NEWSLETTER - SMALL BUSINESS

Using the Internet to Enter New Markets

By Dave Williams, International Trade Specialist

While nothing replaces the need to travel to a market and meet with potential partners face-to-face, there are many ways a company can increase its exposure in foreign markets without leaving the office. Internet usage is growing worldwide, and there are many methods of using the Internet to improve international exposure.

As in traditional marketing, e-marketing includes both pull and push strategies. Pull methods include creating a multi-language website, maximizing placement in domestic and foreign search engines, participating in virtual trade shows, and listing in export directories. Push methods include one-to-one e-marketing, trade lead postings, e-Publications, and advanced e-marketing.

Selling internationally can be time-consuming and expensive, especially for small-to-medium sized firms. However, the time and money invested favorably impacts the bottom line through additional export sales. Adding an e-marketing component to traditional marketing plans can reduce the initial costs of international marketing through careful targeting of markets and the strategies described above.

There are currently over 1.5 billion web pages on the Internet, and over 729 million users are accessing the Internet worldwide. According to Global Reach, the top ten Internet-using countries are the United States, Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Germany, South Korea, Italy, Brazil, Russia, and France.

Although US businesses often view the Internet as a US institution, only 36% of global web users speak English as their primary language. Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and German, are each primary languages of global Internet users. By translating websites into five additional languages, US businesses can reach 80% of all worldwide Internet users.

Translation is only one part of a successful Internet strategy to grow a company's electronic footprint in cyberspace. There are now electronic versions of traditional marketing tools such as trade shows and business directories. Trade leads are also posted and updated more frequently on the Internet.