Scaling Globally: Strategies for Expanding Your Business into New Markets

"The biggest risk is not taking any risk... In a world that's changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks." - Mark Zuckerberg.

Hey. Matt here. Today's one is going to be an interesting read, regardless of if you're here to grow or just learn more about actually scaling a business.

So, scaling is interesting. I mean, it’s growth. Who doesn’t like growth?

In your business, in your agency, wherever you have growth, you have more money and more potential.

However, with all good things, there’s a lot of effort involved as well as risk.

So, before I get into this, I’d like to make this clear:

There’s no easy shortcut. There’s no quick trick. There’s no ‘overnight’ success that isn’t potentially weeks, months, or years in the making. It all takes quite some time, creativity, and hard work to be able to succeed.

Let’s go.

"Should I ask the question or what?"

The why, right??

Well, WHY should you scale?

“I know. Because being present in more markets means more opportunities.”

Well, that’s just one of the many benefits.

Sure, as you expand your presence to other, new, previously-unexplored markets…

You discover new things.?

Potentially new demands.

Various types of customer needs.

Gaps in the market that can be filled by building specific offers.

Market environments varying from your initial market circumstances.

Opportunities to connect with teams unsuccessful in that niche.

Experts that would benefit from partnering up with a firm, to make the most for both parties.

There are many things, aside from money, that you get, discover, and come across when you decide to expand.

However, it’s not something to be taken lightly.?

Just a few wrong decisions and you could potentially run into roadblocks, and end up burning all of your funds trying to do something that just won't work.

So, it’s about getting more on the obvious metrics, like revenue, sales, brand awareness, audience, etc.

But it’s also about adding to your company culture, diversification of your corporate team, experimenting with new things as well as just growing.

However, there are many things, other than just market conditions, that can cause things to spiral out of control. So, let’s see what not to do, and what you should do instead.

Going in without planning.

Did your initial market deliver exceptional results when you tried checking the product-market fit? Yes?

Well, don’t simply take that process and try to replicate it in another market. That won’t be a great idea.

The thing is, just because something worked in one market, or under certain conditions, is no guarantee you’re going to get the same results in a different environment.

It doesn’t matter if there is demand for your product, if your product has really good results in its initial market, or if you have an exceptional brand.

Take the agile methodology and put a global filter on it.?

Instead of simply going in, and pushing on sales and revenue with an irrelevant plan in a new market…

Start with the basics, like customer discovery, getting better insights, and building out a strategy.

Likely, everything from the way the market behaves to the performance of the employees will vary to some degree.

So, going in, testing, validating, going over the basics and doing research, etc. will not just set you up for success.

It’ll also help you either pre-validate or pre-disqualify the area you’re trying to expand into, without losing a lot in terms of resources as well as risking your brand credibility by bearing huge losses, just because you didn’t do some research.

A lack of planning combined with an absent review of the company is an amazing combination…for going bust.

You think you know your company. Sure, that might be true.

However, at the pace that things change, everything from your company culture and values to your team’s communication and work ethic varies.

And, with dynamic market conditions, any products or services you have to offer need to be constantly updated and modified to make sure they’re relevant and appropriate for your target audience.

Not knowing all of these things before deciding to expand? Not a good idea.

Instead, start with a general overview. A refresher, if you like.

What are your company values? Where do you stand today?

How do your customers see you? What makes them perceive you like that?

What does your team do best? Are they ready to take on more work? Or do they need some more time to ‘gear up’?

All of these checks and mini-research projects are necessary, so that, not only will you be in the know about your current state of affairs, but you’ll be able to accurately judge if you’re in the best position to expand, take on potentially more risk, responsibilities as well as deal with the growth aspect.

And, there’s nothing worse about not knowing what you want.

Let’s suppose you’ve got your market research, your homework, and your groundwork done and your market is pre-validated.

You’ve also checked in with your team and done a deep dive into your company, with everything from your values to your mission to how your team’s work schedules affect the performance of your company’s output on different days and how ready they are to move into the growth stage.

