what is the first step a marketer should take to estimate a products potential sales?

Expanding into international markets is a crucial footstep for whatsoever existing business trying to realize their total potential. In terms of marketplace share, breaking into new markets tin greatly increment the bachelor terrain. And for businesses with a product or service of value, new markets can mean new business opportunities.

Like any other business try, expansion comes with risk. There are barriers to entry, cultural based differences in language and consumer buying habits, and the land of your industry might look quite different elsewhere in the earth. Everyone, from C-level executives to sales and marketing teams, should understand a future marketplace's potential and pitfalls.

Earlier making whatsoever decisions most expansion, it'southward important to acquit a market assay, a business potential assessment, and develop a business concern plan for expansion. These steps will help y'all reduce take chances and find the right entry point into the new market.

In this guide, nosotros'll walk you through how to assess a market, so you lot tin be more than confident most developing a go-to-market strategy for a non-domestic region.

A Look at Existing Marketplace Cess Research: Summit Markets for International Expansion

To begin broadly, let'southward look at Gross Domestic Product (Gdp) across the world. GDP is the full market value of all products and services produced within a country during a specific menstruation of time. Amid other things, GDP can provide a broad snapshot of a specific country's economical health, which is of import information when considering an expansion.

The United states currently holds the top spot when it comes to global Gdp, accounting for almost one-4th of the full global economic system. If you programme to grow your business organization within the U.s., this might be encouraging. But if you were looking for additional options beyond your domestic market, you could begin past looking to other leaders.

Those that follow the United states of america — China, Nihon, Frg, India, and the United kingdom — might be full of untapped potential. But at this stage, don't write off whatever key player, and recall, these standings will virtually certainly change over time.

The adjacent graph projects some significant movements in Gdp by 2030. Experts estimate People's republic of china will eventually move into first position for economic growth. India is predicted to surpass today's leaders, too, along with several more economies that could also strengthen their positions. The global GDP picture might look quite different in 10 years.

If such growth happens, the opportunities could exist huge. And if you place the right bets in these locations, y'all could notice yourself with major gains down the line.

Many large The states companies — including Mattel, ExxonMobil, Apple, and GE — are already tapping into growing markets. Close to two-thirds of their total sales come from exterior the US. Netflix now has nigh 56% of its customers exterior the US, with xc% of its growth fueled by international markets.

A brief global market place assessment shows that there might be opportunities for certain offerings effectually the globe in years to come. The question is: how do you lot select a country to brainstorm your expansion efforts?

How to Assess a New Marketplace with the Goal of Expansion

Conducting a strange market assessment on a step-by-step basis ensures you leave no rock unturned. You'll want to study a diverseness of factors, such equally:

• The strengths and weaknesses of the economy
• The size of the marketplace and levels of competition
• The competitive landscape
• Customer beliefs and sales funnel information
• Language, cultural barriers, and societal barriers to entry

Before you even start looking into new markets, brand sure your product-market fit in your existing market is stiff. This is especially true for pocket-size businesses with tight budgets. If you don't run into growth in your current region, expanding elsewhere might non be the answer.

Have time to hone your product, empathize your customers, and refine your marketing message at dwelling house earlier following these steps to prepare for a completely new market.

Step one. Report various markets for existing opportunity and growth potential

Before choosing a location for your expansion, explore various markets and compare them confronting one some other. At this outset pace, your primary goal is to make certain that the new marketplace is suitable for an expansion. Consider:

• Marketplace size
• Level of competition
• Major players and their marketplace share

Gathering information and comparing countries may reveal opportunities you hadn't considered, affirm your initial suspicion near a prospective market's force, or reveal unforeseen risks.

The Market Explorer tool offers a location based Market Summary section. We entered Squareup.com and the tool produced this summary of the payment processing industry in the U.s. marketplace.

Though the US market is large, the contest levels are at 75%, meaning information technology'south difficult to compete. This is due to the fact that a modest number of companies — Paypal in particular — ain almost all of the market for payment processing.

Changing the location to Brazil, however, the marketplace looks quite different.

However, a small number of companies ain the majority of the market, but marketplace shares among these companies are more spread out. The marketplace size is also significantly smaller than that in the US, indicating a smaller amount of market need.

Finally, we looked at Nippon, which seems to offering the best potential.

Because the market share is spread out more evenly among a larger number of players, it'due south easier to compete in the Japanese market than the Brazilian or U.s. markets. The market place size is as well much larger than the Brazilian market with a significantly higher amount of consumer need.

Step 2. Get a full view of the competitive landscape in your potential markets

In one case you discover your top locations for expansion, get familiar with the competitive landscape. An understanding of the layout of the playing field, the strength of the competition, and the strategies they're using allows you to enter the market knowing what to expect.

