growth more rapidly than when selling to a domestic market.
But how do you market your company successfully to overseas buyers? What can you
do to provide the right information to prospective clients that is informative and
engaging? How can you stand out from the crowd?
The most common promotional approach is to provide brochures. While brochures do
play an important role, they can be uninspiring and ill equipped to convey a real
feeling for what an organisation does and how they operate.
Furthermore, when brochures are translated into other languages it is commonly agreed
that even the best translations are cumbersome and not reflective of how that particular
language is used. This often means that international prospects feel less inclined
to read brochures in depth.
So how do you show prospective clients how your product is made? What can you do
to highlight your product range and its associated benefits?
A proven promotional method is corporate video production. The combination of moving
vision with sound, allows complex messages to be communicated in a far superior
way to that of any written information.
Research has found that video can be up to four times more effective than a printed
brochure. Given that 80% of the information we recall is visual, it is understandable
why audiovisual materials are so successful in getting messages across to viewers.
The best investment companies can make is by providing prospective clients with
their corporate video on a VHS tape or a menu driven DVD disk or CDROM disk (which
is like the menu option on a movie DVD).
CDROMs are particularly flexible as they can include video, brochures, documents
and website links. They can even be produced as CD business cards which is perfect
for travellers who wish to reduce the amount of marketing materials they need to
carry.
Corporate videos can be downloaded from websites, which not only saves money in
distribution costs, but provides 24 hour worldwide access.
A further advantage of corporate video is that it allows for voiceovers to be translated
into a variety of languages. As visual cues are used in conjunction with the voiceover,
the language sounds natural and appealing.
The winner of the 2002 Regional Exporter of the Year Awards, the Warrnambool Cheese
and Butter Factory, strongly agrees with the use of corporate video production to
boost export sales.
John Williams, Warrnambool Cheese and Butter Factory’s marketing manager,
says “We are very proud of our Factory and our picturesque location. It makes
a lot of sense to show our best attributes to their advantage and the way to do
that is through a corporate video.”
“We’ve found corporate video to be extremely flexible. I can travel
overseas and show a DVD quality video to potential clients on my notebook computer”.
“We had a short promotional video created that was slotted into our Powerpoint
presentation which we presented to a large Japanese dairy importer. It really gave
us the competitive edge and helped us win a large multi-million dollar contract”.
Justin Howden, an International Marketing specialist from Marketing and Investment
Partners, also advocates using corporate videos when marketing overseas.
“For companies that are undertaking trade marketing, corporate video is critical.
It is vital to get trade onside when marketing overseas and corporate video is irreplaceable
when trying to get distributors involved,” he says.
“A successful corporate video is created by finding out what are the most
important pieces of information that your target market wants to know. You need
to unearth what 20% of information will give you an 80% kick in marketing terms.
Once you’ve done this, you then need to focus on these important points in
the promotional video”.
Corporate video production is a powerful, convenient and cost effective way for
overseas buyers to see what you have to offer. It is an innovative method that can
encompass video, brochures, documents and website/email links into one small CD
business card.
By using a combination of the right promotional tools and a creative approach, the
time-consuming and often difficult road to breaking into the global marketplace,
can be made much easier.
About The Author:
Marie-Claire Ross is from Digicast Television Production. Digicast Television Production
has helped many businesses win big contracts and projects by increasing more awareness
and knowledge of their products and services. To get the FREE Digicast Ezine with
marketing tips and the latest information on technology to help busy business professionals
visit www.digicast.com.au to subscribe or contact 0500 800 234 (Australia wide).
© Marie-Claire Ross 2003. All rights reserved
mc@digicast.com.au