In our increasingly global markets I see an interesting trend: Companies are taking a single, powerful marketing message and they are using it around the globe.
Taking a message, product and brand overseas and across frontiers is as challenging as it is exciting. Breaking through to foreign markets represents new growth, revenue, and opportunities- but if not done intelligently- it can hurt as much as help the business. So once it has been established that marketing internationally is part of the strategy, the chosen partner for telemarketing will define success as much as the branding or label selected to represent the product being promoted.
Here are some guidelines that can be put to work when making your short-list of potential telemarketing partners:
- Choose a domestic partner with significant experience in the targeted market. This way it possible to have the best of both worlds: a partner that is close to you but who understands the local culture and language of the country in question. This provides transparency with regards to operations, which is very hard to manage and understand from a distance.
- Make sure the agency you select can operate in various time-zones. If it possible to have a single vendor instead of several, it possible to create economies of scale, and in today landscape that important. A single vendor who has the capability and understanding to work according to varying schedules from a practical/ logistical point of view is of high-value.
- One Message, One Vendor, Multiple Markets= High Impact. A single telemarketing partner working in several languages and mind-sets understands their client product and offer much better than several localized vendors. Why? Because volume dictates coverage (market penetration). By consolidating international efforts and having one single vendor handle localization, that vendor will in turn focus a great deal of it efforts in ensuring the programs work across the board. TCO for the client is lowered and impact is optimized.
- An agency with a qualified staff. You’re only as good as your team,and the right telemarketing agency for international marketing should feature staff members who are readily on hand that are fully fluent in the languages of the markets you are trying to reach. However, understanding goes beyond just being fluent in a language- it means knowing how companies do business in a specific place. The right partner should have on site:
- Team members who can translate collateral and scripts
- Calling agents who are native speakers of a specific language
- Management that is effective working in