How to Successfully Promote your Business to an International Audience

by: Marie-Claire Ross

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.

Caputo Creative

www.caputocreative.com

A Right Media Mix Can Make The Difference

by: Jennie Williams

Branding is no longer simply about visual appeal or the cherry in the apple pie example. Unfortunately, many graphic design firms who position themselves as advertising agencies believe that branding your corporate identity is all about developing great looking visual solutions.

However, there is much much more to branding than just looking good. Particularly in this web 2.0 era, where a powerful web presence has become a vital ingredient of your branding strategy, developing the right media mix holds the key to building a powerful brand equity.

In other words, a right media mix would mean:

• Creative design solutions (the design, color, and content of your ads, marketing collateral and website enhance your brand equity, attract customers, and generate sales)
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• Web development (every product/service worth its name has a web presence these days, some have truly interactive, animated sites encouraging customer involvement).

• Viral marketing (vitally important in today’s age of social networking, tagging, podcasting, blogs, forums, wikis and what have you)

• Television commercial production, print media advertising (traditional media cannot be overlooked)

• Strategic films (have become necessary elements of roadshows, exhibitions and other promotional campaigns)

• Corporate video production (a very important tool for branding your corporate identity)

• Direct marketing (marketing collaterals need to be just as effective and resonant with the overall branding scheme as the communicate directly with the customer)

• Outdoor advertising (hoardings, roadshows, participations in business fairs, exhibitions, etc)

There are some interactive advertising agencies that have recognized the need of the hour – developing creative design solutions that employ user-centric investigation and involve critical and systematic thinking. User-centric means understanding of needs and priorities of end user; the clients’ customers, their channel partners, users, and brand communities.

So if you want to register your brand as one that is synonymous with customer loyalty, you must develop a complete package, keeping the customer as the prime objective and organizing product stories around the way they prefer to learn about, compare, select and confirm purchases, connecting brands and their experiences.

Caputo Creative

www.caputocreative.com

Television Host Training has Come to St. Petersburg Florida

Caputo Creative Inc. (C2) announced the launch of a guest training studio and product lab. Recognizing the need for well-trained guests to present products, C2 created a guest-training program that closely replicates the experience of being on live national television selling a product.

The studio features robotic cameras, grid lighting, wireless microphones and IFB’s, plus on-set program and preview monitors to train potential guests how to work the cameras effectively.

In addition to the studio training, C2 in conjunction with affiliate, The Product Pad, has developed a program designed to take products through every step of the television retailing process, from buyer’s presentations to QA and legal meetings.

Once a product is accepted, C2 not only trains on-air guests, but develops the entire television retailing presentation including, guest selection and training, presentation development and scripting, prop design and creation, wardrobe and makeup consulting and on-site management.Gene Silverman,