5 Must-Haves Every International Business Expansion Plan Should Have

In a globalised world, growing your home-based business by tapping into new markets is easier than ever—at least in theory. Developing an international business expansion plan can be a transformative experience for any organisation. After establishing a successful company right at home, stepping out of your comfort zone and expanding to new markets is often critical to a company’s overall growth strategy.

But understanding how to grow your business offers several challenges. Most CEOs will focus on the usual regulations, tax restrictions, distribution, and licensing issues. But language is often one of the greatest barriers when thinking about how to make your business grow.

So, does your company have what it takes to go global? Here’re a few things to consider.

1. Conduct International Market Research

Attempting to go global without conducting thorough international market research can be a huge waste of time and money. Why? Simply because the reasons behind your organisation’s international business expansion plan must be thoroughly vetted and thought out. For this, conducting international market research is key. Be it by contracting the services of a research company or performing it on your own with tools like Google Trends. Market research will allow you to gauge the interest these new markets harbour towards the goods or services you offer. In turn, this analysis will let you know when the time is ripe to kickstart your international business expansion plan.

#OptimationalTip: If hiring a company to conduct international market research is beyond your budget, leveraging tools like Google Trends or Ubersuggest will let you search interest trends in keywords broken down by location.

2. Translate for Countries, Not Languages With Localisation Services

It’d be naive to think that simply translating your content to a different, widely used language is all it takes to expand to new markets. Take Spanish, for example, and the different nuances it displays between Spain and Latin America.

Translating and localising aren’t the same thing. Focusing on localisation will mean not just adapting content but also your overall marketing strategy, price points, checkout, and payment options, and even date formats and writing tone. Studies show that customer experience became the key brand differentiator, overtaking price and product. With this in mind, the first step to providing an excellent customer experience is to communicate with your customers (and prospects) in a manner tailored to their tastes and customs—from language to everything else.

#OptimationalTip: Prioritise localisation services over simple translation to tailor your content, marketing strategy, and customer experience to each specific market. Remember, adapting to local preferences can significantly enhance your brand’s appeal and effectiveness.

3. Optimise for Google: Translation and SEO

One of the key ways to reach a new audience is by making sure your brand is easily found on Google—or any other search engine that’s popular in the new market you’re stepping into. This means paying close attention to your SEO results.

SEO results depend on several factors, some of which are easier to improve than others. Aside from the technical side of a website, one of the key things to improve your SEO performance is making sure your content is relevant to your audience. This means creating quality content that your readers will find useful and catch their eyes. Also, using the right keywords guarantees that when someone searches for a specific topic on a search engine, your content pops up.

In Short: Leverage tools like Ubersuggest to find the short and long-tailed key terms and phrases that work best for your business in your new market. Next, remember to localise the rest of your content according to multilingual SEO best practices as well.

#OptimationalTip: Creating multilingual content and using each region’s appropriate keywords for that topic will make your content rank higher. Also, as people look for something, find and read your content, the search engine’s algorithm will consider it more valuable.

4. Create a Seamless eCommerce Experience

Is there anyone among the readers of this article who hasn’t had at least one online shopping experience (either to buy or to sell)? We bet not. And as the eCommerce experience is only increasing, paving the way for users makes more than just sense. In other words, making your products easily and readily available in a way that’s understandable by your end-user is key. 

Studies show that people are keener to buy a product in their original language. This highlights the importance of translating your eCommerce experience—from welcome messages to after-purchase emails and manuals. Also, being able to access the purchase experience in their original language is a great way to improve customer experience. This is something that over 86% of customers say are willing to pay extra for.

#OptimationalTip: During a purchase, forcing your potential customers to go through the content in a foreign language—or bad copy due to poor translation—can mean losing the sale entirely. Boost your chances of success by ensuring a properly written online experience in their native language.

5. Leverage the Power of Videos Through Professional Subtitles

Creating content through videos is a great way for businesses to keep their audience engaged and build trust. However, failing to add professional subtitles in different languages to your video can mean losing the opportunity to engage with a broader audience. While, ideally, companies would create a localised video for each different target audience, certain content (like explainer videos or user manual videos) can be easily reused simply by adding language-relevant professional subtitles.

According to research findings, 73% of customers say they are more likely to purchase if they can watch a video explaining the product or service. Investing in localisation services such as professional subtitles can enable companies to significantly increase conversion rates. 

Final Thoughts on Creating an International Business Expansion Plan

Global expansion has undeniably become the ultimate organisational goal. To assert industry leader status, organisations must penetrate international borders, attract new target audiences, and significantly boost ROI.  

To bridge the language barrier, companies need a proactive localisation services partner to increase their speed to market, ensure compliance with local conventions, and communicate as effectively as their local market competitors.

If you’re looking to expand into new markets, contact us today. We can help you find out the impact that language solutions can have on your business.