Do you have a small business? Do you think it’s going to remain small for many, many years? Think again! We live in a digital world that gives startup owners and small entrepreneurs an opportunity to grow rapidly.
If you choose the right tools, it’s possible to acquire international customers for your small company. Going global isn’t as challenging as it may seem at first. All that you have to do is dedicate enough time to planning and coming up with a solid, error-proof strategy.
An eСommerce Website
This tip is far from revolutionary but it’s an absolute essential for every small business that wants to expand its reach beyond a local level.
Worldwide eСommerce reached a volume of 1.915 trillion dollars in 2016. Sales will exceed four trillion dollars by 2020. The number will represent 14.6 percent of all spending during the year – a serious increase from the 8.7 percent in 2016.
Currently, 40 percent of internet users worldwide report that they’ve bought a product from an eСommerce store at least once. This means there are more than one billion online buyers in the world and their number is expected to grow even further in the years to come. The numbers are even more impressive if we take a look at certain demographics. Of all Americans, 51 percent report that they prefer online shopping over visiting a brick and mortar store. Forty-eight percent of online shoppers report that they have spent more on purchases than originally anticipated.
An eCommerce website enables you to grow exponentially without having to make a massive investment in the process. Just think about it – how much money would you need to open a store in every country that you have a business interest in? The investment in a solid e-commerce website, staff and logistics will be minimal in comparison.
Increase Your Social Media Presence
Building a strong, powerful and recognizable brand is the most important factor for sustainable growth in the long run.
Luckily, small businesses can rely on an array of very inexpensive and very potent branding opportunities. Doing social media marketing is one of the best approaches. Social media offer a high level of targeting and just like all other inbound promotional methods, they’re highly cost-efficient.
Just think about it – as of March 2017, Facebook has 1.28 billion daily active users. That’s a huge crowd of potential customers across the globe. Instagram has 600 million active users, followed by Twitter with 317 million.
The number of social media users across the globe is expected to reach 2.5 billion people by 2018. Needless to say, social media marketing expenditure will also increase.
In order to make the best use of social media, you have to determine your audience profile and the specific goal of the campaign. Knowing what you’re trying to accomplish (introduce the brand, reach a new target audience, launch a new product line, generate more revenue, etc.) will make it much easier to pick the right social media channel.
When it comes to effective social media promotion, you need powerful copywriting and you need some patience. Building an organic community takes some time. Focus on useful posts and interactions with your followers – you can learn a lot from the information you’re getting from them. Once you lay solid foundations, you can expect a lot of the marketing to be handled by your followers.
Optimize Your Website
Even if you have the best website in the world, you can’t expect a lot from it without doing some professional level search engine optimization (SEO).
SEO is a set of strategies aimed at improving the ranking of your pages for keywords of preference. When you’re attempting to reach international audiences, it can get a bit more complicated.
Professional SEO used to be pretty simple in the past. Over the years, however, major search engines like Google introduced algorithm changes in an attempt to give their users more relevant results and to curb blackhat practices.
Good SEO today is all about reputation establishment. The goal can be accomplished through the creation of useful content, having a functional website, optimizing for mobile devices, spreading your reach (high-quality link building) and increasing the audience’s engagement.
If you have specific audiences in mind, it may be a good idea to think about putting together a multi-lingual website. True, you’ll have to pay for content creation and SEO in the respective language. The investment will pay off quickly, however, especially if you manage to accomplish good positioning within the respective market.
While SEO isn’t particularly expensive to do, it requires constant effort. You’ll have to work on improving your content, ensuring the stellar performance of your website and building your online reputation. The ROI of SEO is high enough to justify such efforts but some time will be required to see the results that you’re hoping for.
When it comes to growing your small business globally, the internet is your safest bet. The online realm provides excellent popularization opportunities. You can connect with the right audience, interact with these people and even carry out commercial transactions in the virtual realm. While certain strategies tend to be generally effective, there may be some specifics for different industry representatives. Take some time to brainstorm, define clear goals and learn a bit more about your audience. Such intelligence can boost the cost-efficiency of the campaign and give you even better results than originally anticipated.
