Selling internationally in 2024 is something every business owner anticipates especially when they’ve dominated their home countries. But it’s not easy. There are numerous legal, cultural, and monetary hurdles to cross to successfully sell products or establish a business internationally. This article will show you 7 steps to selling internationally in 2024.
Key Takeaways
- To sell your products internationally, you must conduct market research, consult legal advice, establish relationships with key value chain players, localize your products and web content, create international payment options, partake in tradeshows and exhibitions, and set up a seamless ecommerce site.
- Earning in higher paying currencies, customer base expansion, enhanced brand reputation in domestic & international markets, access to talents and initiatives, decreased competition, product flexibility, and higher risk management are some of the benefits of selling your product internationally in 2024.
- Foreign policies, politics, and relations, foreign exchange and inflation, team management, cross-cultural differences, and custom duties and restrictions are some of the challenges to international trade.
- International trade facilitation companies like MATE Africa Concepts offers business registration, product certification, marketing & advertising, local & foreign distribution, ecommerce, and trade promotion & facilitation.
7 Steps to Sell Internationally in 2024
Conduct Market Research
When expanding a business, research must come first. These are the steps to consider when conducting market research:
- Review the global economic landscape in your sector. Analyse your sector’s trends and challenges for a minimum of 5 years and set up a strategy for how your business can profit from it. Reviewing your sector’s global economic landscape involves learning about market saturation, economic stability, legality, and demand. Read predictive articles and consult business experts on your product/business positioning in the current global economic landscape.
- Identify potential markets for your products. Consider the regional demand for your products, customers needs, the ease of doing business in potential market regions and your company’s scalability.
- Run a SWOT analysis on your competition. As you expand your business internationally, you have more to worry about. Analysing your competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats allows you to strategize and start on a good note.
- Review cultural nuances. The world is a global village with different languages and cultures. That’s why KFC and McDonald’s operations are tailored to their host country’s culture. Understanding cultural nuances entails knowing local preferences, buying habits, social trends, language differences and more. This helps you know how to present your business to your international customers.
Accessible online tools for market research are Statista, Pew Research Centre, Google Trends, Google Market Finder, and Export.gov.
Consult Legal Professionals
Every region has a set of guiding laws businesses must adhere to. Consulting with legal professionals will give you more clarity on:
- Legal and tax implications
- Cross-border transactions
- Import restrictions
- Product certification and standardization
- Tax obligations
- Custom duties
- Import restrictions
- Labelling requirements, and
- Legal agreements with key value chain players.
Establish Relationships with Key Value Chain Players
Will you be producing/manufacturing in your home country and shipping your products to new regions? Will you handle production in the new region(s)? Who are your suppliers, distributors, and partners?
The value chain players are necessary for logistics, understanding local business operations, and increasing your product’s accessibility. Thanks to the Internet, many reputable local distribution and supply companies exist to make this possible. But don’t just stick to one! Consult a minimum of five distributors, designers, and suppliers for a variety of options.
Localize Your Products and Web Content
Ever noticed how Coca-Cola and Fanta have different designs for nearly every country? That is what this step is all about. Localizing your product isn’t just about changing the product size and language description, it’s about adjusting your products to reflect the local culture so they can accept it as one of theirs and imbibe it in their culture.
Product localization requires research into local cultures. Does the region use plastic bags? Is there a gift-giving culture as practiced in Japan? Are there various ethnic groups with different languages? How would your product make sense to the average Hawaiians, for example?
Localization goes beyond your products! It also entails your service, and on the Internet, it entails making minor web adjustments. It is important to optimize your website for international SEO. Integrating Google Translate is the first step to doing this. Creating graphic designs with local content, explanatory videos in the local language, and even local customer service assistants all play significant roles in product/business localization.
