How To Help Your Small Business Fit Into International Markets
Taking your company to the international stage is an exciting venture for any entrepreneur — but a tricky one too. There’s a lot of work to be done on understanding a fresh customer base and establishing your brand before your international expansion.
While these are all challenges you can overcome, you can’t rush into things. So, before you decide to take things global, consider these factors:
Do Your (Global Market) Research
Before you jump into anything, you should identify international market opportunities. Is there a gap in the market, or an unexpressed need for your product in this country?
The Department of Commerce is an excellent source of information on potential international markets for U.S. goods and services. You can also check out their guide to conducting global market research here.
Know the Culture
At the risk of stating the obvious — everywhere is different! Customers in different countries — sometimes even cities — will often have a different set of values and beliefs than those in your domestic market.
Are there words here that carry a different meaning than when used back home? Should you avoid certain colors or images in your visuals? This is all research worth doing. Some international consumers might excuse your ignorance, but when you have a basic grasp of the local culture it shows the awareness of your brand — resulting in appreciation, respect, and affinity from your new target market.
Truly Tip: Laws may be different too! Make sure your product passes local requirements and regulations. Also, bear in mind how data privacy regulations like GDPR in the E.U. may impact your communication and data gathering efforts.
Make Your Website Accessible
Your website is everything to international customers — it’s where they’ll first form an impression of your brand, and likely the way they’ll connect with you.
You should strongly consider having a multilingual website to help people navigate your products and services. When applicable, you should also provide pricing in local currencies.
Truly Tip: If you grow a strong enough client base in a non-English speaking region, consider running a social account in that language. For example, @YourCompany_Es could share content and answer queries in Spanish.
Have a Seamless Payment Process
Slow, expensive international payments are too often a stumbling block for small businesses looking to scale globally.
When running an international business, it’s likely you’ll be managing overseas suppliers and contractors. You will want to ensure they get paid on time so that operations can run smoothly, your brand reputation stellar, and your supplier relationships strong.
It’s a huge boost to your brand’s reputation and reliability if you can pay your suppliers quickly AND in their local currency. Truly Financial lets you do both easily.
Truly Financial can help with both of these issues. We’re a payments and money management service that is exclusively built to solve the problems faced by small business. Truly Financial helps you make fast payments, get paid easily, streamline your expenses, and pay your team anywhere in the world.
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