Showing posts with label Global Marketing. Show all posts

The Glocal Strategy Of Global Brands

by Oseme Group | 0 comments

By M. Isi Eromosele

Many years ago, globalization was the new paradigm in international business. However, from a branding perspective, it has lost its initial efficiency giving the fact that consumers do not seem to feel a connection anymore with the standardized products of global corporations, as catered to them in mass marketing communication programs.

With their centralized decision making processes, most companies simply stopped having a connection with their customers in the new global marketplace and neglected its emergence.

As such, the influence of local market characteristics arose, and with that a new term that encapsulates the global and the local – glocal. “Glocalization” encourages companies to “think global, act local”, and they could do so by using the global brand, while localizing certain elements of that brand in order to suit a particular marketplace or country.

Globalization of Markets

For many years, large scale companies stopped emphasizing on the customization of their offers and opted to providing globally standardized products that were advanced, functional, reliable and low priced.

They argued that informed customers were heading toward a “convergence of tastes”; thus corporations should exploit the “economics of simplicity”. As such, they maintained that the future belonged to global corporations that did not cater to local differences in taste but, instead, adopted strategies that operated as if the entire world (or major regions of it) were a single entity, which required these organizations to sell the same things in the same way everywhere in the world.

Transnational companies standardized products, packaging and communication to achieve a least-common-denominator positioning that would be effective across cultures. For a while, selling standardized products and services was a good strategy. However, the global marketplace went through an evolution and customers stopped feeling a connection with the generic products and communications.

Even the products that were synonyms with ‘globalization’ took a different approach. For instance, Coca-Cola, the firm often portrayed as the exemplar of the standardized product, found that it’s increasingly standardized strategy had run its course.

The world was demanding greater flexibility, responsiveness and local sensitivity, even while the corporations were further consolidating decision making and standardizing their marketing practices.

The next big evolutionary step of ‘going global’ now has to be ‘going local’.

Global, Local and Glocal Strategies

Nowadays, global corporations face difficult decisions regarding what marketing strategy to adopt. Global marketing strategies aim to maximize standardization, homogenization and integration of marketing activities across markets throughout the world.

However, global marketers must address a number of issues in their marketing strategy to ensure their brand will be successful worldwide. Examples of such issues include differences in the economic, political, social and cultural environment around the world.

While the theory of standardization of marketing activities works on a strategic level, it is often not suitable for the richness of detail needed on operative and tactical levels. Most marketing activities will be more successful when adapted to local conditions and circumstances in the global marketplace.

In this way, a pure global marketing strategy is not ideal as it does not take locally related issues into account. Marketers need to understand how their brand is meeting the needs of customers and how successful their marketing efforts are in individual countries.

Multinational marketers face challenges of creating marketing and advertising programs capable of communicating effectively with a diversity of target markets. To assist in this imposing task, various frameworks must be developed to determine the degree to which marketing and advertising efforts should be either globalized or localized, mixed or combined.

There are five marketing strategies available to a firm contemplating doing business on a global basis. A firm might decide to either standardize or localize its products, either standardize or localize its communications programs, or combine the two.

The five possibilities that this decision framework considers range from a company incorporating a ‘global strategy’ (standardizing both product and communication program) to developing a completely ‘local strategy’ (customizing both the product and communication program) for each unique market. In the middle are the two mixed strategies and the last strategies are combines. These three strategies could be developed into ‘glocal strategies’.

Glocal Strategy

Glocal strategy refers to the idea of “think global, act local”, and it represents a middle way between the global and the local strategies.

Successful corporations must develop a glocal strategy, by utilizing their global experiences and then customizing and tailoring their services and products in such a way that would appeal to local markets. This should not apply just for product design or communications; it has to incorporate branding and all of the seven variables from the marketing mix, whenever possible.

A glocal strategy standardizes certain core elements and localizes other elements. It is a compromise between global and domestic marketing strategies.