Create International Payment Options
Seamless transactions or quick payments boils down to the payment options and processes. While Paystack and Flutterwave are the norm in most African countries, Apple Pay, Venmo, Wish, and PayPal, to name a few, are the norm for other countries. Research regional payment preferences (you can take a cue from your competitors) and integrate the right payment gateways.
Creating appropriate payment options is the easiest way to retain customers whereas the opposite is the easiest way to lose them and give your business a bad name or give your competitors your customers.
Partake in Exhibitions and Tradeshows
Tradeshows and exhibitions are the perfect avenues to get immediate customer feedback, assess your competition, understand the market, create demand, and finetune your products to meet customers needs. They are perfect for collaborations and meetings with potential partners as opposed to the back and forth via email or Zoom.
Participating in tradeshows and exhibitions are easy. Find one or two in the region your business is expanding to and research on previous editions of your preferred tradeshow; the attendance quality, vendor participation, and meeting point are all key factors you should consider when signing up for a trade show.
Set Up an E-commerce Site
This remains one of the easiest ways to sell your products anywhere. With an e-commerce site, you have to worry about on-page SEO, display ads in target regions, payment gateways, and language settings.
Market research and product localization are also important when setting up your ecommerce site so be sure you target your desired region. For instance, buyafricamade.com is an ecommerce site for African-made products only, for both local and global audiences.
7 Benefits of Selling Internationally in 2024
As you know, there are several benefits to selling your products internationally, some of which are:
- Earn in higher paying currencies. Expanding your business to countries with high currency values boosts your business revenue and reach.
- Expand your customer base. Whether you sell physically or through ecommerce, selling internationally expands your business across boundaries.
- Enhanced brand reputation in domestic and international markets. Through prime international memberships or subscriptions, strong consumer demand, and stronger economic conditions, selling internationally is a good way to grow your brand.
- Access to talent and initiatives. Selling internationally provides access to local talents and initiatives. Establishing an office or warehouse will require the employment of local talents, which will improve bilateral international relations.
- Decreased competition. Your product may be 1 out of 1000 similar products in your home country, but it could be 1 out of 10 in some foreign countries. Less competition ultimately translates to more income for your business.
- Product flexibility. This is a benefit in terms of design, price and consumer trends. Your product may easily be accepted in foreign countries than in your home country, and this can increase its shelf life.
- Higher risk management. As opposed to a closed economy, trading in a global market offers higher risk management through price regulatory bodies, standardization organizations and foreign exchange.
5 Challenges To Selling Internationally in 2024
Selling in a foreign region has a lot of benefits as well as challenges. Some of those challenges are:
- Foreign policy, politics & relations. Business is influenced by policies, politics, relationships, and bilateral relations, and these are often unpredictable. Being adequately informed on existing policies by paying close attention to the news and international policymakers is a good way to checkmate this.
- Foreign exchange & inflation. According to Harvard Business School Online, the value of a dollar in your country won’t always equal the same amount in other countries’ currency, nor will the value of currency consistently be worth the same amount of goods and services. This can affect your production and supply rate and derail your business.
- Team management. As your business expands, so does your workforce. Managing cross-cultural teams across regions is no easy feat, but working with capable managers can help with this.
- Cross-cultural differences. Culture consists of routine behaviours, language, traditions, time zones, holidays, and social norms. No matter how well you research, you may experience severe or mild culture shock. Constantly learning about your target regions and organizing cultural sensitivity training for your staff is the best way to deal with this.
- Custom duties and import restrictions. This is especially true for African countries. Boundary regulations pose a big challenge to international trade, and fufilling all custom requirements is necessary to overcome this challenge.
In conclusion, selling internationally in 2024 offers great benefits for your business but not without consequences. However, several companies like MATE Africa Concepts exists to facilitate trade for international businesses seeking expansion within Africa, and local businesses seeking expansion in foreign regions.
They facilitate business services through:
- Business registration
- Product certification
- Marketing & advertising
- Local & foreign distribution
- Ecommerce and;
- Trade promotion & facilitation.