Are you sure you know what you want?

“I mean, we’ve done the research, we’ve done the pre-launch checks and preps. There’s nothing more left, right? Just the launch?”

No, I meant it literally. Are you sure you know what you want??

As in, have you got your goals nailed down?

Have you isolated the key metrics you’ll be focusing on for which periods, and what your target results are?

Have you figured out the strategies behind achieving your optimal goal?

Are you sure what you want lines up with what your company presents itself as pursuing?

Goals go way beyond simply giving you some targets you have to fulfill.

When you’re in a situation where you’ve got oh-so-many opportunities and different strategies you can pursue and test, it’s easy to get caught up in various things and lose sight of the main purpose.

Having clearly defined goals help make progress evaluation easier, as you’re driven to figure out a set of steps and proper strategies to achieve those results.

Now, planning, self-research, and goals are the main things here. However, there are lots of small things you’d be better off keeping in mind.

One of these: your core mini-strategies to make sure you hit the ground running.

Maybe you were successful in your initial market and were able to prove product scalability without having to focus on various things, like setting up social media and sales funnels as well as focusing on loyalty programs and incentives to increase customer retention and return rate.

However, that doesn’t mean you should do the same when you grow.

Everything from building an email list and keeping customers and potential prospects nurtured to having a fully-integrated CRM and a variety of sales funnels for the various products and services you may offer plays a big part in the long run.

Not do you make things easy for yourself as your company grows and expands, but you also potentially automate sales (with the sales funnel) as well as have an active and engaged audience that you can always promote an offer to (your email list), making sure they have some incentive to consider what you’re selling (with your loyalty program).

Another is having scaling and global expansion in mind from day one.

Maybe starting with a plan to launch in multiple markets from day one isn’t the best idea.

To be able to validate your product and prove its potential to grow and scale, it’s important to pick just one market and focus on getting a product-market fit.

However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have future global ambitions.

That is, aiming to grow across different cultures, and environments and make a place in new international markets as things take off.

The benefit of doing so will be that everything from your processes and systems to your company culture and values will be built around that concept.

Instead of things being closed and restricted and just relevant to your initial launch market…

And that refers to everything from the accommodation of holidays for your team members to the commenting in your code…

They’ll be built in such a way that it won’t be a huge hassle to adapt to other, foreign marketplaces.

So, you’ll have a diverse team, coming from different cultures and backgrounds.

You’ll be more open to and interested in working with local businesses, who’ll not just help themselves grow but get your foot in the door when it comes to navigating the intricacies of a previously-unknown market.

You’ll be more open to having an open communication strategy. Instead of one-way management-to-lower-level messages, it’ll be in your interest to have open channels.

That way, when working with previously experienced teams as well as local businesses, you’ll be able to see what you want vs what they recommend and make better decisions, driven by solid data.

I could go on and on about this.

The thing is, you’re more likely to succeed if you consider growth and scaling as a mindset, instead of a rigid framework with set-in-stone steps you have to do.

Everything from communication methods and company values to diverse company culture and in-depth market research plays a part in helping your company build a strong foundation and enable it to be able to grow and expand into new, uncharted territories.

Discovering things like scaling sustainably instead of speedily, making sure you’ll be able to keep running current operations if things don’t work out as planned, and doing proper localization-centric planning to make sure you hit the ground running, etc all come as you try and experiment.

However, if there’s one thing you take away from this, it’s that you should try to...

Think with a global mindset.

That will not just enable you to set your goals accordingly and focus on expanding as soon as current operations make that a [possibility…

You’ll also build your systems, your values, your processes, and everything else in such a way that you can accommodate growth without having to make major changes to your core processes…

Or face a lot of hassle in trying to explain systems and the way you do work to the new people that join your team.

That’s it for now.

Remember, it’s all about experimenting, researching, and trying new things.

The takeaways that you get, regardless of if you succeed or fall back, are what will give you deeper insights when you try new ventures.

As usual, if you’ve got any questions or need help with something, feel free to send things my way and we’ll see what we can work out.

Keep Building.