How to Enter a New Market and Scale Your Operations

According to one survey, 45% of product launches are delayed by at least one month. 

If you’re thinking of launching your products in a new market, you’ll need to come up with a launch plan. 

Thankfully, we have some tips that can help you have a successful launch in a new global market. Keep reading to find out what they are!

Figure Out Your Goals

You first need to identify your goals for entering a new market. You can only succeed if you have a guiding post and know why you’re entering this new market. 

For example, you might be expanding as a part of your growth strategy. Or you might be developing a new product or service that fits into a niche in an international market. 

You’ll need to review your brand and marketing strategy as well. This can help you set out how you know if your business expansion was successful or not. When you have this goal in mind, you’ll be able to plan out the rest of your strategy. 

You should set goals or reasonable and measurable as well. You may also want to set short- and long-term goals. Some questions that you want to think about while setting these goals is how long you want to have before you launch your brand. 

You also need to set a limit on how much market research you need to do before launching your product. Lastly, what are you trying to accomplish with the expansion besides revenue? 

For example, it could help your brand name more in the long-term, which will naturally bring in more revenue.

You should invite your marketing, executive, and board team to brainstorm the beginning stage of your strategy. This ensures that you are all on the same page.

Do Competitor Research

Some part of your strategy should also include some competitor research. You need to identify your top five competitors and analyse what markets they’re entering. If they’ve launched products globally, study how they did it and identify what they did right or wrong.

When you understand your competitors, you’ll also understand where your brand is positioned in the market. This can also help you refine your value propositions and explain it better to a customer as well. 

You need to have a strong product with competitive pricing or features that can make you stand out from your competitors. You can also understand what markets your competitors are in, which can help you identify which markets you might want to enter. 

Identify Your Target Customer

You also want to define who your target customer is. You need to figure out how many potential customers are in a market. For example, if you will only have one customer in an international market, it may not be worth the money and effort to launch your brand there. 

You’ll also want to figure out if you can provide local customer support to your target customer. You’ll need to understand the cultural aspect of your audience as well. For example, understand their rules, cultural differences, and habits. 

You’ll also need to understand the local rules and regulations because some of them have strict rules around marketing, for example. You might want to consider hiring a consultant who is familiar with all of the local regulations so that you can have a successful launch. 

Be Flexible

Entering a new global market can be stressful, and your company needs to be flexible. You’ll need to have skills for scaling your business because it can be challenging. 

While you might have experience launching your initial business, you need to have different skills to help grow your business. You will need to learn new skills and develop new attitudes, and be flexible and responsive. 

You’ll need to learn how to delegate and allow management and staff to handle different tasks. You can’t manage the day-to-day operations of your business, and you also need to have time management skills. 

Bringing in outsiders and consultants can be helpful as well. They can provide an objective position on how to grow your business. Be open to listening to them and be sure to take some of their advice to actually help your business. 

Train Staff

If you want to completely trust your staff, you need to train them and prepare them for the change as well. You’ll need to upskill your employees and effectively communicate your expansion plan.

They may need to transition to new roles and handle new responsibilities to manage a new customer base. You should spend time training the staff and showing them how to manage new software or equipment that you’ll be using to grow. 

Refine Marketing Efforts

The marketing that you’re doing in your home country may not be effective in the new country as well. Focus on refining your inbound marketing strategies to draw your target audience in.

You need to identify a strategy for marketing-qualified and sales-qualified leads. You can also brainstorm different strategies that you can try to get the best results for the new marketing efforts.

Discover More About How to Enter a New Market

These are only a few strategies to know about entering a new market, but we can make it much easier for you.

It can be challenging and stressful, but by hiring the right consultant, you can spend your time focusing on running the overall business.

Check out our page on our consulting services to see how we can help you with global expansion!