All the World’s a Stage; So Start Performing!
In November 2016, when Donald Trump won the US Presidential Elections, it wasn’t surprising that the US stock market responded. However, the impact of this news was not limited to America. The Mexican peso plummeted, the Japanese Nikkei 225 fell sharply and the Chinese economy stuttered. You can read more about the global impact of President Trump’s victory in an article by The Guardian.
Every significant event, ranging from the Brexit to Chester Bennington’s suicide, now has an impact on people from across countries and continents. This wouldn’t have been the case if we hadn’t made such tremendous advancements in technology over the past decade.
Businesses Expand as the World Shrinks
The greatest advantage of this shrinking of the world is that it offers huge opportunities for businesses to profit from. This isn’t limited to huge multinational companies. Even smaller firms and startups can view the world as their target market to offer their products and services.
Communication is Key
I believe the success of a business depends upon how frequently and how well it communicates with prospective and existing clients. Communication is key to enjoying the many benefits of globalization. When planning their communication strategy, companies should follow what I call the “broaden and narrow” approach. A company must keep broadening its reach (therefore expanding its base of prospective customers), while also narrowing or focusing on its relationship with each client. This approach, I reckon, would result in meaningful returns.
So, here are the two legs of the approach:
Broaden the Reach: Today, it’s become possible to showcase your brand, company and offering to prospective customers across the world. Focus on increasing your presence on the web through all popular platforms. Needless to mention, a company website is important. At the same time, there are more than a billion websites on the world wide web, according to figures published by Internet Live Stats. To compete with such a massive number of entities, focus your online marketing on your value proposition. I believe this is especially important for startups. I suggest all startups to identify their niche and focus all their marketing initiatives to highlight that.
Focus on Every Lead, Every Client: Never hesitate to pick up the phone and call a prospective customer to explain your offering. Studies have shown that companies, especially startups who have fewer employees, lose more than 70% of their internet leads due to extended response time. Most startups take more than two days to contact prospective clients, resulting in missed opportunities. This can be handled by a VoIP system, since the call routing feature can direct incoming calls to specific employees, while the call hunting feature will ensure the call gets forwarded to another employee in case the specific employee is unbale to take the call. Even when these startups do manage to return calls, they lose millions-of-dollars worth of business due to poor call quality, says a blog by experts at 888VoIP. This challenge can also be overcome by using a VoIP system.
When communicating with clients, it’s critical that one never ignores a dissatisfied client. While a happy client may or may not remember to recommend your company, a dissatisfied one would typically be more vocal about discouraging people from using your products or services.
One of the challenges posed by globalization is that your customers may be in a different time zone. This means that companies need to be ready to conduct business at anytime and from anywhere. Processes and systems need to be set up accordingly.
