When it comes to international marketing and strategy, I am normally the one giving out advice to improve a young company’s competitiveness. But in my own business I am often the last to follow my own prescriptions for a healthy business. I think this is fairly common in many professional fields – doctors who rarely seek medical advice, lawyers without legal wills, accountants getting audited, etc. So I have decided to follow the advice I so frequently give others and this starts now… 

 

Consistency

As a consultant, I am always weighing all aspects of branding for consistency. Is it a high-end brand whose logo looks like it was designed by a software engineer? Is quality a core competitive advantage, but the company has a misspelling on their homepage? Now I need to confess what is obvious – my brand is not consistent. My presentation skills and global marketing analysis may be top notch, but my website design looks like I’m a hobbyist instead of a professional. I collaborate on a regular basis with colleagues in related fields, and yet those network partners are nowhere to be found on my website. My clients’ testimonials are absent too. I would never let a client of mine get away with such low-effort high-value marketing fixes. Over the next few weeks, I will be working to develop more consistency in my own branding.

Leverage Competitive Strengths

My competition won’t like this, but I plan to finally leverage those things that I do particularly well and shore up my company’s weaknesses. For starters, I have a strong social media presence that I don’t come close to utilizing the way I could. I have a strong online brand, but have not been following my own advice: ALWAYS proactively seek out your markets instead of waiting for whoever happens to find you. And as many of you know, I have written a large amount of material on global marketing and international business. I also produce a variety of videos on these topics. But it’s time to repackage these materials into something I can market to B2B technology companies looking to expand internationally. At least that’s what I would tell a client to do!

Driving To Sales

For the last two years, I’ve been giving so much away – free advice, free checklists, free videos, free presentations … I classified all of my giveaways as “marketing”. I would never let a client pass so much to the market without expecting something in return.  As part of engaging in a marketing qualification and sales pipeline building process, I will now be looking to engage with potential clients more. This may mean that I collect more email addresses and sell my highest value articles instead of giving away so much to anonymous readers. But long-term I think it will be a smarter growth strategy to deliver high-value where this value is understood and sought after.

For the original article, please visit :http://www.the-international-entrepreneur.com/

( Vivian )25 Apr,2012

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