Glocal marketing reflects both the ideal of pure global marketing strategy and the recognition that locally related issues of marketing activities need to be considered. In other words, the concept prescribes that in order to be successful globally, marketing managers must act locally in the different markets they choose to enter. In a global strategy, the corporate level gives strategic direction while local units focus on the local

customer differences.

Glocalization is the tempering effects of local conditions on global pressures” and it means the co-presence of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies. As such, glocalization, then, is the art of attaining a fine balance of assimilating foreign influences into a society that add to its diversity without overwhelming it.

The following are the attributes of glocalization:

a way to supplement globalization and localization synergy ally and

strategically

a system to manage the approach to the glocal market (global/local market)
the capacity to remain rooted strongly in the local reality, while also facing the global market
the chance of articulating in global and local (glocal) key the chain of the value proposition
a method which allows the local or global enterprise to arrive in optimum way respectively to the global or the local market

The practice of glocalization can produce the following competitive advantages for companies that put it into effect:

Consumers feel that the brand is relevant to them and is tailored to their needs and wants
There is harmony and balance between the different levels of marketing activity: strategic, tactical and operative
Brands gain greater market share

In recent years, as sales plunged, global - brand corporations started to pay more attention and listen to their local business partners about how to adapt product attributes and advertising messages to local tastes.

Glocal marketing or brand managers have the task of balancing demands from headquarters with those of local branches and taking full advantage of local expertise, knowledge and information. So, some transnational companies began delegating more authority over product development and marketing to local managers.

Meanwhile, U.S. multinationals like Philip Morris and Coca-Cola ramped up their acquisition of local brands, for the same reasons that investors diversify a stock portfolio.

Today, two-thirds of Coca-Cola’s sales in Japan are from local beverage brands, and the company now owns more than 100 local beverage brands worldwide. In some cases, the global-brand owners are financing totally separate companies. Unilever India, for example, has set up the freestanding Wheel organization as a low-cost enterprise that markets quality, low-priced local brands to the mass market.

Glocal marketing allows for local and global marketing activities to be optimized simultaneously. Nowadays, global companies must understand that they often need to customize their products or services to a certain extent in specific global markets.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Global Marketing

Effective Global Strategic Marketing

by Oseme Group | 0 comments

By M. Isi Eromosele

Marketing is a broad, challenging and often misunderstood function. Ask several people from various parts of the world to define it and you’ll probably get very different answers.Yet marketing is much more than brochures and websites and numbers; it’s an investment that generates revenue, profit and opportunity for growth.

Good marketing is essential for every company. It can make a company with a mediocre product successful, but poor marketing can send a good company out of business. Yet even business-to-business (B2B) marketing is often seen as a soft creative field instead of the engine that drives company revenue.

The Strategic Marketing Process can be organized into three categories:

Develop Your Strategy
Create Tools and Processes
Generate and Manage Customers

Competitive Positioning

The first major step a company has to take in developing its Strategic Marketing is to establish its competitive positioning.

What sets your product, service and company apart from your competitors? What value do you provide and how is it different from the alternatives? Competitive positioning is about defining how you’ll differentiate your offering and create value for your market.

It’s about carving out a spot in the competitive landscape and focusing your company to deliver on that strategy. A good strategy includes:

Market profile: size, competitors, stage of growth
Customer segments: groups of prospects with similar wants & needs
Competitive analysis: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in the landscape
Positioning strategy: how you’ll position your offering to focus on opportunities in the market
Value proposition: the type of value you’ll deliver to the market

When your market clearly sees how your offering is different from that of your competition, it’s easier to generate new prospects and guide them to buy. Without differentiation, it takes more time and money to show prospects why they should choose you; as a result, you often end up competing on price, a tough position to sustain over the long term.

One of the key elements of your positioning strategy is your value proposition. There are three essential types of value: operational excellence, product leadership and customer intimacy.

Rather than leaving your positioning and value proposition to chance, establish a strategy. Think impartially about the wants and needs of your customers and what your competition offers. You may find an unmet need in the market or you may realize that you need to find a way to differentiate from your competitors.

