Cultural Factors

Culture comes in many shapes and sizes. It includes areas such as politics, history, faith, mentality, behaviour and lifestyle. The following examples demonstrate how a lack of cultural sensitivity led to failure:

-When colouring in 800,000 pixels on a map of India, Microsoft coloured eight of them a different shade of green to represent the disputed Kashmiri territory. The difference in greens meant Kashmir was shown as non-Indian, and the product was promptly banned in India. Microsoft was left to recall all 200,000 copies of the offending Windows 95 operating system software to try and heal the diplomatic wounds. It cost them millions.

-The fast food giant McDonald’s spent thousands on a new TV ad to target the Chinese consumer. The ad showed a Chinese man kneeling before a McDonald’s vendor and begging him to accept his expired discount coupon. The ad was pulled due to a lack of cultural sensitivity on McDonald’s behalf. The ad caused uproar over the fact that begging is considered a shameful act in Chinese culture.

-A new facial cream with the name Joni was proposed for marketing in India. They changed the name since the word translated in Hindi meant “female genitals.”

- IKEA once tried to sell a workbench called FARTFULL – not a hugely popular product for obvious reasons.

- The film Hollywood Buddha showed a complete lack of cultural sensitivity by causing outrage and protest on the streets of Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Burma when the designer of the film’s poster decided to show the lead actor sitting on the Buddha’s head, an act of clear degradation against something holy.

- The concept of Big Brother was somehow taken to the Middle East. The show was pulled of the air after its first few episodes due to public protests and pressure from religious bodies stating the show’s mixed gender format was against Islamic principles.

The above cited examples prove that “if it is OK for us it is OK for them” cannot be assumed anymore. So it is vital to understand the importance of cultural sensitivity for internationalisation.

i-marketing

A major innovation has been brought to marketing that has taken it away from the traditional forms…..INTERNET MARKETING dominating the marketing world has brought an end to the traditional marketing.

During the 1990’s Mass Communications dominated the market and advertisers focused on delivering one message to a mass audience through various mediums like television, radio, and print. Now companies are shifting money from traditional marketing to Web based business services.

The Internet has brought many unique benefits to marketing, one of which being lower costs for the distribution of information and media to a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, both in terms of providing instant response and eliciting responses, is a unique quality of the medium.

It ties together creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including design, development, advertising, and sale. It also refers to the placement of media along different stages of the customer engagement cycle through (SEM), search engine marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), banner ads on specific websites, e-mail marketing, and Web 2.0 strategies.

In order to survive in this world, businesses both small and big need to have an online presence. They have to create a consistent internet marketing strategy that will make the internet work for them. When it comes to internet marketing, a functional website should include a content management system that lets you do routine updating automatically.

There are tons of effective marketing programs on the internet but the first thing what any business needs to do is to identify their target audience.

Despite the rapid expansion of internet marketing there are still many businesses who are wary of this new concept and prefer to stay with tried and tested marketing strategies and often wonder “why should one prefer internet marketing over traditional marketing?”

1. Internet Marketing is More Measurable
2. It makes strategic decisions based on facts
3. It can be used for Global Marketing
4. It is better at reaching the target audience
5. It is a constant source
6. It provides better Word-of-Mouth
7. It can increase conversions

Inspite of these unique advantages internet marketing too has some flaws.

There is a possibility that business  could be participating in illegal or unethical online promotions. That is why it is extremely important to familiarize yourself with the appropriate ways to obtain emails and to avoid spamming.

It is also possible that marketers may not want to reach customers through the Internet b’coz the type of business may be of the kind that requires face-to-face contact for success.

Lastly,  Internet marketing is useless unless you can market professionally, few consumers will take you seriously. Just like other forms of advertising, it is equally important that you make the right impression with consumers. Your website, emails and ads should  be presentable and professional.

However, after understanding the advantages and disadvantages the biggest difference between traditional marketing versus internet marketing is, you not only have access to a massive audience you can reach in a relatively short period of time, but you will keep your overhead expenses reasonably low. As a result of these two internet marketing formulas working simultaneously, it will automatically create an endless online cash flow.

Internet marketing is far more efficient than traditional marketing. You can adjust your campaign much easier to produce the best results but to choose internet or traditional marketing  totally depends on an individual business, some may even prefer to use a mix of the two.

SMS Marketing

Everyday across the world several billions of SMS are sent and most of them carry personal messages sent mostly by youths for staying in contact with their friends. I was also under the same impression till I started searching about SMSes.

In the recent years, the popularity of SMS has increasingly spread in business sectors also.

