For all types of businesses, marketing to the global market is not taken lightly as it requires thought, time and investment. Taking time to research and understand the global market is vital before involving shareholders and other interested parties in expanding overseas.

One of the keys to success is gaining a thorough understanding of the targeted markets, including the potential role of any competitors and what is required in each of the targeted countries to make a useful mark. The following are the priority on any to do list before a final decision is made about going global:

1. Prepare a segmentation marketing analysis which will help to determine if your brand is suitable for selling on the local market.
2. Prepare what is referred to as a product gap analysis which compares your product’s status with what is available with regards to similar locally available products.  Is there a gap in demand?
3. Conduct a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis against any likely competition. To begin with, you will probably discover that your asking price is more than the local market price. This is something you may need to adapt.
4. Develop a strategic business plan related to the targeted overseas local markets. You may need a different one for each country. For example, if your language is English, you will only be able to localise your brand effectively if you translate all information related to it into the countries’ languages.
5. Define your strategy for the short, medium, and long-term scenario and layout reasonable goals that will measure your progress and benefits/costs as you proceed over time.
6. Define objectives, goals, and success measurements which includes whether you think it is better to set up a separate company in your localisation plan, a branch or just a sales office where the later will organise the showcasing and importing of the product for customers.
7. Establishing a beachhead team is a proven method of kick-starting your product overseas. This means hiring a proven senior management team, to begin with, that knows how to set up a business in the targeted country. Once established the team members can be changed according to the needs of the new business base. Many companies outsource these management roles to people outside of their company with the aim of replacing them once successful establishment has taken place.
8. Review the targeted country’s government regulations related to setting up a business in that country. There are minimum wages to consider, provision for sick and holiday pay, environmental legislation and taxation rules. All these will help to fix the price of your brand.
9. Product readiness is only likely to take place once all the information has been localised and translated professionally into the language of the targeted country and your targeted market within that country. This is no easy task as research has shown bad translations and in particular poor, inappropriate wording does not go down well with new customers. One of the known mistakes is translating the slogans of your brand into new languages. Often, slang and idioms are used, which when translated into other languages could cause offence or even a negative reaction to your brand. Get this translated properly in the first place and you will not go wrong.
10. Get your product patented before it leaves your country’s shores. This is because as soon as it arrives overseas and seems marketable, it will not be too long before someone tries to imitate your idea and market it at a price you are unable to compete with.
11. Test your product with your new market to make sure it meets up to the quality customers in that country demand.
12. Legal documentation must be fulfilled as you should be aware that some government agencies follow strict requirements regarding the adherence to legal documentation which means all legal documents required such as contracts, land leases, employee work conditions and wages should be completed where necessary and translated into the host country’s language before you make a firm presence in another country.
13. Organizational readiness is a key to success, so that means ensuring your product matches the language, the culture and the customs of the country. For example, it is no use marketing modern skimpy swimwear to Moslem countries. It might be secretly admired, but it will not get a lot of takers. Modest swimwear that conceals most parts of the body could turn out to be highly successful.
14. You are going to want to take advantage of the local labour market so you should initiate and guarantee a highly competitive package of wages and benefits to attract new, loyal employees who will go the extra mile.

 Conclusion

For the effective marketing and selling of your product, it needs a cohesive, comprehensive strategy that takes into consideration marketing and sales strategies, product delivery options, clear branding and pricing all in a language that is understood by your targeted market.