19 Tips to Take Your Small Business Global

Taking your small business global sounds like a huge undertaking. But even small businesses can realize the benefits of selling in international markets, if you have the right tools and guidance.

In anticipation of the Global Small Business Forum, Laurel Delaney, founder of GlobeTradeand organizer of the event, shared some tips for businesses looking to expand into global markets.

Taking Your Small Business Global

Consider the Benefits

There are plenty of reasons to expand your business into global markets. It can get your product in front of new types of customers. It can lead to a sense of accomplishment. And it can force you to learn about new cultures and markets. But the biggest reason for most businesses is that global expansion can lead to a major increase in profitability. If those reasons don’t appeal to you, global expansion likely isn’t right for your business.

Only Expand if You’re Comfortable

Unfortunately, a desire to increase profits isn’t enough. Your business also needs to be poised to do so. That means that your business should be at least relatively successful in its current domestic market. Otherwise, further expansion will only stretch you too thin. Delaney explained in a phone interview with Small Business Trends:

“You have to be able to service your customers’ needs domestically. If you don’t have all your ducks in a row with your products or services when you go to export it is highly unlikely that you’ll be successful.”

Be Able to Fill Large Orders

When starting to export, it makes the most financial sense to ship large amounts of goods together, small ecommerce orders notwithstanding. So before deciding to expand, your business should be able to fill large orders fairly quickly and easily, either on your own or through outsourcing.

Start Slow

Taking your business global doesn’t mean you have to jump right into a fully global market. According to Delaney, it makes more sense for most small businesses to choose one international market to focus on first, and then eventually grow from there.

Find a Market for Your Product

To choose your first international market, do some research to find what countries have a strong interest in your product or offering. Look at other businesses in your niche and determine which markets have a strong interest without being oversaturated.

Utilize Trade Shows

Trade shows can be a great resource for both learning about global markets and meeting people who can help you expand. Marc Schulman used this technique to take his business,Eli’s Cheesecake Company, into global markets. He said in a phone interview with Small Business Trends, “If you’re in the early stages of running a business you can walk the trade show and just talk to people and learn. And then once you grow you can be an exhibitor and that gives you the opportunity to meet people like agents and importers who can help get your products into those markets.”

Do Your Homework Online

As with most types of research, looking online can be an easy first step in finding new international markets for your products. Even a simple Google search can lead you to information about exporting your particular product and point you in the right direction of industry resources.

Utilize Export Tools and Services

There are also several agencies and organizations that offer specific services aimed at helping small businesses get into exporting. Delaney suggests looking into the Small Business Administration’s resources and various city and state-based groups. But she also said that the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Gold Key Service can be a major help. The paid service helps connect business owners with overseas agents and distributors in their respective industries.

Meet the Right People

Getting in touch with your agents and distributors is an important step in the process. But Schulman cautions against just going with the first people you meet before actually finding out what they can offer your business. Specifically, since Eli’s products are perishable food items, he had to find out if each distributor had the proper freezers, trucks, and other equipment to keep his products at peak freshness.

Be Willing to Travel

Unsurprisingly, exporting goods to a new country often requires that you travel to that country. It may be necessary to travel there to meet with distributors or potential customers. But it can also be beneficial to travel there for trade shows and similar events.

Use Technology Whenever Possible

However, too much back and forth traveling can stretch your schedule and your budget. So while you should always be willing to travel if an agent or distributor requires it, try and schedule discussions via Skype or similar online tools whenever possible.

Focus on Relationships

Whether you deal with agents and distributors mainly in person or using technology, it’s imperative that you build strong relationships with them. If they’re going to represent your business in any way in your new market, they have to understand what you expect from them and vice versa.

Ensure You’ll Be Paid for Your Exports

As with any other business transaction, it’s essential for you to have a set contract and guidelines about how payments and order fulfillment will proceed. Make sure that you will be paid for any products that you export, especially since taking legal action in other countries can be complicated, if not impossible.

Get Ready for Paperwork

Every country that you might consider for expansion comes with its own set of rules and qualifications. That often means that you have a lot of paperwork to complete in order to do business in various other countries.

Achieve Success Before Moving On

Once you’ve officially started selling your goods in an international market, it can be tempting to try and expand again right away. But just as you should achieve relative success stateside before going international, you should also find some success in your new market before moving on. Delaney says:

“I always say it’s better to diversify later after you achieve some reasonable success. If you are stable in your current markets then your whole global strategy won’t fall apart when one thing goes wrong.”

Look to Congruent Markets

Once you’ve determined that it is time to expand further, looking to countries next to where you already do business can make the process easier. Your existing contacts may be able to put you in touch with people in nearby markets. And the processes are likely to be similar as well.

Learn About Your New Customers

When doing business in other countries, you have to consider the different customs and cultural aspects that might impact transactions. You can do your own research about the culture of your new market. But you can also rely on your agents or distributors to guide you in the right direction if you’ve built solid relationships with them.

