Do you have a thriving local online store and are still hesitant to enter other markets? Coronavirus caused an earthquake in the online world. People have learned to shop, study and work online in record time.
Digitalisation advances have been reflected in e-commerce, and online stores have started to see their sales grow. Yours probably did too, if you were already in business. Do you want to maintain or increase your market share? Then take the leap and expand.
Why you shouldn’t delay expanding your online store
You will increase revenue and reduce costs
Entering a different market will help you gain new customers and increase your revenue. As your orders grow, you can negotiate better prices from suppliers or optimise production costs.
You will overtake the competition
For example, the Slovak market is small and, in many areas, quite crowded. Use HitHorizons to compare your sales with your competitors. Find out how popular the goods you sell are. Like this, you can easily work out your approximate market share. Are you satisfied with this figure?No? You can either start competing for customers or expand and find new ones. If you succeed, step one will happen naturally. You will start to produce more cost-effectively and gain a huge competitive advantage, even within your original market.
You will strengthen your business
With the expansion, you end dependence on a home market that is filling up and where many customers lack buying power. Although the world is interconnected, income from multiple markets is more stable.
There are always markets that perform better than others in any given period.
How to expand – today
Focus on the markets that hold the greatest potential for you. Find out which ones they are with the free Google Market Finder tool.
At Dexfinity, we help clients find suitable markets through advanced Google export tools, which we have unique access to.
When choosing a market, take into account the following:
- the expected cost of entering a new market,
- the amount of competition in your segment,
- the size and maturity of the market,
- and transport and translation options.
Localisation of your online shop and brand in a new market
Accurate translations are the key to the success of the entire online shop expansion process. English is the world’s most widely spoken business language, but if you enter a non-English speaking market, it will be of no use to you.
Locals know more than you do
Localisation doesn’t just mean translating the website and product descriptions. You need to adapt your entire brand to the new market. Work with local people who know much more about it than you do.
For example, almost every Swede speaks perfect English, but they tend to purchase much more frequently from online stores that trade in their mother tongue. Germans, on the other hand, like to study the terms and conditions and hate the use of superlatives.
When expanding, take inspiration from your competitors
Focus on online stores that sell the same or similar products as yours. Check out their buying process, or order the product and contact customer support. You’ll get an excellent overview of your competitors, their processes and their approach to customers.
Compare this experience with your online store and look for opportunities to:
- simplify shopping even further,
- improve customer service,
- and supplement your product range with products or services that your competitors lack.
A seemingly simple but effective solution that will help you understand the market and find new opportunities. Spend a little, gain a lot.
Re-evaluate your ideal customers
Every business owner (or at least those serious about their business) knows their ideal customer. The expansion of an online store into a new market changes the situation. Not by much, but enough to make you rethink your current personas (fictional ideal customers) somewhat.
The target group in terms of age, gender or education will remain the same, but expect some factors to change.
In the new market:
- customers have different incomes and buying behaviour (if you sell luxury watches, you might find that in Germany, you will gain more customers. At the same time, they are also more picky, they read reviews and expect excellent customer service).
- expect different buying motivations (in one market, your product may be a dream come true for the customer, while elsewhere, it’s ‘just another one for the collection, simply because they have, and spend, much more money).
- customers often favour different social media platforms (Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and others).
- customers seek inspiration from local media, price comparison sites or online marketplaces (adapt your sales strategy to the new environment).
Create content that earns respect
The success of expansion is not just dependent on cheap transport and the number of payment methods (although these are extremely important).
You should also concentrate on the authority of your own brand:
- Publish high-quality and grammatically correct content (videos, blogs, infographics).
- Educate your customers for free (do you sell mattresses? Create a webinar or video on how to choose the most suitable one).
- Build social approval and trust (collect testimonials, partner with the right influencer and give new customers proof of your quality).
You will gain more time with automation
Don’t spend hours working on problems and activities that can be handled by a machine or software. Reach for the right automation tools. Depending on the type of business, we recommend automating the following areas before expanding:
- warehouse and ordering systems,
- email marketing,
- customer support via chatbot,
- gathering customer references and data,
- PPC campaign bidding, ad targeting and ad segmentation.
Why should you avoid creating campaigns manually?
Setting up Google Ads campaigns manually takes a lot of time and exposes you to a high risk of errors. In the long run, this is an extremely expensive solution.
Magic Script and PPC Bee
We recommend that clients automate PPC campaigns before seeking expansion. For example, they can use MagicScript, which we also trust. Up to 86% of our clients’ spend comes from automated campaigns.
PPC Bee helps us optimise the creation of campaigns. Everything is done in real-time and we much prefer to invest the hours spent on manual bidding into strategy development and the collection of quality data.
Expand into new markets with a clear head
When expanding abroad, rely on real data about your competition and demand for your product in the chosen country. We’ve helped many businesses along their journey into foreign markets. However, we always leverage relevant data from Google’s exclusive export tools.
Transcend borders and make your product known around the world.
