Hi, it’s Myles, and I’m finally back from my travels, and ready to start creating more videos for you. As I promised a few weeks ago, I’ve created a video on how to market your business internationally. Today, in this video, I’ll share four tips to effectively marketing your business around the world.

Expanding your business globally can be great for growing your company, but reaching an international audience can be difficult. An international, online marketing strategy requires understanding different cultures, laws, languages, and online behaviors. Before you begin optimizing your business for a global audience, make sure you understand these four key tips.

The first, and probably the most important tip, is to start with cross-cultural competency. In other words, you need to have an intimate understanding of your own and other’s cultures. You need to start off by understanding the cultural assumptions and biases that you hold because they will help you identify cultural differences that may ruin your business abroad. Only after you understand your own culture can you begin to learn about international cultures and determine important differences.

At this point, most people will read different books and visit different websites about a particular country and culture. However, these resources can only take you so far and usually provide inaccurate generalizations and stereotypes. I find it very amusing when a travel guide describes a particular place that I know very well, and the description is far from reality. Because of this, if you’re serious about expanding your business internationally, talk with, learn from, and spend time with the people who make up the audience you’re hoping to reach. Many serious companies will even invest in hiring a local, business consultant.

The second tip centers on doing your homework and being aware of international advertising and sales regulations, and product laws. In different parts of the world, advertising and sales of certain types of products are subject to approval by various governing bodies. Likewise, all the products you sell are subject to different product development laws. The best way to ensure you are aware of all laws and regulations is to hire a reputable, local business consultant.

The third tip is to customize your online marketing based on local usage. It goes without saying that you need to translate your website into the language that the country or region you’re marketing to uses. But, this isn’t enough. Think about which search engines are used by the international markets you’re targeting. You and I most likely focus our attention on Google, Bing, and Yahoo; however, different countries use different search engines. For example, China uses the search engine Baidu frequently. As a result, if China was one of your target countries, you ought learn how to rank high in Baidu search results.

More importantly, when considering an international location’s local usage of the net, you need to choose the key words and key phrases native to the market you’re targeting. You shouldn’t simply translate the current keywords you may be using in your campaigns into foreign languages. Different countries use different words and phrases to describe the same things. For example, if you were in charge of an outer wear company and trying to optimize for the phrase “Rain Coats,” in the U.S. we’d use the key phrase “Rain Coats” but in the UK, people refer to rain coats as “Macs.” So, in the UK, we’d want to use the key word “Macs.” It’s extremely important to determine the proper native words and phrases to use.

The last tip is to adjust your website, if needed, to cater to the international market you’re targeting. Do certain colors and symbols connect with your target market? Do you need to adjust the currency of your product pricing? Let’s say from US dollars to Euros. In many cases, your website will be the first chance you get to communicate with potential customers, so make sure you optimize your site design for your market.

That’s it for today’s video. If you plan to take your business global, make sure to remember these tips. Once again, I’m Myles, and if you have a question about marketing your business online, email me at myles@internetmarketinginc.com and I’ll answer your question in a future video. Have a great week!

Ok, so it’s been ages since I’ve written a blog post. What can I say, I have been very busy building my empire. lol But, I’m not kidding…Depending on my schedule, I will be adding more to the blog. I do want to share something thought provoking.

Today, a friend and I had a conversation about wealthy entrepreneurs that I thought was insightful. Looking at select entrepreneurs, they all shared a similar characteristic. When they were younger, they seemed to develop a slight obsession over whatever it was that they liked or became successful from. While their friends were busy doing different things like watching movies or just ‘hanging out,’ these entrepreneurs were busy doing what they loved, although what they loved may have caused them to miss out on different activities.

When my friend and I were both younger, we spent a lot of time training in the martial arts. While other people were out partying and having a good time, we were in the gym, training, sparring, and drilling until we couldn’t move. We loved it, and skipped out on going out, getting drunk, and all of that stuff. Of course, we would find time to hang out, but for the most part we were very serious about training.

As time passed by, the people who always went out partying would wonder why and how we got good so fast. It’s because we made sacrifices and prioritized our training over spending a lot of our time on leisurely activities that albeit fun, did not add any ‘value’ to our lives.

Ultimately, I feel that understanding opportunity cost is vital to becoming good at anything, and successful in life, business, etc. If you understand that by getting involved in one thing means you have to sacrifice other things, you know that you need to really think about things and prioritize what you want to do.

It’s clear that the most successful do this, whether they know it or not.

Here’s another inspiring video, sent to me by a friend and old student. It’s all about passion, heart, and who wants it more. For any serious athlete, no explanation is necessary. Just watch the video.

Toby, thank you for sending this. It brought back a lot of good memories.

Photographer Zack Arias created this video and it’s a great reminder that it takes sacrifice and hard work to be successful. Whether you’re a photographer/artist or not, I think you’ll find some inspiration and motivation from watching this video.

Here is Part 1 of my “How To Start An Online Business Case Study” series of posts. This will be a four part series, all in audio–and maybe some video. The first part to this case study is about an hour long. It deals with deciding one your niche and thinking of initial business ideas. This is what I call the “Planning Phase,” which involves four key steps: 1. Selecting your niche; 2. Determining profitability; 3. Evaluating competition; and 4) Refining your business idea.

I hope you find the information valuable. Please leave a comment and if you have any questions, feel free to contact me or leave a comment. I will have these podcasts transcribed in the future.

Show Notes:

* Google Adwords Keyword Tool – Used for Niche, Profitability, and Competition research

* Keyword Discovery - Great tool for researching Profitability and Competition

* SEMRush, SpyFu, and WordTracker are additional tools I mention and recommend.