Developing Sales and Marketing Materials for Overseas
By Carol Webster, Cassel International
You’ve selected a target market overseas, and found a distribution partner, who has now asked you for some sales collateral materials to help him or her market your product or service successfully.
As you put together your brochures and sales sheets, you’ll want to keep a few things in mind to ensure that your printed marketing materials are culturally and linguistically correct.
1. Translation. It is of course important to provide materials in the language of the country. Be it French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic or Urdu, be sure you hire the right person to translate your literature. For example, the Spanish spoken in Chile varies widely from that spoken in Mexico, Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries.
2. Standards. Use the right system for any technical data or measurements (English vs. metric) included in your brochure. Using the metric system where required indicates that you have taken the time and effort to provide data that is immediately usable by your potential customers. It may even be necessary to have your product’s physical property tests performed overseas according to a specific standard, such as DIN (Germany), ISO (Europe), or BS (UK). Be sure to also check what size paper is the norm in your target country.
3. Graphics. Be sure to do some research on cultural issues in your new market. Certain colors may be considered offensive or have a particular meaning that may be counter to what your product is trying to portray. According to Jonathan Groucutt in his book Foundations of Marketing, almost every color can mean death or mourning in another country (for example purple in Brazil, black in much of the Western hemisphere, white in Japan, dark red in the Ivory Coast); either red (Asia) or green (Middle East) can stand for luck. Certain images or photos could also be considered offensive in other countries.
4. Purpose. How will your brochures or other marketing materials be distributed? Will they be explained by a salesperson during visits to potential clients? Will they be used in a direct mail campaign to spur initial interest in your product or service? Knowing exactly how you or your overseas partners will use the materials will help you determine how much detail needs to be included and what format the final product should take.