Succeed abroad blog

How to successfully expand your business to a new market

Written by Søren Kjær Nielsen | Dec 6, 2012

How to successfully expand your business to a new market

Written by Søren Kjær Nielsen

 

It can be an almost impossible mission to dedicate an equal amount of time, focus and resources to a new market in a new country, that you dedicated to your home market when you just started out.

Conversion rates and traffic development will often suffer due to a lack of attention and knowledge of the new country. There is no quick fix to this. What you have in your home country is a unique combination of ownership of your business and detailed local insight.

But you can do something else. 

We believe that knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your business is important in order to navigate a new market. You will need to dedicate ongoing attention to the new market, and you will need insights from “the other side”. What do your new customers think, what are their habits, and how do they prefer to pay online?

To do this, you need to ally with someone who can convert this knowledge to activities and actions in your webshop.

For example, This week it has been snowing in Denmark. It has been unusually cold which is not normal this time of year. If you lived here, you would properly relate to this abnormal situation in your newsletter, and use the weather to convince customers of the convenience of online Christmas shopping. You can use it as a theme for a “too cold to go out – sale” or something else the Danish consumers can relate to.

It’s impossible to relate to your customers in another country if you don’t have boots on the ground.