Sometimes, to achieve success, it’s important you take your business to different regions. You never know how much your niche is in demand abroad and it sometimes makes sense to try different markets. However, getting into another market can be very difficult so you need to know what you’re doing and how to make it work. This is why I recommend doing the right research and knowing what needs to be done to flourish in another market. It doesn’t matter if you have a physical business or an online business because growth in another region means you have to know what to expect. Sometimes you’ll have language barriers, financial barriers, content barriers, etc.
If you are thinking of expanding your business globally, then here are a few things to consider before getting started…
Research
No matter what step you’re taking in your business that’s out of the ordinary, you should start with research. Doing research will protect you from unforeseen situations. I’ve noticed when I sit down and do my research, I’ll find obstacles I otherwise would have forgotten the first time around. The risks are even bigger when you are entering a market you’re NOT familiar with so I encourage spending a few days gathering data. Here are a few things to pay close attention to…
- Local language
- Market research
- Competition
- Demand
Again, these are just a few things that popped into my mind, however, you should conduct the corresponding research associated with your niche.
Sustain Your Blog
Blogging is one of the best ways to get up-to-date information across and it’s important to sustain content writing when transitioning into another territory. By keeping a steady blog going, you’re able to tell people about changes being made and what they can expect locally and globally. However, the main reason writing content focused around the region is important is for SEO. When you focus content within a given region, you will rank within the country Google search and this can drive massive traffic to your blog. This will also lower your initial marketing costs because organic traffic is FREE.
Local Language
Here is one of the toughest factors that will influence your growth within a local region. You have to remember, English is NOT always the local language for different regions so you need to find a way to transform your content. There are a few ways to quickly transform your content to the local region so you don’t lose any downtime. For example,
First, you can hire some local writers who know the language well and have them either write new content for you or simply translate current content. Secondly, you can use handy tools available to convert content into local language and there are many to select from. This tool works great and it’s installed within your backend so when a visitor arrives on your page, it’ll give them an option to change language. The tool will trace the region by connecting with the browser IP address and will know what options to provide the visitor.
Google Trends
Google Trends is a great way to find out where you should expand your business to because it provides search information over several months. If you type in your “target” keywords, Google Trends will bring up a list of countries and keywords where your niche is growing. For example, in the illustration below, I’ve used the keyword “weight loss diet”…
The cool thing is if I click on the country, Google Trends will narrow the search results down to the State>City. It’s a great tool to find out how the growth of markets is within a specific region and this will provide you with some knowledge into future success rate. If you’ve noticed your niche has had growth for the past 2-3 years, then you know it’s a HOT area. However, again, it’s important to only use this as a slight indication of success and conduct your own research going forward.