As a result, you may decide to promote a different attribute of your product, or you may find entirely new opportunities to create new products and services. Either way, you’ll strengthen your business in both the short and long term.

Key Concepts and Actions

Your competitive positioning strategy is the foundation of your entire business - it’s the first thing you should do, particularly if you’re launching a new company or product. It’s also important when you’re expanding or looking for a new competitive edge.

Profile your market

Document the size of your market, major competitors and how they’re positioned.
Determine whether your market is in the introductory, growth, mature or declining stage of its life. This lifecycle stage affects your entire marketing strategy.

Segment your market

Understand the problems that your market faces. Talk with prospects and customers or conduct research if you have the time, budget and opportunity. Uncover their true wants and needs - you’ll learn a great deal about what you can deliver to solve their problems and beat your competitors.
Group your prospects into segments that have similar problems and can use your product in similar ways. By grouping them into segments, you can efficiently market to each group.

Evaluate your competition

List your competitors. Include any competitors that can solve your customers’ problems, even if their solutions are much different than yours, they’re still your competition.
Rate your own company and your direct competitors on operational efficiency (price), product leadership and customer intimacy. It’s easy to think you’re the best, so be as impartial as you can.

Stake a position

Identify areas where your competition is vulnerable.
Determine whether you can focus on those vulnerable areas - they’re major opportunities.
Identify products/services you can offer to meet the true needs of your market in a new and better way.

Define your value proposition

There are three core types of value that a company can deliver: operational efficiency (the lowest price), product leadership (the best product), or customer intimacy (the best solution & service). Determine which one you’re best equipped to deliver; your decision is your value proposition.

Brand Strategy

Develop a brand strategy to help you communicate your positioning and value proposition every time you touch your market. Together, these strategies are the essential building blocks for your business.

Your brand is the entire experience your prospects and customers have with your company. It’s what you stand for, a promise you make and the personality you convey. And while it includes your logo, color palette and slogan, those are only creative elements that convey your brand. Instead, your brand lives in every day-to-day interaction you have with your market, including:

The images you convey
The messages you deliver on your website, proposals and sales materials
The way your employees interact with customers
A customer’s opinion of you versus your competition

Branding is crucial for products and services sold in huge consumer markets. It’s also important in B2B because it helps you stand out from your competition. It brings your competitive position and value proposition to life; it positions you as a certain “something” in the mind of your prospects and customers.

Your brand consistently and repeatedly tells your prospects and customers why they should buy from you. If you want to capture significant market share, start with a strong and unique brand identity or you may not get far.

Successful branding also creates brand equity, the amount of money that customers are willing to pay just because it’s your brand. In addition to generating revenue, brand equity makes your company itself more valuable over the long term.

Together with your competitive positioning strategy, your brand strategy is the essence of what you represent. A great brand strategy helps you communicate more effectively with your market, so follow it in every interaction you have with your prospects and customers.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Global Marketing

The New Paradigm In Global Marketing

by Oseme Group | 0 comments

By M. Isi Eromosele

From the smallest local business to sprawling global enterprises, it’s the end of the art of marketing and the beginning of practicing marketing as a science. Gone are the esoteric theories of marketing as a creatively driven endeavor. Now is the time for an analytical

method that focuses on selling by engaging and closer interaction with the customer.

With the new paradigm, marketing will make investments, not gambles, and will make every effort to determine the return on those investments. You will have the opportunity to put your company a competitive edge, not just by spending your money wisely,

but also by embracing all of the elements of an information-driven global marketplace.

Your enterprise marketing management should be empowered by your desire to do whatever is necessary to drive profits higher. That desire alone will not suffice, though. You have to rethink how marketing will work for brand in the current fast paced, highly competitive global business environment.

Marketing is not all about creativity. A greater part of marketing has to do with tactical strategies and underlying activities. Marketing is a business. Marketing spending is an investment that should be expected to engender specific expected results that can be measured.