Larger companies have adopted SMS as a cheap and effective marketing tool as it delivers the company’s message to its audience and according to me it either outpulls e-mail marketing by a considerable margin, or enhances e-mail marketing manifold.

There are four reasons for this:

• SMS messages almost always reach the recipient

• It  almost always get read by the recipient

• It  almost always get read WITHIN SECONDS after it’s received

• It can get you an immediate response

The major areas where SMS marketing is used are banks, drink firms, entertainment and leisure venues. Along with SMS, the MMS, which includes picture messaging, is also increasingly becoming an essential marketing tool by these organizations. This is possible after the development of needed software and tools that allows your SMS and MMS from your desktop through a web-based service or by using downloaded software. Through SMS marketing you can send large number of SMS at one time.

Often a question is asked, “How do companies use SMS service to market their product and create brand image?”

• Sales Promotions
• ‘Text & Win’ competitions
• Quotations
• Orders
• Vending Sales
• Prepaid Coupons and Virtual Vouchers
• Discount Coupons and Vouchers
• Virtual Gifts
• Auction Bidding
• Daily Mobile Content (Premium)

Even though this medium is quite innovative, beneficial  for marketers it has its downside too.

Inherently, it needs a mechanism – the cell phone – in order to deliver content. The business, as well, has to make use of specific technology and software in order to deliver the message to customers, which can equal considerable costs.

Another downside is the fact that SMS marketing is heavily regulated by the telecommunications industry in response to public disquiet about what data and marketing they get exposed to. Most Western nations have laws in place that compel companies to gain the approval of customers before promotional content is sent to them.

As mobile technology improves, SMS marketing will surely continue to rise in importance.

Orkut versus Facebook

If you’re young and Internet-savvy, you probably run an account on a social networking website. And if you live in India, chances are that website is either Orkut or Facebook.

Orkut is run by Google — the site was launched in January of 2004. It helps you meet new friends, get in touch with old ones and permits the creation of community forums that users can be part of.

Facebook, on the other hand, was initially a website reserved strictly for students of Harvard University. It was launched in February of 2004 and gradually extended its membership to include students from other universities across the globe. Today anyone with a valid email address and falling within a specific age group can sign up for a Facebook account. It also offers members the chance to join groups online and run forums within them. Facebook is particularly known for its photo-sharing feature.

So I want to know — which of these two popular websites goes down better with you and why?

Do you run accounts on both websites? Which do you prefer?

It’s Orkut versus Facebook, guys and gals — so tell us which is your favourite! Post your comments on the message

Twitter vs Facebook

The recent updates these days is a new war brewing up in the social sphere between the two popular social web tools  & . Social networking powerhouse Facebook sees itself on “a collision course” with  Twitter. Some analysts see Facebook’s site redesign,  as a “desperate attempt to mimic Twitter.”

Well, “if you can’t buy ’em . . . beat ’em?” said Kenneth Corbin in InternetNews.com. Back in fall of 2008, Facebook offered Twitter $500 million in stock to wed and bed her.

However, the deal broke down when Twitter assessed that the offer Facebook was presenting might not actually be worth.

Facebook is planning a series of changes to its homepage and how the flow of information coming onto the site is displayed. It seems in the world of social media, imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery, or just a way of trying to steal a rival company’s thunder in light of their refusal to be bought out.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced changes to its home page that would allow streaming of “posts from your friends in real-time.” It  also changed the status prompt from “What are you doing right now?” to “What’s on your mind?”

This move makes sense, because people seem to be veering away from Facebook towards Twitter due to its real-time nature.

There are an estimated four to five million users on Twitter, 30 percent of which are new. HubSpot claims between five and ten thousand new accounts are started every day. Which may seem impressive until compared to the recently published Facebook numbers of 140 million active users and up to 600,000 new registrations ever day.

In terms of  numbers, Facebook is a much more important service than Twitter.  But of course, quantity isn’t everything, with the quality of people on Twitter maybe making up for the huge numbers being achieved by the social networking site.

However, as of now, Twitter remains a niche enjoyed by the relatively small number of people using it but failing to break out into the mainstream.

“What are you doing?”

“What are you doing?”……is a comman question we ask friends and family and answering this couldn’t have been made easier, thanks to TWITTER.

Twitter a social networking and micro-blogging service allows people to stay connected with one another and to send, receive and read messages (known as tweets), via your browser, email , instant messaging clients and SMS so you can keep in touch no matter where you are. The people signed up to get messages are your followers – or tweeple, or tweeps.

All twitter does is ask: “What are you doing?” and allows you to send a small update (limited to 140 characters) to your followers.

