International marketing is the adaptation of the company’s marketing strategy to markets in other countries, identifying the specific needs in each region. Different types of international marketing include exporting, licensing, franchising, joint ventures, and foreign direct investment. The goal of international marketing is to meet the needs of global customers.

In addition, international marketing can help increase and improve business opportunities for companies locally and internationally. It is possible to expand the customer base and diversify, protecting your company against possible economic recessions.

Why do International Marketing? What are its benefits?

Why does a company decide to internationalize? In general, International Marketing is not carried out if this does not imply some type of opportunity or benefit.

There are several reasons to try to position yourself and sell in foreign markets, these may be some:

• Favorable environment: The target country offers a political, legal or fiscal environment that is more favorable.
• Low competition: International competition is relatively less or weaker than that of our environment.
• Weather Seasons: The target country or countries have opposite weather seasons (Northern and Southern Hemispheres) which makes it possible to sell seasonal products at different times of the year.
• Market saturation: The home country market is already too mature and saturated, with little room to grow.
• Production capacity: Our company has surplus production capacity that is not being used.
• Reinforce the brand image: Show yourself as a leader before all the parties interested in the company (stakeholders), both external and internal.
• Diversify risks: Having sources of income in different countries minimizes the economic risk in the event that one of these presents a decrease in sales.

Whatever your reason or reasons for internationalizing, it is crucial to always keep them in mind during all the planning that takes place afterwards, so that inconsistencies in the strategy do not arise.

What is the basis of effective International Marketing? What is its main feature?

In Marketing (both local and international), there are a number of internal factors that the company can control, which are: the product, the price, the positioning and the promotion.

On the other hand, there are many external variables that cannot be controlled, such as laws and regulations, politics, the technological level of society, competition, the environment, and more.

Effective International Marketing is one that studies both well and adapts internal variables to the external environment, thus proposing the most appropriate strategies and tactics for the country in which you want to market.

And this question could arise: Why adapt to the company if in our country we are doing well like this? Your company may work well within familiar territory, but outside of it, your competitive position will not be the same and neither will your promotional needs. We cannot pretend that everything is the same outside national borders.

Main challenges of Marketing and Sales in an Internationalization process

Our experience in the sector has allowed us to synthesize and classify in a very summarized way the most common difficulties that arise in most internationalization processes at the Marketing and Sales level.

Here are the three most common challenges or barriers:

Positioning barriers in target countries

The market seems to be different, your value proposition is not as appreciated as usual. The people who make the decisions are different, they have values, habits, interests, culture, language and needs that are nothing like the ones you know. Consequently, you need to rethink who you are and how you conduct communications and sales efforts.

Generation of commercial opportunities

Nobody knows the brand. You do not have the same reputation, contacts and recommendations as in our country. The sales opportunities that in our territory can come spontaneously here are not present. Therefore, it is necessary to have a system that periodically generates these contacts and sales opportunities for the commercial department.

Sales efficiency

For many companies, the natural way to start promoting sales in international markets is as follows:

• Start marketing through multi-product distributors, who sell your products at the same time as those of other companies.
• A second option could be to hire and keep a dedicated salesperson.
• And the third would be to set up a physical headquarters with a multi-person marketing team.

Obviously, the cost and risk increase progressively from the first to the third option. However, the common problem is that, many times, even if you increase the investment and sales costs, you do not always manage to make the profitability grow proportionally.