The following are absolutely essential to successfully implement the science of enterprise marketing:

Timely, relevant customer insights to define your brand’s value proposition and drive brand decision making and investments
Ability to translate this value proposition into specific actions, both in traditional media and company-wide, to build an end-to-end brand experience with targeted customers
Integration and accountability in action on relevant customer insights across key enterprise constituencies such as marketing, sales, service, manufacturing, finance, human resources (HR), information technology (IT), and so forth, to increase the profitability of the business

Marketers often fail in three key categories:

The inability to use their knowledge of their customers to position their brands
The inability to put their brands to work beyond traditional media
The inability to build necessary customer-facing processes with supporting organization, culture and information for brand management.

Run Brands As Businesses, Not As Campaigns

The first step on the road to enterprise marketing management is to run your brands as businesses. Brands are much more than marketing campaigns, advertisements and logos.

Bring a brand-centric approach to the way you think about and manage your business. Use the knowledge of your customers to position your brands. Develop a deep understanding of the benefits that will really drive your customers to buy. Communicate what specific benefits your customers will derive from buying your brands.

These benefits should be organized into a brand architecture that clearly fleshes out the value the company creates and the key emotional and functional benefits it must communicate consistently to sell more products and services.

Manage Your Brand, Not Your Customer

Leveraging customer data to build brand architecture and plugging marketing in to the rest of the enterprise represent the right first steps. Take the value proposition spelled out in the brand architecture and translate it into a productive and profitable brand experience for your customers.

Creating this brand experience means marketing must develop the specific content and messages that are consistently delivered at every customer touch point. These touch points can be anything from a meeting with a salesperson to clicks on a web site.

This brand experience addresses all aspects of the way your company interacts with your customers, including downstream and post-purchase interactions concerning how to use or service what you sell.

Customer insights drive brand decision making and marketing investments. The term investment (rather than expense) connotes the way that marketing should function.

The customer insights that drive decision making must be both relevant and timely. Compiling such information is an enormous challenge for many companies, but it’s an imperative burden.

It’s critical that you understand the amount of marketing investment required to generate business with your target customers, as well as the amount of the return from doing business with those customers over time.

Consider creating a marketing investment profile. This profile indicates the timing of marketing investments and the timing of the returns, which in turn lets you monitor both the incremental and the cumulative ROI for specific marketing initiatives. It offers an immediate snapshot of the validity of your marketing investments.

The marketing investment approach, combined with creative drive, gives marketers an

even greater ability to build brand and drive value for their company. Marketing has to move beyond its traditional reliance on third-party media, such as TV or print ads, and put all of its customer touch points to work as sales drivers.

You have to put real changes in place, bringing together organization, culture, incentives, and information technology to make building and retaining a brand experience possible. Financial discipline and scientific rigor must take hold across every marketing decision.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Global Marketing

Effective Global Marketing Strategies

by Oseme Group | 0 comments

By M. Isi Eromosele

External critical factors such as globalization, privacy legislation, technology advancement and the maturity of traditional marketing channels are causing many companies to reevaluate their traditional approach to reaching their customers.

The availability and impact of advanced technology such as analytical Customer Relation Management (CRM), multi-channel marketing and integrated marketing campaign management are having a profound effect on how companies successfully conduct the marketing and branding of their products.

The cumulative effect of this evolutionary marketing change is that companies need to make strategic adjustments in the way they acquire, manage and retain their customers. This is having a tremendous impact on how marketing is conducted in the global marketplace.

The Marketing Evolution

This marketing evolution requires the effective integration of market positioning with customer-focused strategies such as intuitive personalization and permission-based marketing. The result would be increased sales and revenues.

To accomplish the above, new models for building profitable value-based customer relationships need to be established, which would require companies to automate sales and customer service functions, which would improve sales management and customer service.

Today, with Web 2.0 advancements, marketing processes is going through profound changes. Internal and external factors are making it imperative for companies to implement new models of marketing, especially with the development of robust technology. There is a necessary need for companies to shift from mass marketing to value-based marketing.

