Expanding Your Small Business's Potential by Attracting International Business

One way to expand a business's potential is to broaden its customer base. There are several ways to do this. You can focus on expanding your key demographics or you can expand your geographical market. While expanding key demographics is an option for some companies, most will be better off focusing on a geographical expansion. This is because the global economy makes it possible to complete this expansion without having to spend a lot of money redesigning the foundation of the company; however, some changes will be needed if you want to take your company global.

Does Your Company Have Global Appeal?

The first question that you need to ask yourself before launching a global marketing campaign is "does your company have global appeal?" Not every product or service has global appeal, in fact many products and services rely on their regional appeal in order to make sales. Products that have global appeal will generally have a universal application, such as health, beauty, technology and education.

How Global Do You Want To Go?

If you have decided that your business has global appeal then your next step is to determine which global markets you want to target. For example, you can target English speaking countries, Pacific Rim markets, European markets or Australasian markets. The markets that you select will impact how you need to package your marketing materials and your products.

Marketing Upgrades

When you approach international markets you need to make changes to your marketing materials. These changes will need to focus on making your marketing materials accessible to individuals who may or may not speak English. A common change is to have your marketing materials translated into several key languages, e.g. Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Mandarin. As you translate your marketing materials you will also want to think about making changes to your graphics to make them more culturally appealing.

Product Upgrades

Product tastes usually vary by region. This means that if you want to attract a broader geographic dispersion of customers that you will need to think about how tastes differ around the globe. Your normal stock of products may not be appealing to people in Japan or even in Australia, so you will want to think about expanding your inventory to include specialty items that cater specifically to your new markets' tastes. While you can see this as a drawback, it can actually be a great opportunity to enhance your product line and to increase your overall revenue.

References

http://smallbiztrends.com/2011/02/getting-international-business.html