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So your business is already large. Fantastic.
But is it international?
Gaining international clients can come with a host of large benefits – higher profits being one of them.
To grow your business in this way, you’ll need to make adjustments to your marketing, manage your accounting workflow, understand current trends in consumer behavior, and effectively manage your international business.
With this article, you’ll get a solid starting point.
Table of Contents
Introduction
If you’re a business owner, you’ve probably mulled over at least one of these two things: accounting reconciliation, and attracting international clients. For the former, there’s always automated reconciliation software, if not reconciliation services.
As for the latter – well, it may be a bit more complicated. Even though the Internet has made the business world a smaller place, there are many things to consider when trying to attract a global clientele. If done correctly, the results can be immensely rewarding.
And it’s not limited to large businesses. According to a USForex survey, 58% of small businesses work with foreign clients. And why not? The advantages are numerous. Some of them, aside from the better profit margins, include:
Year-round business: Skirt seasonal dips, since overseas clients may not have the same holiday seasons as your home country.
Strengthened brand: People like to know your company is well-established. Just knowing you work for clients not just in your home city, but in London, Toulouse, Amsterdam, Tokyo, and more, can improve your brand image to both current and prospective clients.
Increased network: Overseas clients give you the opportunity to grow your industry contacts. This means not just more customers, but more suppliers and more business opportunities.
If you’re going to hop onto the overseas clients train, it’s best not to go on flailing. With the points below, you will be better prepared to attract global clients and grow your business accordingly.
Grow Your Business: How to Attract Overseas Clients
1. Analyze International Sales & Traffic
Your first step should be checking and analyzing your international sales and traffic. There are several tools you can use for this: Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Semrush are some of the most best ones.
You can check the top 5–10 markets that are searching for and clicking on your website. You may find that you already get more traffic from a different country than your current targeted country.
Use this information to turn those clicks into sales, if you think it would be lucrative.
Look into the market reports and keywords to understand the way people are searching, and whether they are looking for the kind of products or services you sell.
2. Use the Market Diversification Tool
If you are based in the US, a fantastic tool is the Market Diversification tool by the US Trade Department. To provide recommendations, the tool uses 11 key trade indicators.
You will need to know the harmonized codes for any products you are planning to export.
Once you provide the code, the tool can take advantage of vast sets of trade data relevant to your product category.
You will be able to access information such as: tariffs you might face while importing products, how much of this kind of product has the nation imported from the US in the past, and whether the market is ready for further exports of your product.
Other indicators are country-level. These reflect whether the export markets you are considering are ripe for doing business.
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3. Provide Clear Delivery Dates
If you are selling a service or product online, it is vital to provide an accurate and clear turnaround time or delivery date.
It will be easier for clients to decide if they want to buy from you when they know they will receive their product by a certain date.
Needless to add – do not make a habit of late deliveries or missed due dates. This is one of the easiest ways to lose customers and get them to leave a bad review of your company online. If you are outsourcing your delivery service, make sure they deliver on their promises.
4. Host Virtual Events
Hosting virtual events such as online workshops, trade shows, webinars, and live streaming can be a great way to obtain international clients and grow your business.
With these events, you can also collect the attendees’ contact details, so you can send them follow-up text messages, emails and phone calls. This will give you further opportunities to working with new business partners and selling to new clients.
Ensure that you share all the details of your online event on your website, landing pages and social media accounts well in advance.
5. Ad Campaigns
Using paid advertising can work faster than purely organic marketing, which can take months to start providing results. With ad campaigns, you can display ads on popular platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter, and search engines like Google.
The three most popular paid ad channels are search engine ads, content promotion networks, and social media ads. This way, you can target your audience within a fixed budget.
Make sure that you optimize your keywords and use good, relevant content in your ads.
6. Cross the Language Barrier
It is recommended that you or at least one of your employees is fluent in the language of your target audience.
Furthermore, you should be mindful of the nuances of your target audience’s language. For instance, in the US, a “biscuit” is a soft cake akin to a scone, while while in the UK, a “biscuit” is an unleavened, flat, crisp and sweet cake.
Conclusion
We hope this article has given you an insight into how to grow your business by attracting global clients. Is there a point you would like to add to the list? Let us know in the comments!
To help manage your business after gaining international clients, it is always prudent to conduct daily reconciliation. NextGen Accounting offers credit card reconciliation services, bank reconciliation services, reconciliation automation, and consulting services to large firms.
To give you the most accurate and fastest reconciliation, we use our patented software CrushErrors, which you can also obtain as a product if you’d rather conduct reconciliations in-house.
NextGen Accounting’s management team has decades of experience and includes former executives of Barclays Bank, Bank of America, and ICBC. Contact us today for reconciliation services or book a free demo if you’d like to get CrushErrors!
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