It would be putting it lightly to say that the last year has been extremely difficult for businesses, but it finally seems like we might have a few reasons to be cheerful. All around the world, we are seeing vaccines starting to reach more and more people. Restrictions are being lifted and places of work are being reopened. For business owners, this is a time when we can afford to be a little optimistic after more than a year of holding our breath, not to mention holding our nerve. It’s a time when we can stop treading water and take that next step forward to grow and look for new opportunities.
Speaking of growth, a landmark next step for growing businesses is thinking about how they can start to make an impact overseas. It is an exciting moment, but it is not without its challenges. You are stepping out of your comfort zone, the area where you have tested your mettle and been successful, and you are going to be entering into a completely different marketplace.
And it’s not just the language difference. It’s a whole different culture, a new way of doing business. If you are thinking about expanding your horizons to include Europe, then it will be worth bringing in some outside help. Here are a few services that are worth paying for.
Think About Bringing In A Professional Accountant
A lot of small businesses try as hard as they can to work without a professional accountant for the most part, waiting until it’s absolutely necessary (the year-end tax return, for example) before they spend their money on someone who can tell them what they should be doing with it. Many more businesses have an accountant on team or on retainer, but only use someone with knowledge and experience in their own particular region.
If you’re going to expand your business into Europe, then you are going to need a little extra help in this department. A good accountant doesn’t just tell you when you need to file your paperwork and when you’re getting into financial difficulty. They are the ones who identify opportunities for growth. They are the ones who find you those local grants and incentives, who tell you where you can make and save money that you would never have known about otherwise.
Now, add in all the turmoil and confusion that has come from Brexit on both sides of the Channel, and that’s another headache that you’re going to need help with. Think about where in Europe you’re going to be focusing your efforts and find an accountant or accountancy services who can help you flourish there.
Connect With Local Customers Faster With A Professional SEO Agency
If you’ve reached this stage of growth, then you almost certainly have a pretty firm handle on your business’ SEO strategy. You will have created SEO-driven content for your site with expertly written blog posts loaded with relevant keywords. You will have kept up to date with the latest Google updates to ensure that your website stays on top of those search rankings. You will have worked hard on your link-building and your site’s user experience to keep people around once they have clicked through.
But bringing in audiences of another nationality is not as simple as using some free software to translate your content. You need to make sure that you have keywords that are relevant to your target market. You may have an excellent concept of the behavior of audiences at home, but can you say the same for users in Italy, Belgium or Germany? As obvious as this sounds, “Europe” is not a single homogenous unit, it’s a collection of vastly different countries and cultures, so beware any agency that tries to make it sound like one size fits all.
No matter how confident you are in your own abilities to manage your SEO, it is absolutely worth employing the services of an SEO company with experience in European countries. If you are looking for an SEO company in Europe, look for a proven track record and a demonstrable understanding of what makes users tick in each specific nation. Smart Web Group has helped their clients increase their turnover by 27% per year and they work with native consultants for any European country of your choosing.
You Will Need Help With A Marketing Strategy
As with the point above, it goes without saying that what works for an American or a British audience may not necessarily have the same results in another country or another culture. Now, many of the core principles of good digital marketing will remain the same. It is absolutely important to make sure that you are using your customer data to identify what is working and what isn’t. You should research which platforms your target audience is using and plan your marketing strategy accordingly.
Good local SEO will absolutely make a difference, and you can also think about setting up localized social media channels to ensure that you are getting your message across and communicating with potential clients and customers. But you will need to work with a local agency who can tell you about what your new target audience is looking for and what their typical behavior patterns are. Again, it’s not as simple as translating your messaging. You need to make sure that the spirit of your messaging translates too. Following on from the social media point, it may well be worth thinking about whether a local social media manager could help you establish your profile.
You May Want To Think About Setting Up An Office Overseas
Over the course of the last year, we have all been dazzled by just how much we can do while working at home. We have teleconferenced from our kitchens, we have agreed to deals from the home office we share with our partners, and we have juggled launching businesses while home-schooling our kids. But if you want your business to really make an impact overseas, then it is worth seriously considering setting up an office in your target country.
Now, we are not saying that you need to bring in a whole team but putting down roots has a lot of advantages. It will allow you to react more quickly to issues as they arise, and it will allow you to grow. One important factor to be aware of is that costs will start to add up quickly once you have an office abroad, just as they would if you decided to open an extra office at home. If you want to make sure the office is giving you more value than it is taking from you, you need to make sure that you are working with the right people.
Having a person on the ground is a tremendous asset for all the reasons we already mentioned, and a small local team that can navigate everything from local financial issues to distribution problems will absolutely help you. It goes without saying that expanding into other countries is something of a roll of the dice, but if you bring in people that you can trust who understand your business, you have a much better shot at making it work.
