by
Uncategorised
28th May, 2026
If your SME has got off to a good start, there might come a point where you’ve reached a healthy level of profitability … but then growth stagnates. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – a lot of businesses are happy with serving their existing clients and making enough profits to stay stable. But for other business owners, this period is a sign that they have to look to expand, one way or another. Perhaps you have reached that conclusion.
What has normally happened here is that you have saturated your local, or perhaps national, market with your offering. Winning new clients from your competitors becomes more challenging from an ROI perspective, and even if you’re the only provider in your territory, you have reached a deadlock. One option is to diversify your range so your existing customers will buy more products or services from you. It can work up to a point, as long as your new offerings are relevant to what you already have, and they are competitive with existing products in the market. Failing that, if you seek more growth, the only real option is to expand your territory, which probably means having a presence in other nations.
For many businesses, this is a huge step – and we certainly wouldn’t want to downplay how difficult it can be. But you have already proved that there’s a market for your products in your own locale, so why wouldn’t the same apply elsewhere?
The trick to going global really all revolves around being strategic and intelligent, managing risks against potential rewards, and ensuring all your paperwork is in order. Research costs time and money, but it is nothing compared to the potential costs of making rash decisions and setting up shop where you don’t belong. In this article, we’ll cover the main considerations for taking your business into new countries and continents. It should give you a starting point towards ensuring you’ve got all bases covered as you come up with a strategy that suits your business.
You will no doubt be familiar with market research in your own territory from your history so far. If you’re preparing to expand, we can assume it was successful. Of course, supply and demand are key factors when you’re researching overseas markets, so much of your past and current methodologies will still be applicable. But there are also important cultural aspects to take into consideration.
Every nation has its traditions, habits, product preferences and ways of doing business, and it might be difficult to enter many markets with a given product. But could you use that to your advantage, by being a disrupter? Have you identified a nation where your line of business is still stuck in the dark ages, and you could use your experience to change the way people think about your sector? Being the first disrupter gives you a huge advantage. If you’re successful, you will be copied, but you will still be the name that locals associate with that new way of doing things.
There could even be opportunities to take advantage of your home nation’s reputation for a certain product. How many times is “Made in Italy” used as a selling point for pasta, for example? Japan benefited for decades because of its electronic prowess and reputation for reliable motor vehicles. Is your sector one that plays well abroad because of your home nation? This kind of factor can be a great way to start targeting your market research.
Having a presence in another nation doesn’t necessarily mean a copy and paste of your current setup. There are multiple ways of entering a market, even if they can change as you get more of a foothold there.
The simplest way into a market is exporting. Other retailers or suppliers can take your products and sell them if it’s a retail offering, or you can sell your products directly to customers in other nations by physically shipping them over, without having a production facility there.
Partnerships can be formed with businesses that you share a market with, so you take advantage of their existing name and infrastructure, and they get to expand their range with your products. Becoming a subsidiary of an overseas business can also work in some sectors.
Licensing might be a cost-effective way in, too. You allow an overseas company to produce and distribute your product by granting them legal use of your IP, be that with your own branding, or with theirs. It’s a relatively low risk strategy, as you earn royalties from sales, but you already have the overseas company’s marketing and local knowledge to take advantage of.
There are certain elements of your brand that might play well in your own country, but which could fall flat – or be downright offensive – in others. It is vital that you ensure your whole branding operation, from logos and straplines to adverts and imagery, play well in the target nation. It’s usually best to hire a marketing agency from that territory to go over the finer points with you, because they will have a more instinctive feel for cultural differences between your nations.
Even your company’s name, which might not translate favourably in the foreign language, might need to change when you’re abroad. For example, TJ Maxx, a US brand, changed its name to TK Maxx when it opened in the UK, because its original name was too similar to TJ Hughes. But the same can also apply to logos, which might be similar to existing ones, or even brand colours, which could have different connotations in different cultures.
You might even need to change your pricing and positioning between your home and overseas territories. A cheap and cheerful product in one country could be considered high-end in another, or you might have to charge more competitively if you are entering a sector that is more widely represented than at home.
You might have a healthy digital marketing operation targeting your own country, but if you are not familiar with digital marketing to overseas customers, you should hire a specialist agency, as there is a lot to learn. International SEO is vital to giving you visibility in your target locale, with elements like language, local domains and keyword research all being determined by the market. A .com domain might be useful globally, but if you have a .uk or .co.uk domain, that probably won’t play well overseas.
