During a recent meeting with a group of ten Laval SME executives, we discussed the best practises to cost-effectively pursue business opportunities in international markets. The objective of the meeting was to draw up a list of tips that we could share with SME leaders who wish to break into a foreign market but have a limited available budget.
The tips were classified under four (4) main themes:
- Participating in foreign trade fairs;
- Prospecting for clients or partners;
- Hiring staff or foreign representatives assigned to developing international business;
- Promotion and advertising.
Of course, the relevance of each tip will vary based on the company’s strategy, business model or field of business.
In Part 2, we will present tips relating to the last two themes.
Hiring Staff or Foreign Representatives Assigned to Developing International Business:
- Use your network of contacts and your social networks to specifically identify the right person in the targeted market. Choosing the wrong person is a frequent and costly mistake, which is why a careful search and assessment is a wise investment of time;
- Hire the person as a consultant, at least at the beginning, in order to avoid the bureaucratic pitfalls and constraints linked to hiring and managing employees abroad;
- Hire employees who can take over the company’s day-to-day business activities in order to free yourself from certain tasks and enable yourself to get actively involved in developing your business abroad.
Promotion and Advertising:
- Create evocative, clear and specific promotional tools in order to make it as easy as possible for sales intermediaries to do their job and limit information requests and questions about your products to your own sales people;
- Draft white papers that provide clear information to potential clients and to the general public about your products’ usage context and benefits;
- Launch a public relations campaign in the targeted market in order to take advantage of free exposure in local media;
- Ensure search engine optimization of your Web site so that it is easy to find;
- Raise awareness among Web influencers in order to gain low-cost exposure in international markets;
- Use social media to build an international network of contacts to whom you can regularly transmit information of interest relating to your activity sector;
- Launch highly targeted Google AdWords advertising campaigns by specifying the targeted region and key words. These campaigns are relatively inexpensive, because you only pay when an Internet user clicks on the link and visits your site. Even if he does not click on the link, you still benefit from a certain amount of free exposure. Moreover, this type of advertising campaign can be entirely measured and personalized.
In conclusion, although money is always an issue for an SME hoping to break into foreign markets, it is possible to obtain very good results at a low cost if you make use of your network, invest time, adopt a structured approach, use new technologies and are suitably prepared. Indeed, even with a large budget, it is rare that a disorganized approach yields good results.
How about you, what are your tips and tricks?
Bruno Séguin