The Advent of Enabling Technology

Continued emerging technology has major underpinning on the marketing evolution that is taking place. The Internet has played a major role in turning consumers into highly informed clientele.

They have developed a high degree of product/ service knowledge. As a result, customer switching is rampart. This situation highlights the significance of marketing organizations’ effectiveness in acquiring, retaining and growing their customers.

The key to implementing a successful marketing campaign is for companies to be highly adaptive. Offers to customers must me personalized and made through multi channels. Customer information has to be consistently analyzed to respond to changes in customer preferences.

Multi-Channel Strategy

Today’s customers demand convenience. To satisfy this requirement, companies need to develop sophisticated and integrated multiple channels to their targeted markets. These new channels need to be integrated, with front-end analytical consumer information being merged with back-office fulfillment processes.

The marketing channels have to be integrated for individual customer segments and preferences. Every channel must be customer-centric, prepared to conform to the customized preferences of individual customers. This strategy turns low-value customers into high-value ones. Preferred channel interactions create loyalty among customers.

Integrated Marketing

Marketing is the engine that drives sales in any business organization. When properly executed, marketing generates qualified leads for the sales organization as well as drive customers to the appropriate channel.

Instead of being a separate cost center, it needs to be a key component in the overall sales process. Utilizing analytical engines, marketing provides sales with a complete picture of customer profile and activity, with up-sell and cross-sell possibilities. This customer data and insight generated by the marketing team must be deployed to all key decision making functions within the company.

Achieving increased profits through effective marketing requires that internal processes be defined and automated. Customer-centric interactive processes are implemented, underpinned by data analytical technology that will enable building profitable long-term relationships with customers.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Global Marketing

Customer Focus In Global Marketing

by Oseme Group | 0 comments

By M. Isi Eromosele

Globally, businesses compete to serve customer needs. There are different types of customers whose needs vary by personal preference. As such, most markets and as an extension, market segments are not homogeneous.

A business, whether national or global, cannot reach all customer groups with equal effectiveness.

To establish a competitive advantage over its competition with a feasible marketing strategy, it is imperative for a company to clearly define the global markets or market groups it intends to serve. These markets must be segmented, with the identification of one or more sub-groups of customers.

Fine targeting of customer groups provides a company with the opportunity to establish competitive leverage.

Modern approaches to strategic planning require good definition of target markets. It is necessary to systematically develop a theoretical framework for this purpose. The first logical step in defining the market is the determination of customer need. The market will emerge from this definition.

A broad perspective of the market will also result from the delineation of customer needs. A company should select and serve market segments for which it is best equipped to compete for the long term.

Customer Needs

The satisfaction of customer needs is the paramount test of a company’s success in its marketplace. A forward looking marketing strategy should contain the objective of meeting the customer needs better than the company’s competitors.

The focus on customers is the essence of marketing strategy. The sound logic and worth of the assessment of customer need is indisputable, yet this is often ignored. A majority of new products fail in their respective markets because of this error in business market judgment.

Marketing performs a border role purpose between the company and its markets. It guides allocation of resources to marketing product and service offerings in the quest to achieve corporate business objectives. The border role purpose is crucial to overall strategy development.

Before a company acquires a new business, introduce a new product or repositions an existing product, it must use incisive marketing research to cross the company-market border in assessing the target market reply.

Customer need has always formed the basis of effective marketing. Without understanding customer needs, a company’s product, especially a new one, has a much better chance of floundering in the target market. Getting customer needs right is the first step in providing value to customers in a market segment.

A need that is not satisfied becomes a source of frustration. If a company does not satisfy a particular sought-after need, the customer will seek relief with a purchase from a competitor.

