Marketing Tips for SMEs Expanding Overseas
Thanks to a great product and an even greater team, you’re successful in your country. Your company is growing. Your clients are posting positive reviews about your products. Your employees are engaged and happy. What’s next? If you’re thinking of expanding overseas, wonderful! But be prepared for a bumpy ride.
Selling products to an international market can be touch-and-go. How much localization is the sweet spot? How best to replicate marketing successes in foreign markets? Which website builder will really enable your web presence to be multilingual?
These are difficult questions that don’t have any silver bullet answers. But if you want to be successful beyond your borders, these are the kinds of conversations you’ll have to explore.
Here are some straightforward tips to get your overseas marketing aspirations up and running.
1. Challenge Your Assumptions and Test, Test, Test
Marketing is a game. And what works on your home court won’t necessarily score points abroad. For instance, it’s great if past email campaigns have helped you convert trial users into paying customers. But that doesn’t mean similar campaigns pitched to people overseas will be effective.
Tip: In a sense, all of the big marketing wins you’ve accrued in the past need to be re-evaluated before you set them loose on other countries. In short, ask yourself the hard questions. One quick way to do this is to list what has been most successful in the past — giveaways? online ads? product placement? — and create some short, trial campaigns to test the waters. That way you can confirm what works in your target countries. Next, take it to the next level and commit to broader, bolder campaigns.
2. Suss Out the Marketing Campaigns of Your Competition
What are others in your marketplace doing? If some focus heavily on guests posts written by experts or paying for press releases, should you too? Probably not. But if your competitors are being prosperous with techniques and strategies that you wouldn’t think twice about using on your home turf, then maybe you should think again.
Tip: Your objective should be to figure out not just what’s innovative about their approaches, but what’s different.
3. Decide How Social — or Antisocial — You Want to Be
Social media isn’t the be-all-end-all. No way is it a guaranteed road to riches. Indeed, all some companies have to show for their vast amounts of invested time and money are a bunch of likes and followers yet few transactions.
Tip: Before committing to building social media presences to facilitate your overseas dreams, think hard about what benefits your customers would really get out being social with you.
4. Connect with Local Preferences
Many cultures and business practices share similarities around the world. But businesses sink or swim according to subtitles. For instance, if locals in a particular country respond much more favorably to, say, inbound marketing than influencer marketing, you absolutely need to know that before courting them.
Tip: Invest in some research about your potential customers. What makes them click? More importantly, what makes them buy?
Baby Steps + Trial and Error = Wonderful Opportunities
Expanding your small or medium business into foreign markets takes patience. On your journey, brace yourself for a few inevitable setbacks. That said, adopting a global mindset and broadening your marketing activities beyond your borders might be a perfect way to write your own success story.
By Lee Bob Black.
P.S. I originally wrote this article a few years ago for a British bank, which published it under their marketing manager’s name. After the bank removed this article from their blog, I decided to post it here.
