Ecommerce offers a great opportunity because it allows marketers to sell globally much more easily than opening brick-and-mortar locations around the world. This video from the MarketingSherpa video archive features Rob Garf, Vice President of Industry Strategy and Insights, Demandware, covering this topic with some tips on global ecommerce and insights from the frontlines of selling online in new geographies.
Preserving brand value across multiple cultures
According to Rob, global ecommerce is growing, and the first challenge is preserving brand value while meeting the specific needs of the new marketplace.
“First off, you can’t not pay attention to [global ecommerce]. Retailers — historically, how they grew globally was to have to stand up an entire physical location, retool their entire supply chain, and it was really expensive,” he said.
“The digital world really allows you to grow across boundaries in a real, more efficient way. Be able to test different markets. Be able to reach new consumers and ultimately grow the business,” Rob added.
Rob explained that it comes down to culture and being entrenched in how the consumers behave and how they want to interact with the brand, and those factors are affected by geography. In order to accomplish this in marketing, merchandising and promotional practices need to be adjusted. In Rob’s words, “Have a local presence in order to be local.”
Watch the video to find out more of Rob’s advice on marketing ecommerce globally:
According to eMarketer, a marketing research company, ecommerce sales are expected to hit $1.771 trillion this year — with $1.233 trillion of those sales coming from outside North America.
Keeping this figure in mind, I sat down with Don Davis, Editor-in-Chief, Internet Retailer, after his trip to Shanghai to get some tips and advice for you as you expand your ecommerce business internationally:
We talked about the similarities and differences to the U.S. market, challenges of fulfillment and the important of trust to the Chinese consumer.
For example, when discussing trust, Don said, “Ratings and reviews are really important in China, because there are still a lot of fakes.”
In the past few years, the term globalization has been used to describe an unprecedented cultural, economic and political phenomenon that has fundamentally changed the world.
With faster intercontinental travel and almost instantaneous communication technologies, societies, economies and individuals have become more interdependent than ever before.
As globalization spreads more wealth from developed nations and into developing ones, a new global middle class has risen with an even greater desire to consume than 1950s America. According to Internetworldstats.com, the amount of people who have access to the internet has increased 676.32% in the last 14 years. Most of that growth occurred in the continents of Africa and Asia.
So what does that mean to a 21st century marketer?
It means that a taxi driver in Senegal can watch a Yankees game, purchase Yankees related merchandise and spread the Yankees brand to a whole new generation of consumers.
Now imagine if you could deliberately break into this new emerging market.
What would you do? How would you connect with your new potential customers and increase your brand awareness at the same time?
Most companies do it by creating and promoting culturally specific products that vary depending on the region. McDonalds is great at this. Ever heard of the Teriyaki McBurger?
It’s a product exclusive to its Japanese market and one of McDonalds Japan’s biggest sellers.
At this time of year, I see many “My Top 10 Posts for 2010” or “Our Top Blog Posts of the Year.” Here on the MarketingSherpa Blog, we thought we’d try something a little different. We’re sharing your top posts of the year.
We used that neat little plug-in located in the upper right of every post, the Topsy Retweet Button, to determine which posts you (and your peers) found most valuable this year. Here’s what you had to say…
For the last few months, MarketingExperiments has been testing which times of the morning work best for their webinar announcements. The results — in terms of number of signups — have been surprising. Read more…
Jacqueline Simpson, Marketing Manager, Tourism British Columbia, and her team are constantly testing their opt-in landing pages for multichannel campaigns. They came upon a particularly outstanding group of findings recently.
The Internet has opened up the entire world to retail marketers. Anyone who can reach a computer to go online can buy your product.
Global ecommerce marketing has a lot of challenges, though, like translation. Unless you have a team of translators on staff, you’re going to need some help localizing your marketing copy.
Here is some advice from Larry Arnold, Manager, Consumer Technology Publications, Garmin, that could help you organize a diverse translation process.
One of the newer ways of marketing to consumers lies in the idea of being green. It’s pretty simple: If you can convince environmentally conscious folks that you care about running your operations responsibly, that sizable group becomes much more inclined to spend money on your products or services. Read more…
Online consumers want a personalized Web experience, according to a recent survey conducted by MyBuys/The E-tailing Group. Out of the 1,345 consumers surveyed, 77% said they have made additional purchases based on a merchant’s personalized recommendation.Read more…
There’s a lot to be said for marketing to one of our closest neighbors, Canada – especially when their economy (and dollar) is strong, and ours remains weaker.
There is plenty of opportunity for B-to-B marketers targeting Canada. I discovered this opportunity while doing research for a special report on marketing to Canadians.
Infographic: How to Create a Model of Your Customer’s Mind
You need a repeatable methodology focused on building your organization’s customer wisdom throughout your campaigns and websites. This infographic can get you started.
