How to Sell Your Product to an International Market Successfully

For most business owners who are growth-minded, it is quite essential for them to conquer their local market and they might even take that as a beginning. However, the main goal for them is to take their idea and spread it globally and make an international business. To many, this might sound rather ambitious, but going global certainly comes with benefits. Selling your product to the global market successfully will allow you to decrease the dependency on one market, prolong the sales life of products and even expand and grow your own business. For such efforts, you can easily generate more income.

Expanding a business is not an easy task, but it can certainly be done for businesses of all kinds and sizes if they follow these basic business strategies:

1. Conduct a Thorough Market Research

Once you have a solid foundation that is intact, it is necessary to see whether your business will even succeed in the new markets. A global business research might help you figure out the various facts from fiction with definite numbers. The review would actually help you identify your capabilities, the specific resources, core abilities, and even the unique value offer.

2. Come up with an Appealing Product Description in Different Languages

It is necessary to come up with an innovative product description in different languages to reach out to a greater audience. Experts believe that having access to different languages for your business and related content regarding your store is necessary. This includes availability to search engines and emails too. If you wish to step-up your business game, increase your business strategy and sell products internationally, you’ll even need to work with locals who are familiar with the language and cultural problems to help with your market research.

3. Pricing Strategy

Deciding on how much you need to charge customers for your product needs more thought than just calculating the costs and totaling a mark-up. Pricing your product is among the most important characteristics of a marketing business strategy. Generally, pricing strategies can be categorized into five strategies:

Cost-plus pricing: This is simply calculating the costs and totaling a mark-up.

Competitive pricing: Setting a price that is based on what the opposition charges.

Value-based pricing: Setting a price that is based on how much the buyer believes what the item you’re selling is worth.

Price skimming: Setting a great price and then decreasing it as the market evolves.

Penetration pricing: Setting a low price so as to enter a competitive market easily and increasing it later. It is important to remember that you want the customer to purchase your product, which is why a suitable pricing strategy must be chosen that is suitable to your target market.

4. Shipping and Delivery Methods

When creating a global business, and entering the world of e-commerce you need to pay close attention to your international target audience and how they will physically receive the product they ordered. You need to always keep the international market in the back of your mind to succeed – many outlets such as Statista report that retailers who offer premium international shipping grow about 60% faster than those who don’t. Better yet, the average order value of an international sale is approximately 17% higher than an average domestic sale.

Two of the popular shipping methods are:

Local to Foreign

Using express shipping options to ship products immediately from your local warehouse to the customer. This shipping method is more expensive, despite the fact that you wouldn’t need a foreign warehouse or inventory. This method equates to slower delivery times.

Local to Foreign to Local

This method requires your business to have a warehouse located in a foreign country along with a large inventory that is dedicated for foreign customers. This method is much faster than express and creates cheaper shipping rates, overall.

5. Payment Methods

It is important for businesses who wish to go global to consider accepting payments through popular payment methods, in particular e-commerce.

There are various methods by which a global business could accept payments. These include PayPal which is a great alternative to the typical payment methods online, particularly if your website is not so famous, because if you aren’t popular, many people might not wish to leave their credit card information. A second method is by Visa and Master Cards. These credit/debit cards are the most popular online payment method for international business across the globe. Also, digital wallets or mobile payment apps are also good methods. They offer better security than credit cards in general.

“What’s more, you can make your own invoices by using some free invoice templates online which can help you bill customers and get paid quickly.

6. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is an effective way for businesses of every size and kind to approach customers. Your customers are probably already cooperating with brands through all kinds of social media, and if you’re not communicating with your audience directly through social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram, then you’re missing out on a lot!

Good marketing on social media can bring amazing success to your business, creating dedicated brand supporters and even driving sales and leads. Social media marketing helps businesses with many goals like enhancing the web traffic, creating conversions, increasing brand awareness, inventing a brand identity and a progressive brand association, as well as enhancing interaction and communication with key audiences.

7. Your Website is Your Brand

You must always keep in mind that your website is a crucial aspect of your brand and should be treated as such. When creating your website design always keep it consistent by keeping your customers in the loop with updated information. You should also be sure to keep your website design as professional as possible by making it easy to use and interactive.

8. Customer Service

Providing a good customer service for businesses in going global is very important. They can help you enhance customer loyalty to the businesses, enhance the amount of cash each customer spends on your business, enhance how often a client purchases from you, and generate a positive word-of-mouth and even a good reputation.

Conclusion

The global economy is rather hungry for trust, content and value. If a business can fulfill this it’ll surely profit too. Control all the previous successes by taking the first baby steps out of the comfort zone. Perceptions and cultures keep shifting in new countries all the time, but the direction of marketing is always constant. So build an audience, win their trust, realize what they want most and then sell exactly that to them. This works every time no matter what the location or language.