How Small Businesses Can Launch Into Foreign Markets

There are three main ways to launch into foreign markets. You can establish a physical presence or branch of your business on foreign soil. You can export directly to foreign market consumers or you can enter into a partnership with a local business. The first choice might be a step too far for many small businesses, but exporting and doing business with foreign partners should be within the reach of most.

If you enter into a white label arrangement – supplying a product or service that another company rebrands and sells under their own name – your partner will be responsible for marketing the product on the ground. If you are fully or partly responsible for marketing your product however, there are a number of issues you should bear in mind.

Choose your target markets

Firstly, if you’re a small business with limited resources, you should be wary of over-extending. It often makes sense to focus your efforts on one or two new markets to begin with, even if you consider your product to have true global appeal.

Thorough market research is vital. You have to establish whether there’s a demand for what you have to offer in the first place and, if so, what competition exists. You will also have to research the practicalities of doing business abroad. A good understanding of common business practices, legal requirements, import regulations and consumer habits is important before you embark on any overseas venture. Organisations such as the Small Business Administration and the US Commercial Service can offer help and advice both off- and online.

Localize

Sometimes the very fact that you’re a foreign business can give your products an exotic appeal, but you should always adapt your message to suit the target market. Even a globally recognized brand such as McDonald’s goes ‘glocal’ in its international efforts – retaining a strong core identity but tailoring its menus, message and websites to individual markets.

Your website is your virtual shop window and a localized site can be a great asset. English is the most widely spoken language online but it still represents only around a quarter of total usage. Research has also shown that multilingual users place less trust in websites that are not in their own language. A recent study suggested that, while more than 50% of internet users across the EU regularly visited foreign language sites, only 18% would make a purchase from a site that was not in their own native language.

Foreign language microsites offer one solution but a fully localized site is even better if resources allow. Investing in a ccTLD or country code top level domain (such as .fr for France or .au for Australia) can help your organic SEO as well as giving your website a more local feel, which helps to engender trust.

It can also help to set up foreign language social media profiles. The big hitters, such as Facebook and Twitter, have multinational audiences and settings but, depending on your target market, other local competitors can also be useful.  Sites like QQ, VK and Mixi are hugely popular in China, Russia and Japan respectively, and profiles can be linked to your regular Facebook page and localized website.

Take care of translation issues

Whether considering your online content, local marketing materials, product packaging or anything else, good quality translation is essential. Automatic translation programs are a useful (and free way) to get the gist of a foreign text, but they can be prone to contextual errors and don’t generally deal well with colloquialisms, abbreviations and other linguistic deviations. Native speaking translators are a far better bet for retaining nuance and avoiding mistakes.

Some mistranslations can merely leave you looking a little unprofessional. That’s hardly ideal but others are the stuff of marketing nightmares.

When Pepsi exported their slogan “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” to Taiwan it was mistranslated as “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead.” Not to be outdone, Kentucky Fried Chicken’s famous “Finger lickin’ good” turned into “Eat your fingers off” in China. They might be hilarious in retrospect but you don’t particularly want to be the one being laughed at.

Avoid cultural faux pas

As well as linguistic issues you should also take care not to make any cultural faux pas. If you’re not fully steeped in a particular culture this can be trickier than you might imagine. Even experienced campaigners McDonald’s have been caught out unexpectedly. When the corporation used cartoon character Asterix in a series of advertisements in France, it caused something of a furore. McDonald’s knew about the character’s popularity but didn’t take into account the iconic Gaul’s anti-imperialistic stance and embodiment of all things French – which patently doesn’t include American-style fast food.

There’s a lot to think about when preparing to embark into a foreign market. But the rewards can be great and worth every bit of effort.

How Small Businesses Can Launch Into Foreign Markets