The social media platforms you use might not be as important overseas, too. While the big name US platforms like Facebook, X, TikTok, LinkedIn and Instagram serve huge swathes of the world, including non-English-speaking parts, some countries have other dominant platforms that you would be better off getting a presence on. This is particularly true of China, where you’ll effectively have to start your social media presence from scratch.
Think about how you translate your website, too. Automatic translation can produce laughable results, so it’s always worth hiring a native-tongue translator for your copy. But you might need to go further than that. Some of your marketing messages might be very specific to your home country, and would be meaningless in another. Seek good advice on whether to completely rewrite the copy for overseas website visitors.
You might not be surprised to learn that we are strong advocates of the power of trade shows for entering new markets. We design and build stands for all sorts of companies that are looking to go global, and we have seen how well it works.
Whether you are a B2B company seeking new clients overseas, or a retail business trying to get your products on foreign shelves, the exhibition sector is a great way to gauge interest and make those all-important leads. Sending representatives to the target nation puts you right inside the culture, and provides a priceless education on the market.
Perhaps the most important role is to give good first impressions of your business to a market that might be unfamiliar to you. It’s your time to shine, and with an eye-catching stand, interactive elements and knowledgeable staff who speak your target clients’ language (literally and figuratively), you can give your sales team months’ worth of work to follow up with.
Just as with your branding, making sure that your stand is relevant to the nation and the sector you’re trying to woo is important. Some markets love flashy stands that would seem over the top back home, while others like a more subdued, businesslike feel. Consider the logistics of your stand, too. Are you transporting your regular stand overseas, or will you be hiring a builder that’s local to the venue? There are costs involved with both approaches, which we cover in our article on planning your first international exhibiting event.
Accumulating good PR when you’re not a local company can be tricky, but it’s an effective way of getting yourself known if you can pull it off. As with marketing, an agency in the place you are hoping to sell to is probably your best option, as they will have all the necessary links to the right kinds of media. PR can represent incredible value for money, however, compared to marketing, so it’s often worth a punt, even though success is never guaranteed.
There are other forms of soft marketing that can be effective, though. If you enter yourself for international awards that carry weight in the foreign nation, and make sure you take time to study the best way to make your entry fly, it will automatically win you press mentions if you do well. Winning is a bonus, of course, but just being nominated or given an honourable mention makes people take notice.
Speaking at conferences and international events can also be a great way to give your brand credibility and importance when you’re trying to make inroads. There will always be something that your business has gained expertise in that will form useful sharable nuggets for others in your sector.
Entering a new market means you have a completely new rulebook, and the consequences of getting it wrong can be costly. An important consideration is data protection laws, for example, which vary significantly by region. While GDPR sets the standard across Europe, markets like the US, China and the Gulf states operate under very different frameworks.
Advertising standards, product labelling requirements and intellectual property protections also have hugely different interpretations around the world, from relatively liberal to very strict. It’s vital that you seek professional legal advice before even attempting to get yourself established in a country – it could turn out that the way you operate could be unacceptable there, even though it’s perfectly legitimate in your home country.
If you are convinced that the next step for your business is through international expansion, you’re about to enter an exciting period in its evolution. Thousands of companies take their first tentative steps overseas every year, and many of them will end up being successful, so there’s no reason why yours should be any different.
The best thing you can do now is to study how businesses have made that transition, and learn from their mistakes and wins. Some of your efforts may indeed come to nothing, but as long as you have mapped out the risks and performed a full cost/benefit analysis for any given step, you should at least minimise your losses – as well as picking up valuable lessons.
The important thing to know is that “overseas” isn’t a single entity, and that two neighbouring countries with seemingly similar cultures (to our eyes at least) can have very different regulations and cultures. There can even be variations within regions of a single nation, as exemplified by the USA. It makes sense to focus on one at a time, so you can really immerse yourself in the culture, and get sound advice from experts in that nation’s marketing, law, traditions and openings. The lessons picked from the first overseas move will form the backbone of future expansion.
If exhibitions look like being a promising channel for your organisation, why not talk to us about getting an exhibition stand that will turn heads wherever you aim to do business?
