How to Scale Your Business Abroad

An action plan for entering a foreign market depends on several points at once: the type of activity, the chosen country, the goal, and much more. It will not be possible to give universal advice to all businessmen, but you can designate a guideline and protect them from frequent mistakes. To do this, we have collected trends, expert recommendations, and cases of companies that are trying to conquer abroad.

How to enter a foreign market

Products and online services, such as jewelry, clothing, or language courses, can be sold online. But in some segments, online sales alone are not enough. Cafes, bars, massage parlors, beauty studios definitely need offline outlets. Websites and applications for such a business are just an additional promotion tool. Let's talk about the main stages that you need to think through before starting online trading and offline sales.

E-commerce

The advantage of online sales is that you don't have to delve into the issues of renting premises and hiring foreign employees. It is enough to adapt the products and the online platform to the needs of the new market and organize delivery, if necessary. We have prescribed the main steps that are better to think about at the stage of preparing a business plan:

Adapt a website or app. Sometimes it's not enough just to translate a website into another language. It is worth taking into account the habits and peculiarities of the mentality. For example, some illustrations and phrases that are acceptable with us may offend or mislead foreign customers. And don't forget about search engine optimization – SEO. There are many nuances, so it is better to contact specialists.

Unlike online service providers, retailers need to think about a few more things. Other things to do:

Improve packaging. It is better to translate the labels into the language of new customers, and make the packaging itself more reliable, since it has a long road ahead of it. Some delivery services offer turnkey packaging services, which is worth paying attention to when choosing.

Choose an international shipping company. Familiarize yourself with the services of different services and read the reviews of their customers. Find out if the company provides turnkey logistics services so that you do not have problems with customs in the future. It's definitely not worth saving money, as a violation of delivery times or the integrity of the packaging will affect your brand.

Think over the methods of payment and return of goods. Clear and transparent terms of payment, delivery, and return on the site increase loyalty and encourage customers to buy. Decide for yourself whether you are ready to receive payment after delivery or if you need an advance payment. We also recommend that you include the cost of return in the price of the product in advance.

Offline Sales

If you decide to open offline outlets in other countries, you can go two ways: do it yourself or sell a franchise. But in both cases, you need to study a new market, adapt the business to foreign requests, draw up a business plan, create a financial model, competently draw up documents, and so on.