Adjust Your Marketing Efforts

Expanding your customer base can also have an impact on your marketing efforts. You’ll likely need to dedicate significant resources to targeting some of your marketing materials specifically to your new customers and their interests.

Enjoy Your Success

One of the benefits of selling in international markets is seeing your products being sold all around the world. So once you’ve expanded to those markets, it’s important to enjoy that success. Schulman says:

“We take a lot of pride in our international business. When I see the Eli’s Cheesecake name and logo in leading restaurants in England I feel a real sense of accomplishment.”

Globe in Hand Photo via Shutterstock



This article, "19 Tips to Take Your Small Business Global" was first published on Small Business Trends

Read More

How To Evaluate Your Digital Marketing Campaign

Guest author Stephen Moyers is an online marketer, designer, avid tech-savvy blogger. Associated with Los Angeles–based SPINX Digital Agency, he writes about online marketing, web design, development, social media marketing and more.

Each marketing strategy is unique, but every marketing strategy should include evaluation. No matter what business you are in, be certain that you aren’t throwing good money after bad by continuing a strategy that is not performing.

Some companies act like digital marketing is a magic tonic with an immediate effect that just continues on. When they fail, others think it’s because they were using standards designed for traditional marketing.

Both are common problems, and they can be solved by understanding the similarities and differences between digital and traditional campaigns.
Identify Your Goals

Every marketing strategy should have a specific goal, so you can ultimately distinguish between success and failure. It’s also impossible to achieve a meaningful measure of return on investment (ROI), which relies on having a concrete expectation to match the actual returns to.

Goals must be concrete. You can't perform ROI calculations without some measure of what you're looking for. And it may not always be sales. While the traditional way to calculate ROI is by counting the money acquired compared to money spent, that doesn’t work for Facebook likes, retweets, or other some other measure of customer interaction. Whatever you're looking for, it’s easier to find non-monetary indicators online than through traditional business models.


There’s a better way: First, determine how much effort you spent—whether that was time spent, number of posts, or amount of money spent on a campaign, the investment must be defined. For the returns, you need a numerical value, such as number of likes or the number of people referred to your webpage. Once you figure out what to measure, then you can perform a ratio calculation. The number might not be as convenient as the traditional ROI formula, but it will give you a base to work with.
Identify Your Customer Base

Although you may consider a campaign successful based on numbers alone, you could be missing the bigger picture. That same campaign may have been a failure on demographics, which can be critical. To truly evaluate its success, focus on identifying your customer base. It will give you a better idea of how effective your targeting was.

If you reached an unexpected demographic, be prepared to analyze it further—whether you reached your goal numbers or not. You could have inadvertently reached a broader range of people than you expected, or grabbed a different group than you wanted. Be sure to check the relative proportions of your demographic. Whatever you learn, take it and apply it to the next one.

An effective digital presence can influence areas far outside the physical geographic scope of a company, no matter its actual size. Smaller companies can have results many times larger than their size would allow otherwise, thanks to the intimacy their small size brings to the table. Though larger companies may never feel as personal to their users as startups can, they have many more resources.

The responsiveness of the web can have a huge impact on a company’s digital presence, both positive and negative, and its effects can extend to all areas of the business. Companies should take care, because a mishap in one web campaign can have major repercussions.

Examine your ROI and other sources to determine the effects of your digital presence. With large ROI and good levels of influence, you shouldn’t have to change any part of your marketing plan. If ROIs are less than expected, take a look at your demographics and campaign strategy. You may have inadvertently alienated your core demographics. Make certain your message is consistent across all platforms. If all else fails, look at what companies succeeding in this area are doing and mirror them.
Evaluate Your Strategy, And Then Expand

No strategy is perfect. Even the most successful marketing campaigns have areas for improvement. In the evaluation phase, consider the previous sections and any potential flaws in the process.

For an extra set of eyes, hiring a professional digital marketing analyst can be an important investment. They are trained in evaluating marketing strategies and can offer invaluable assistance, regardless of whether your campaign met its goals or not. if your strategy didn’t work, they can help identify what went wrong and how to fix the problem. If it did, they can help you identify your next steps.

A successful marketing plan usually leads to another, in an effort to expand the business. No matter what population you are expanding into, you need to evaluate the new demographic and pinpoint the differences between it and your current audience. If enough of your target audience has changed, you need to approach it like an entirely new demographic. Never assume that you know how your target group will react to your campaign.

Be sure to test your ideas before launching the new campaign, even if the type of target users appears to be the same. Already established audiences can change over time.

If you’re expanding beyond your country’s borders, the move can bring both new risks and opportunities. An international audience often comes with cultural differences that should factor into your strategy. Don’t hesitate to hire experts in all aspects of the target culture, if necessary. You don’t want clashes or misunderstandings coming back to haunt you.

No matter how far you seek to expand, you’ll want to test your audience, and never make assumptions about how people will receive your campaign. Ad remember: There’s something to learn from both successes and failures that can help your digital marketing strategies evolve.

Read More