How small companies can win in export
Article provided by Jonathan Bowman @ aspect7.co.uk


"To succeed in export you just have to be prepared to look at things from the buyer’s viewpoint" says Jonathan Bowman, Director of a UK based marketing company helping organisations sell their products worldwide.

"I've seen dozens of people talk about how hard exporting is, but they are generally the ones who don't adjust their marketing communications to suit the local culture. You have to show people that you respect their ethos and their language, or your message is not going to be heard".

Getting your marketing messages heard on a global scale is a huge challenge, but it can be achieved through a simple mix of multilingual web marketing, localized sales brochures and culturally targeted promotions; but can small companies, working on a tight budget, really compete on an international scale?

Jonathan Bowman believes that the Internet holds the key for small businesses: "In the old days, smaller companies had to put a lot of faith in the proficiency of foreign sales agents to push their products overseas, but you can never completely rely on a third party or a middle man to promote your goods. Even a good representative will not know the product, or be committed to it, to the same level as the supplier. However, with the Internet, smaller companies can take direct control over how their products are marketed all over the world, which would have been impossible ten years ago".

Research shows that only around 29% of world global Internet searches are conducted in English. That figure drops to below 17% within the European Union and is less than 6% across Asia. In total, over 785 million people are searching the Internet in a language other than English. How many of those are your potential customers?

"It’s the worst thing when someone wants to buy your product, but ends up going somewhere else just because your web site or your sales brochures are not written in their language", adds Jonathan Bowman, whose company Aspect7 specializes in helping companies export all over the world.

"Our system generates leads directly from a local language web site and then feeds those enquiries back to the sales team or down to the regional distributor".

However, the marketing systems that Aspect7 uses go far beyond simply translating the web copy into a local language, as Jonathan Bowman explains, "If you can get the translation right, then you are half way there, but there are a number of technical issues that have to be dealt with or the whole thing doesn't work. We have worked with some pretty successful corporations over the years, from Shell Oils to McDonald’s, and that experience helps us to form the right strategies to place our client’s products directly in front of the people who want to buy them".

There is no doubt that globalization is creating new opportunities, but it is also creating more competition. While companies here try to compete overseas, foreign companies are pushing into our home markets. Deciding whether to export or not is becoming a matter of survival for many.

"International export is a serious game, which can bring enormous financial rewards", adds Jonathan Bowman, "so businesses here really need to decide whether they are going to play or not. If you decide not to play then you need to be sure that your alternative strategies are going to work."

Article provided by Jonathan Bowman @ aspect7.co.uk