For many businesses, the ultimate ambition is to see your business grow on an international scale. Although international expansion can make your job more complicated, the benefits ultimately outweigh the disadvantages.
The process of expanding globally requires hard work, dedication and careful planning.
Read on for our top tips on how to successfully expand on an international scale…
Begin with a small number of countries
When you first set out to expand internationally, don’t throw your business in the deep end by targeting by language or regional grouping. Instead, set country-specific goals, concentrating on a small number of countries at a time. This will enable you to organically branch out into bigger markets within the same region at a later date.
Discover local trends
Use Google Trends to ascertain what top issues and trends people are talking about in your target regions. To get started, simply select the country you want to explore using the drop-down menu in the top right-hand corner.
Create country-specific content
Even if you continue to write content only in English, this doesn’t mean you can’t create country-specific blog posts. Here at 8 Ways Media, we are always on a mission to tailor our content to our specific target market, which means creating content that our readers can relate to (see here and here for some examples). You should also craft content that focuses on local holidays in the market you’re targeting. Writing high-quality, country-specific content enables us to continue to attract high traffic.
Don’t forget about keyword research
Keywords continue to play a crucial role in attracting the right traffic to your website. Use Google AdWords to establish which keywords offer the best opportunities in your top markets. By also keeping track of metrics, you can repurpose some of your most successful posts.
Focus on meta data
Your keyword focus should also appear in your meta data, including the title, meta description, header, URL and alt image tags. Don’t forget to include your chosen keywords between three and four times in the bulk of your text, including the first and last paragraphs.
Provide local phone numbers
It’s important that your audience can contact you without feeling intimidated or overwhelmed, and one of the easiest ways to do this is to provide a local phone number that they can contact you on. This is easy to do using services such as Global Call Forwarding. It’s also essential that your contact details remain consistent across all marketing materials in order to be perceived as a reliable, trustworthy brand.
Offer a global customer experience
The entire customer experience provided needs to be professional, reliable and holistic and this could mean that you need to expand your current customer support team to include multilingual department members. Creating and promoting multilingual content in the most immersive way possible is essential to the successful expansion of your business.
About 8 Ways
8 Ways Media is a leading branding and web design agency offering an array of professional services designed to take your business to brand new heights. Contact 8 Ways Media today to find out how you can successfully expand your business on an international scale.
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