Small Business Action Strategy For First Time International Business Development

Are you a small business and want to develop your international business?
Do you have a limited budget to develop your international sales?
Do you already have domestic clients but are just starting to reach out to international clients?

Are you at a loss as to what to sell abroad… or where to start?

Numerous ways and strategies exist to get international clients.

A lot depends on your business, your personal commitment and your budget.

Just about any small businesses can reach out and get more international clients using internet marketing strategies.

Here is a shoe string action plan.

• This action plan will help you make take on the international mindset.
• It also helps you to identify where you should market to first, and what to sell.
• And more importantly, it will keep in a constant flow of action.

How does this small business action plan do this?

• By getting you to know your international markets better
• By learning from your international markets
• By stimulating feedback from your international prospects to tell you what they want from you
• And by continually asking questions and moving forward

Small Business Action Plan For International Business Development

Your first international business development strategy:

1. Internationalize your website

Many websites catering to domestic markets just do not work well in international markets. Especially if you have done a great job on your website.

The question is: is your website actually pushing your international visitors away from you?

This is what happens with bad or non-existent cross cultural communication.

Companies in non-English speaking countries usually create an English language website to target their international markets.

English speaking countries have a business decision to make. What you decide will depend on the nature of your business and your clients. You have two choices.

1. You have the option of creating a website specifically targeted to a wide international audience, in your language.
2. You may decide to keep your main website targeted to your domestic clients.

If you decide to stick with one main website for now, there are still ways to tweak your website, with very small touches, to give a better experience for your international readers.

Learn more in the Website Internationalization Guide.

2. Research your international markets

International business development is all about you learning to adapt your business, your products, your communication, and your sales pitches, to each individual country you market to.

How do you start if you do not have any contact with your foreign markets?

• Use everything you have available to you.
• Slowly build up your foreign market research.

The beginning usually requires the most effort. The good news is that it does not take as long as you expect. What it does take is a concentrated set of actions.If you are just starting out:

• Check out all of the associations, official groups for all international data you can find.
• Use the phone extensively.
• Do some online research.

The goal is to simply become familiar, and feel comfortable, with your market.

You need to eliminate all culturally inappropriate businesses ideas at this stage.

Don’t get stuck and spend too much time here in this step. This is preliminary research.
You will also carry out research while you market to your audience online. This gives you more accurate research.

Read more in the International Market Research Guide.

3. Track visitors and results. Adjust your communication

This step is very important. The better your analysis the stronger your international business potential is.

International business development is all about your capacity of adjusting your business to the needs in another country. You need to improve your marketing in an ongoing process as you get to know your international market.

• In order to do this you need to know where you start and how to interpret results.
• You need precise things to measure.
• You must establish measurable goals.
• You must set up a tracking system for your goals.

Your international business success relies on your ability to track the results and response your get from your international readers. Tracking and testing are key international marketing tools.

Your international communication is a process of testing, adjusting, inciting feedback and learning more about your audience.

4. Create a newsletter in English targeted for your international clients and distribute by email and on your website

Internet users all come online to look for information. Internet marketing today is all about creating an online presence through content. Internet readers actively search for content. Your international readers are the same.

So you need to give your international readers content. Of all the formats to deliver your content to a wide international audience, a newsletter gives you the best mileage.

Advantages Of A Newsletter

A regular newsletter is a versatile communication tool.

• It can be short enough to go on two sides of a single piece of paper.
• You can print it and mail it out or distribute it at events.
• It can contain enough articles to be re-purposed into other formats.

A newsletter helps you to stimulate market feedback, with links back to your website and other content provided through different media. Quizzes, surveys, free reports and other feedback generating tools published or advertised in your newsletter create reader interaction.

Another major benefit of publishing a newsletter is it provides a platform for consistency.

Some countries appreciate print format more than information online.

An International Newsletter

Ideally you need to create content specifically for each country you are marketing to.

A regular newsletter targeted to a broad international audience will not be as powerful as content marketing targeted to one specific culture. But it has advantages and is a good choice if other reasons are keeping you from a more targeted newsletter.

A newsletter for a broad international audience is an easy and inexpensive way to start. Use this option if :

• You have no real idea where you want to market to.
• You are not an English speaking company.
• You rely on a lot of international event marketing.

If you have already identified the one country you want to market to, create a newsletter specifically for that country.

5. Include tools to stimulate feedback

It is important to learn more about your international markets. It is important to try to stimulate feedback from your readers, and get as much information from them as you can.

There are tools and web features you can use to stimulate feedback. You will need to test to see which tools work the best with your audience. Different cultures respond differently to these tools.

Here are things you can do to stimulate feedback:

• Quizzes
• Surveys
• Polls
• Questions
• Homework assignments
• Contests
• Q and A Teleconferences

You can also entice readers to participate and respond to your feedback generating tools. Find the right enticement and your response rates will skyrocket. Offer readers free information products:

• White papers
• Case studies
• Reports
• Guides
• Other information useful to your readers

If your feedback enticements are information products, you can use these as another platform for links and offers in your internet marketing strategy.