Although Twitter was  started for one purpose (to tell others what you’re doing) it was quickly adapted by campaigning organizations for their own purposes. One of the recent examples of this was the Barack Obama campaign which began sending out ‘tweets’ and got 44,000 followers.

It is not only trying to create a new delivery channel for important information and campaigns but has also been the medium of choice for some breaking news announcements. People are writing short stories and even whole books on Twitter….

Some believe Twitter’s service is the logical evolution of blogging and also the two platforms have much in common.

One of the recent example is of the skittles company who re-launched their website by including social media websites like twitter…which actually is a bold move.

Twitter’s popularity is growing at a phenomenal rate. Since the time it started, a year a ago, it’s active users have increased 900%.

So what are you all waiting for….

Video Sharing

Video Sharing benefits:

1. Attract a large audience

Video enables you to capture people who like to watch rather than read. This extends the reach of your content because you can appeal to visual learners.

2. Engages the senses

If a picture is worth a 1000 words, then video does even more because you can create live movies with sound. This engages more senses than written text which only uses one medium.

3. Access at any time

You can view videos with all kinds of devices these days eg ipods, cell phones, laptops, etc. allowing you to access video content anywhere at any time.

4. Achieve top rankings in the search engines

Google recently introduced Universal Search. This means videos now appear in the search results pages. For example if you Google “Mustang” you’ll see video listings of mustang cars on the first page of Google.

5. Become known as an expert in your field

If you consistently create high quality video content that your visitors want and need you will soon become recognized as the expert in your niche.

6. Repurpose content

Convert your written content to video by talking about it in a video clip or creating a slide show then upload it to video sharing sites like YouTube. The beauty of this method is that you don’t have to create fresh content and there’s no need to worry about duplicate written content.

7. Easy to create and publish

All you need is a video camera (or just use a digital camera), windows movie maker software (already on all windows’ computers) and a YouTube account.

Now you have no excuse for not creating your first video then marketing it on YouTube and other video sharing sites. It will take some time to get it right the first time, but with practice you’ll soon be generating more traffic to your web site.

So guys, what are you waiting for start sharing……

Entrepreneurs vs Recession

The recession is a good time to become an entrepreneur.  “Google and Intel were started when economy was slowing. It is the time when people can take risks as there are not many jobs around (during recession).”

This is also the right time for would be entrepreneurs to start their new venture. More so, if the individual or the group of people is impacted [through lay-offs] by this slowdown. It can be viewed as god sent opportunity to put entrepreneurial ideas into action which may fetch more money/rewards then were possible through a company pay check. The old thinking was that workers could only gain and expand skills at a regular job. The new thinking is that there’s plenty of growth to be found elsewhere, and a traditional job can even prove stifling. Adversity brings out qualities that every entrepreneur needs to succeed – guts, problem-solving, strength and perseverance. Starting a company in the lean times helps develop those qualities more quickly, which will help the startups in the long-run.

The International Finance Corporation, a World Bank Group, VenturEast, a private equity manager and Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust, an NGO, had joined hands to promote grassroots entrepreneurs in India.

Recession

40 per cent of India’s exports are done by the SMEs. Therefore the government is trying to nurture this sector.

“Today banks are obliged to lend up to Rs five lakh without any collateral while guarantee amount has been extended from Rs 50 lakh to Rs one crore… some business may fail, but that should not deter us from providing loans and risk capital to small businesses,” Lending institutions like SIDBI should “continue to push lending to SMEs,” Home Minister P Chidambaram said and assured more sops for SMEs from Government.

India: Global financial crisis !!!

The big risk for Indian companies is a possible repeat of what happened in 1996: Projects that are halfway to completion, or companies that are stuck with cash flow issues on businesses that are yet to reach break even, will run out of cash. There is already anecdotal evidence of this in the IT and financial sectors, and reports of quiet downsizing in many other fields as companies cut costs. More than the downsizing itself, which may not involve large numbers, what this implies is a significant drop in new hiring — and that will change the complexion of the job market. Every year thousands and thousands of students (in India) graduate from different bussiness schools and unemployment rate is expected to go high during the crisis.

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The slowdown came down like a pile of bricks on Indian companies and their leaders. Most of them had little experience of handling a meltdown of this scale.

As a result, they are still groping for answers. Should they downsize? But won’t they be left without hands if the economy recovers in a couple of quarters? Should they focus on market share or cash management? How can shareholders’ wealth be salvaged?

India is catering major portion of worlds outsourced business. Global financial crisis has reached India late, but it will affect badly.