Business strategy can be based on the certainty that customer needs exist. It is a company’s business to fill customer needs within a target marketplace. Its success depends on it.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Global Marketing

Effective Global Marketing Strategies Part I

by Oseme Group | 0 comments

By M. Isi Eromosele

External critical factors such as globalization, privacy legislation, technology advancement and digital marketing channels are causing many companies to reevaluate their traditional approach to communicating with their customers.

The availability and impact of new technologies that facilitates social media implementation, analytical Customer Relations Management, multi-channel marketing and integrated marketing campaigns are having a profound effect on how companies can successfully conduct global marketing and branding of their products and services in the future.

The cumulative effect of this evolutionary marketing change is that companies would have to make strategic adjustments in the way they acquire, manage and retain their customers. All of the above factors are having a tremendous impact on how marketing is conducted in the global marketplace.

This marketing evolution requires the effective integration of market positioning with customer focused strategies such as intuitive personalization and permission-based marketing. The results would be increased sales and revenues for forward thinking companies.

To accomplish this, new models for building profitable, value-based customer relationships would need to be established, which would require companies to automate sales and customer service functions, primarily through web-based applications and methodologies.

Customers are bombarded with thousands of marketing messages on a daily basis. They are simply overwhelmed with these marketing messages since it is often difficult to differentiate new messages from old ones.

Often, when truly creative advertising is broadcast, consumers remember the advertising theme, rather than the product or service message in the commercial. This severely limits the value in promoting a brand or selling a product or service.

With the limited time they have and their short attention span, consumers consider most marketing efforts from companies as a waste of time as well as being intrusive.

Continued emerging technologies can help reverse the above consumer thinking by making them part of the process, especially through social media. This is a major underpinning of the marketing evolution that is taking place.

The Internet has played a major role in turning consumers into highly informed clientele. As such, they have developed a high degree of product/service knowledge, resulting in a higher level of customer switching.

The key to the successful implementation of a marketing campaign is to make it highly adaptive. Offers to customers must be personalized and made through multi-channels. Customer information needs to be consistently analyzed to respond to changes in customer preferences.

Today’s customers demand convenience. To satisfy this requirement, companies need to develop sophisticated and integrated multiple channels to their targeted markets.

These channels need to be integrated, with front-end analytical customer information being merged with back-office fulfillment processes.

The marketing channels have to be integrated for individual customer segments and preferences. Every channel must be customer centric, primed to conform to the customized preferences of individual customers.

This strategy turns low-value customers into high-value ones. Preferred channel interactions create loyalty among customers.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Global Marketing

Effective Global Marketing Strategies Part II

by Oseme Group | 0 comments

By M. Isi Eromosele

Instead of being a separate cost center, marketing needs to be a key component in the overall sales process. Utilizing analytical engines, marketing provides sales with a complete picture of customer profiles and activities, with up-sell and cross-sell possibilities.

Without insightful customer data, companies will struggle to build effective market segmentation models. Rich data sets include insightful attributes offered by customers, integrated analytical data and pertinent market research.

Additional information could come from socio-economic and demographic research. The above information can then be combined with qualitative data that would result in an abundance of qualitative data necessary to drive increased customer response.

The marketing evolution is taking place from a background of cumbersome processes, with little, if any definition. With the advent of superior enabling technologies, the scope of marketing implementation is becoming ever more complex with marketers now continually interacting with their customers through social networking sites, enabling the management of complex relationships.

The intuitive demands of modern marketing make process definition and integration a key necessity.

The advent of enabling technologies, such as digital marketing campaign management applications and customer data analytics allow for the dissection of gathered information to a granular level of detail.

The result is that multiple marketing campaigns can be implemented and managed simultaneously. This process has been aided immensely by the rise of digital assets that have been specifically developed for Customer Relationship Management implementation.

Insightful information should manifest itself in a marketing campaign as the right offer, to the right customer through the right channel, at the right time. A disconnect between insight and customer interaction in companies’ marketing campaigns will result in lost revenue opportunities that would negatively impact the acquisition, retention and management of customers within their target markets.

The answer is improved integration throughout organizations between those who create insight and those who utilize the information. This can be implemented through automation, in batch or real time.

