Marketing Challenges: Turkey

September 16th, 2008 Alina Posted in Business, Culture |

Are you by any chance thinking of expanding your business and conquering the Turkish market? Good choice, indeed! The economy is growing, they have strong companies, which translates into great business partners and they are implementing all modern technologies at a fast rate. To support the business growth, they are working on a great infrastructure: from building roads to making the visa process easy and to adapting to all potential customers or partners (learning new languages, keeping themselves informed, organizing huge industry events).

There are a few challenges however. Strong competition is the most important one, the local companies’ great skills to adapt to what customers demand, their drive to stay connected with what they need and a long tradition of trading, negotiating and offering high class services only add to the list.

Istanbul Shops

So what do you need to learn to face your competition? A few things to get you started:

1. Prices are never fixed – yes, everything is negotiable! Actually, you will find a quite wide range of shops that have no prices listed. You have to ask the price of everything and the sales person will have the right answer. And even luxury shops selling diamond jewelry are open to negotiation.
2. Marketing tricks to catch the eye of the customers are commonplace: the buy one get one free offer for example – you can see 5 small shops selling the same thing and having the same price and same special offer. You need to fight a little for your customer! Talk to them, draw attention to yourself.
3. Any “star” currency will do it: From restaurants to people charging you the highway tax to electronics shops, most accept Euros, Pounds or Dollars. Don’t be picky when setting a price, money is money in the end and exchange offices are widespread.
4. Everyone takes care of the customers, from the owners, to the top managers and the rest of the employees. Sure, this depends on the size of the company, but who do you think will get return customers easier: those welcoming them to a cold corporate culture or those making them feel like hope, in touch with human beings.

All these are just a little something to get you started. Stay close as we will continue our insight in this fascinating country. By the way, a final trick: if you’re browsing a site and can’t find Turkey under Asia, try Europe, them being on both continents confuses a lot of people, even if the European side is quite tiny.