You can also entice your readers by offering things that are not information products. Something free or at a discount your readers really want to have. Remember, if you can identify exactly what your readers want and need, your enticements will work better.

Strengthen your internet marketing with a wise use of different media touches linked to your feedback stimulation tools. This takes a little prior planning and strategy.

The key is to find out what your target readers want and need the most.

As you learn more about your international prospects you will adjust your feedback tools and enticements.

6. Track results and adjust your communication

This is a repetition of step 3. Tracking your results and analysing your international responses is an ongoing process.

You need to adapt to your foreign markets. When you start out, you do not know much about them. You must continually check and adjust your communication.

Internet marketing is all about adjusting your message continually until you get it right. It is about being present online in real time, finding the current buzz and running with it. If your communication is outdated no one will listen to you.

International marketing is all about taking things one step and a time and making adjustments along the way.

This tracking and adjustment step is the ideal place to combine the two different processes of internet marketing and international marketing.

Applying both internet marketing and international marketing strategies allows you to learn about your foreign markets even if you live thousands of miles away and you don’t speak the language. At least in the very beginning phase of your international business development.

7. Identify one country to target

You will get better results from your international communication if it is targeted to very specific markets.

This means you need to identify a country and specifically target to that country, that culture.

How do you choose which country to target? There is no real definitive way to choose which country you should start off with.

• You can base your decision solely on data: export data, industry revenue.
• You can also base your decision on where your competition is located or not located.

There are obvious cultural obstacles for certain types of businesses. So check with all of the appropriate domestic authorities. They will get good insights into what goes on in other countries. Check with your embassy in the country concerned.

There is no magical formula for choosing your first international target market should. Find a country where you can reasonably expect a good client base.

International business is all about changing your mindset. Choose a country and get started. The first learning curve is the hardest.

So jump in and focus on your learning experience of getting to know one foreign country and one culture well.

8. Create either a blog or a country specific newsletter for that target country depending on your foreign market

Now, once you have identified a specific country you want to target, you will need communication targeted to that culture.

This is custom content for one particular country. And here you have more choices in how you deliver your content. Well, the choice might not be yours to take. Success here depends on if you can identify the format best suited for your target culture and for you content. So spend some time researching, start off small, track, test and adjust.

Blogs

A blog is often the easiest tool to get to know your target country. You can also do this with a newsletter published for one cultural audience. The important thing is to have customized content written for one cultural market.

For best results you need to speak to your target country in their language, with their vocabulary. There may be translation costs involved, or costs for cultural writing and adaptation.

A blog will probably cost you more than a simple monthly newsletter. A blog should be updated several times a week to be optimized. This means more content.

Newsletters

But a newsletter can be re-purposed into several different formats of customized content such as articles and emails.

A 2-page newsletter with 4 short articles can easily be re-purposed into 4 emails, one long article, 4 podcasts and more each month. This provides you with a variety of different channels and ways to touch one market – for the cost of one translation and some re-purposing.

If your communication directly targets one specific culture, you will get better results than with you broad international targeted communication.

Custom content in either a blog or a newsletter reaches out to one foreign country. This is your first real presence in a foreign market. And you do not need to have offices there.

Read more in the Culture Customized Content 101 Guide.

9. Track results and adjust your communication

OK. So now you have a real presence in your target country. Guess what you next step is?

Stimulate and entice feedback. Track results. Adjust your communication to what you learn from your readers. Give them what they want to know. Test and start over again.

You need to adjust your communication to the culture and market you want to create a business relationship with.

This is a learning process. It is critical to your international success.

Action Plan Continues

Use good internet marketing practices. Provide information your readers want by following this action plan.

You can also go further and create other information products as front end sales for your foreign market. Attract international prospects back to what your are selling to your domestic market.

Your action plan continues beyond this one. You need to identify the products and services you want to sell to your foreign markets.

You develop international expertise through this process. Keep moving forward t develop your business internationally. Repeat this action plan to expand into other countries.

After you have adapted your business to one country’s culture, the process usually gets easier. You will be able to anticipate stumbling blocks more easily. But more importantly you will know how to adapt yourself much faster than the first time around.

Other articles you may be interested in reading:

The first question is often what you should sell. Some companies do not know if there is a market for their products.

• 7 Brainstorming Questions To Determine What To Sell Abroad

International Market Research challenges beginners often to the point of delaying action. It is not difficult. The hardest part is jumping in and finding the first two or three key information contacts.

• 7 Initial Market Research Ideas To Define Your First International Expansion
• Initial International Market Research Can Feel Like A Cliff Hanger
• International Market Research – Don’t Get Stumped When Digital Age Communication Fails

Once you establish your first regular communication plan you will need communication tools:

• Case Studies – Best Small Business Tool For Building Trust In International Clients
• Case Studies – Easy Small Business Strategy Strengthens International Client Relationships

As you gain exposure to international clients, you will develop your international negotiation skills:

• Start Your International Negotiations With Identifying The Right Person

And if you really feel overwhelmed and do not want to make that first step there are other solutions:

• You Might Have More Options To Develop Your Business Internationally Than You Realize

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