To achieve this integration, appropriate touch points need to be created to seamlessly receive the data underlying the insight information.

Silos of data and the incompatibility of enterprise technology continue to be a hindrance to companies’ ability to take full advantage of the evolving market paradigm. In order to achieve a full marketing value chain, internal marketing systems integration is imperative.

Achieving increased profits through effective marketing requires that internal processes be defined and automated. Customer-centric interactive processes need to be implemented, underpinned by data analytical technology that would enable the building of profitable long-term relationships with customers.

Technology is simply the underpinning for a successful marketing campaign. Integrating strategy, data analytics, process improvement and change management are other key drivers to creating a successful global marketing organization.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Global Marketing

Developing Customized Global Marketing

by Oseme Group | 0 comments

By M. Isi Eromosele

In an ever interconnected global market where political and economic events can change the landscape at any given time, it is chancy to follow the same direction for marketing and business strategy everywhere.

The speed of change and the continual complexity of the world market requires a new approach to global marketing. The distinctive products or services that companies put into the marketplace are increasingly experiencing shorter and shorter lifecycles.

Companies face the challenge of differentiating their products in an environment where manufactured goods have become commoditized.

Many companies have the tendency to underestimate the market strength of the competition in a given market, especially if these competitors are from outside of their industry.

Another shortcoming is that a great number of companies that have expanded overseas fail to acquire a good understanding of the distinct cultures that exist in the respective countries where they are doing business. It is ill-advised for a company to rush into a new market without taking the time to research what similarities and differences exist between how business is conducted in the new market compared to how it is done in its home country.

Having a true understanding of a target market country’s business culture and ethics would greatly enhance a company’s knowledge of the distinctive needs and requirements of the target market. This would also increase the chances of success for the company.

Companies need to develop products and services for particular segments of the markets in their home country as well as target overseas markets as part of an encompassing global model. Few companies do this, preferring to create products and services for general markets.

The global market is not a homogeneous one. Making products that are unique to specific markets will greatly enhance a company’s flexibility in cross country products and services transfer. Additionally, a company’s top marketing team should include executives from the respective countries where it is doing business.

A company’s marketing organization should be a microcosm of its global markets. The diversity this creates will enable the company to better understand the varied wants and desires of its overseas markets.

It is imperative that companies view global marketing as a business philosophy rather than as one organizational function. Marketing is the eyes and ears of companies, providing them with proactive customer intelligence and insights that should enable customization of their products and services to suit the needs of their marketplaces. As such, their marketing concepts and methods would need to be continually adjusted to meet the changes that are bound to occur in these markets.

A crucial shift that has to take place is in a company’s global marketing program is to move their organization from a mass market focus to a "precise segmentation" one.

This will engender the delivery of breakthrough products and services that are created for a target portfolio of local, regional and global customer segments. When suitable, these products and services could be further customized to specific customer needs.

This new marketing model will no longer have transactions as its core principle. Rather, it will be based on relationships, built on collaborations.

Companies would no longer simply sell products and services. They would provide solutions to segmented customers’ needs.

Competitive advantage will not be dependent on the companies’ onerous marketing muscle but on the quality of its products and services as well as the timing and effectiveness of its marketing programs.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Global Marketing

International Marketing

by Oseme Group | 0 comments

By M. Isi Eromosele

A company that concentrates only on its domestic market is inadvertently restricting its own growth. Inevitably, foreign competitors will come into its home base and challenge it in its market space. Today, international business has no borders. Not in this interdependent and interconnected global economy.

One of the most successful ways for a business to grow is to expand regionally or globally. Interestingly, most companies are too cautious to do so. They envision obstacles and risks, language differences, cultural differences, devaluation and exchange control risks, among others.

However, there are many advantages and benefits in pursuing the international market. By expanding internationally, companies actually diffuse their risks by not wholesomely depending on a singular country’s economy and market. This is especially true if the market for their products and services is mature in their home market, but growing abroad.

