To start your business abroad, you need to follow very specific steps and act very carefully. Nothing is impossible, you just need to plan ahead. We have identified five fundamental steps that can never be missed for marketing abroad.
1.For any good self-respecting strategy, one can only start from an accurate market survey.
Detailed market research on the country of your interest will help you understand who your target audience could be and the leading product(s) to export. The country of destination must be examined very seriously and in depth. Each market is its own reality. Each country follows very specific rules for import and movement of goods. Our advice is therefore to inform yourself as much as you can, perhaps relying on professionals in the sector and the target market. They will be able to advise you on how to seize the opportunity of doing business abroad, indicating current strategies and regulations.
2. Be careful of those like you who try to do business abroad
A second element to keep under control is competition. Once you have ascertained the actual demand for the type of product you intend to export, understand its potential and limitations by comparing it with those who already operate in the same sector as you. The scanning of competitors will not only be quantitative – how many local and how many foreign companies are there already? What are their sales volumes? – but also qualitatively – how did they build their brand awareness? how do they move towards potential customers? What marketing strategies do they adopt?
3. Find the right intermediary between you and the foreign market.
Often companies that initially appear abroad introduce themselves by relying on already established shops and sales activities. You will therefore have to select the importer that is right for you, and establish a relationship of honesty and mutual trust with him. An aspect not to be underestimated here is the linguistic gap, which could arise between the parties. Generally for European countries, the vehicular language is English, also due to its wide use for economic subjects. But if your target country is non-European, then the intervention of a professional native speaker will prove necessary.
4. Implement the right marketing strategies.
Remember that the new foreign customer is not your regular customer, with whom you are used to dealing on a daily basis. If he doesn’t feel pampered and comfortable interacting with you and your products, he may have difficulty trusting you. While you could waste your opportunity to do business abroad in the blink of an eye. Factors such as cultural and linguistic background, habits and customs, habits and customs must be weighed and considered in marketing activities, both online and offline. Any strategy must be considered customer-side. The most direct way to seduce your potential customer is to court them. As? Speaking his own language and making himself understood, producing almost from scratch and localizing content in his language. The localization of texts involves the intervention of expert linguists in the sector, responsible for revisiting the original textual contents present in flyers, blog articles and brochures in a more captivating and usable perspective for the recipient. The attention to form and style, semiotics and syntax serves to guarantee an unforgettable customer experience (CX). Regarding this aspect, the desktop publishing service can also prove to be fundamental.
5. Indulge completely in digital.
The creation of an e-commerce site is a guarantee for a business that wants to survive in the market in the 21st century. You have to be smart to be able to conquer your market share, also and above all abroad is your opportunity to do business abroad. The website is like the window of your physical store, it is your business card. However, to succeed in this undertaking, the automatic “copy-and-translate” of your original website is not sufficient, not to mention harmful. Some studies show that more than 70% of users are likely to make online purchases only if the site is translated into their native language. To convey a certain message, the first step to take is to take care of the linguistic aspect. You can’t try to sell something if you can’t even say it well. And it’s not even enough to simply translate a website, but rather you need to localize it. That is, adapting not only the textual contents to the standards of the target market, but also taking care of the graphic and multimedia aspect. The colors, the images, the design are not the first things that capture the attention of a net surfer. It may shock you to know that certain colors are strictly avoided in some countries, while in others they are considered auspicious. Website localization is an activity that only the most experienced and specialized professionals carry out for a certain reference market.
A small note also regarding app localization: not all countries in the world use and rely on the same search engines or the same apps. The market analysis will also be able to enlighten you in this sense. Take advantage of all the data and resources you have to expand abroad.
Here’s what it takes to do business abroad, without problems or surprises.
LingoYou Press Office
