5 Common Global Business Expansion Strategies
There are all kinds of expansion strategies used for global businesses with varying degrees of success. Expanding your global business across several international borders can be chaotic in 2021 and even intimidating at times.
By HEIDI ROSENBERG
However, some ways can be used for eliminating all the stress and you need to understand your alternatives. Still, the global expansion will appear different for every company and there isn’t any perfect model that may be applied to all the companies. Here are the most common expansion strategies.
1. Conventional expansion: It is the most common business expansion strategy used and it involves these steps. Business incorporation, hiring the country head, securing an office, team recruitment, and beginning sales. Although conventional business expansion is one of the more common business expansion strategies, it has some downsides to it as well. The advantages include full control, a full compliance approach, greater price points for the products than compared to the outsourced sales, etc. There are some other benefits as well such as better brand awareness of the products, gaining control over reaching out and selling to the customers to gain deeper customer insight. You can also develop good relationships directly within the market.
2. Entire outsourcing of business development: While using this global expansion strategy you will need to find a service provider that will offer in-market representation services. For instance, if you are expanding to China you will need to register your company there first. China company register is something you can outsource to these services. These services can drive in leads, develop a team for you, carry out the business cards, perform other tasks such as changing the email ids and adding the business to the LinkedIn account. Using these services has several pros such as it is fast, less expensive than conventional expansion, and if the service provider has the experience you can take advantage of the fact in the target market. It is an effective way to validate your hypothesis regarding the international market.
3. Have a bit of everything: It is a global business expansion strategy developed from the strategies above. The process includes hiring a company head, business incorporation, outsourcing some development work and flying in and out to make sure that new teams and head office are in alignment. This strategy is usually more beneficial for more experienced businesses that have proven capabilities in the market. Here you are using external and internal channels for driving growth thereby minimizing the chances of failure. It provides a strong presence in the market and to a degree allows you to keep good personal connections with the customers.
4. Growth via integration: This strategy involves the identification of relevant platforms where it is possible to give complimentary values. Various organizations do this by approaching the decision-makers remotely and close the deals. In many cases, you can use the service providers for helping you secure these meetings. Keep in mind that there will not be hundreds of relevant organizations. Therefore, it is significant for you to place a lot of weight on every outreach while expanding the business globally. This is inexpensive and can be scaled.
5. Growth through marketing: It is a global business expansion strategy that targets customers from a newer market online. It lets you know the appetite for your business solutions before you begin various procedures such as recruitment, flying in, and business incorporation. After you are convinced that there is a strong demand for the products online you may begin deployment of resources. This is also a scalable method and is reliable because it is data-driven.
Conclusion
There you are. These are 5 ways of expanding your business internationally. Keep in mind that there isn’t a single expansion strategy that will work for all the organizations. Many factors will play a role such as the size, type of industry, product market fit, knowledge about the targeted market, and experience of growing the business internationally. It is a good idea to maintain an experimental mindset that will allow you to test all the assumptions by using these strategies. There are many other strategies you can use that are fast, inexpensive, and allow you to gain better control of operations.