Additionally, companies will benefit from having to improve their products and services as they strive to compete in new environments against new competitors.

When they do expand abroad, companies need to adapt their products and marketing mix. Their branding program would need to be completely reevaluated, guided by a new brand philosophy that says, "Globalize but localize".

When naming its new products, a company must conduct research to make sure that the names travel globally. Companies have a better chance of success overseas when they identify a large target market whose needs are not being met by current in-place sellers. By creating new values that are difficult to replicate for this target market, the company will be well positioned to succeed.

Companies angling to enter developing markets need to offer new benefits or introduce inventive pricing schemes, rather than replicate what they offer at their home market. They must be conversant of the liability for possible abuse of their products due to lower literacy levels and poor quality of intermediary channels.

A major decision needs to be made regarding whether to run overseas operations from home corporate headquarters or appoint regional managers who would be responsible for various overseas markets.

The best course of action is to establish regional headquarters that will run operations within specific geographic areas. The regional headquarters should give high autonomy to country managers. In doing so, it can facilitate a good measure of coordination through corporate information exchange systems, company guidelines and regulations.

The allocation of product resources and marketing funds to the different countries must be guided by consumer preferences and purchasing power, distribution strength, competitor positions and future economic forecast in each country.

Highly effective global oriented companies will likely gain market share in expanding to other countries.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Global Marketing

Global Marketing Strategies

by Oseme Group | 0 comments

By M. Isi Eromosele

To build and enlarge market share globally, companies must become aware of the fundamental marketing challenges they would face in the nation states they are targeting. They could start by looking at global and local environments and addressing how marketing strategies have to be adapted to changes in the target environment. Subsequently, they would have to focus on the primary disciplines of market definition and market segmentation.

From these disciplines, they would transition into key areas such as market entry, market development, target marketing, brand management, product development, distribution channel management, customer relations management, advertising strategies and pricing. The main objective would be to establish a market-focus view that would enable the company to develop a marketing strategy which will be related to corporate and business unit levels.

Specifically, companies would need to:

Look at the significance of two-sided information exchange between the company and global marketplaces in identifying new product requirements, changing competitive conditions, product positioning and strategic commitment
Explore the use of existing as well as new resources in creating a competitive advantage
Demonstrate how the entire organization would be affected by Strategic Marketing decisions
Highlight how globalization and technology could impact the creation and execution of a global marketing strategy
Present case scenarios to illustrate tactical plans for strategies in product development, distribution and channel management and brand equity management

In planning a global marketing strategy, unique techniques and programs would need to be developed on an international scale across many countries. Standardization of marketing programs would be necessary across several countries and the selection of the appropriate entry strategy into foreign markets has to be made on a timely basis. A global mindset needs to be established within the company in order to examine global opportunities and develop global strategies which leverage investment and experience across several countries simultaneously.

In the new global business paradigm, companies are no more restricted to doing business only in their country. As such, a great number of companies are establishing a global driven presence, which requires the development of matching global marketing strategy. The decision to expand into the international market requires companies to think about the sensitivities inherent in the new market environments. There could be distinctive business opportunities, limitations due to economic conditions or political and legal restrictions. Companies must be sensitive to the culture of their target nations, especially in communications. The company’s product offerings may have varied sets of appeal to consumers in respective countries. This would require adaptation of the marketing message.

Global expansion let companies spread the risk of poor market environments. A global company can reap profits from one market to offset losses in another. Operations can be shifted from one market to assist growth in another. Some companies have used their global operations to consolidate their organizational structures. To obtain the full benefits of a global marketing strategy, a high level of standardization is imperative, even as the company would need to cater to the individual needs of each market region or nation.

Most companies develop global marketing out of a desire to explore opportunities and expand their market share. For many companies, benefits include economies of scale, standardization of marketing and establishment of profitable global networks. However, others have discovered that global strategy was not meant for their organizations, prompting them to shift to regional marketing strategy.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

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