A competitive matrix is a great way to consider the market as a whole. The Growth Quadrant is ane example of a matrix that offers a visual layout of the competition based on traffic and traffic growth percentage.

In Nihon, SMBC-Card and Freee are the two established players, meaning they have consistently high traffic, but haven't seen a lot of growth in the past vi months. Nosotros might also consider the four companies in the "Game Changers" category. They all seem to exist on a steady growth trajectory.

Once nosotros've identified specific companies of interest, nosotros can examine them more than thoroughly. The Domain vs Marketplace Dynamics department of the Overview Report allows you to accept a closer look at the companies we've identified and benchmark them against the market equally a whole. Hither are some traffic metrics for robotpayment.co.jp:

These graphs tell a deeper story well-nigh Robotpayment's success in the market and the strategy helping them grow.

The Total Traffic Trends graph depicts their continued growth, despite the slow growth in the market. The 2nd and third graphs reveal the sources of this increased traffic. Their largest increases came from referral and paid traffic, though their biggest overall traffic correspondent is search traffic, suggesting they take a winning SEO strategy.

Step three. Analyze your potential customers' behavior and funnel information in selected markets

While intel on competitors is a crucial component of new market research, it'south only a piece of the movie. Along with the contest, you demand to understand consumer behavior and buying patterns within the market to aggrandize successfully.

To begin, carefully clarify your in-house information to uncover trends related to the specific markets you're considering.

• Do you meet a surge in leads from a detail market, despite express investment there?
• Exercise y'all see a shorter sales wheel or a higher win rate in some markets?
• Is the boilerplate purchase toll higher in a given market?

Most internal analytics platforms runway traffic distribution past location so you can meet where it originates, what happens to that traffic upon arrival, and to what extent it converts. Yous can also apply Semrush'due south Market Explorer to view regional traffic trends in your market place with the Market Geo Distribution widget.

Semrush's Traffic Analytics tool likewise provides user data from potential competitors in prospective markets. The information below reflects Paypal's activities in Germany, their tertiary largest marketplace in terms of spider web traffic.

When considering market audition behavior, begin with the Traffic Journeying graph in the Traffic Journey report.

With this graph, we tin can see where users come from, and where they go afterward visiting paypal.com.

For the German market, this chart offers a few interesting takeaways. Firstly, 3% of the incoming German traffic to paypal.com comes from Adyen.com, which is another payment processing service. Knowing this, we may determine to practice additional enquiry on this company to learn almost their strategies and audience.

2nd, about 4% of German users who visit paypal.com visit a nutrient related service website after leaving the Paypal site. To larn more about this tendency, we could ringlet down to the Traffic Journey Details chart, select 'destination sites,' and filter by 'food and drink.'

In terms of agreement our users, and how we might connect if we were expanding into the German marketplace, this information could add together to our strategy. For case, if we were looking for partners to use our payment processing system, we might look to food related service providers.

For a amend agreement of the products and services that are pop amongst users in a specific market, begin with the Subfolders Report. Here, you tin can view what subfolders within the competitors website receive the most traffic amid users from a specific region.

With the Elevation Subfolders past Traffic widget, you can view traffic numbers for specific subfolders from a specific location (in this case Germany) based on the traffic type. The data can reveal what products are well-nigh pop and how people achieve them.

When considering international markets, you should also check subfolders for the version of the website specific to the language spoken in that region. For example, with the German market, we'd check the german version of the site, ​​paypal.com/de/.

Upon clicking on the /cgi-bin/ link, we discover the page promoting the new mobile app. The popularity of this page suggests this feature is of import in Paypal'due south service to their customers. This sort of information tin can show useful for your expansion programme.

Finally, you can gain insights nearly customer funnel data with the Top Pages study. Hither, you not but discover what pages are nearly pop, but y'all can also determine what sources drive traffic to these pages, and develop an understanding of how customers convert.

We searched the top pages by the term "welcome" to bring Paypal'south signup pages to the forefront. Based on this data, 62.8k unique visitors visited the "signup" page, and 12.1k visitors arrived at the "complete" page. Based on these values, nosotros can gauge the conversion rate for the German market is approximately 19.two%.

Taken as a whole, geographical traffic statistics, location based user journeys, acme subfolders and pages, and estimated conversions offer a better understanding of the audience and how to reach them after expansion.

Step 4. Consider language, cultural, and societal barriers to doing concern

Beyond audience behavior and funnel data, the culture and society of the target region can impact business. When considering these factors, the start step is to check our ain assumptions and keep an open heed toward difference. From this perspective, we can begin the work of understanding.

To assemble market demographics broadly, offset the Market Explorer Demographics Report. This information illuminates the age, gender, social media preferences, and interests of the target audition. Here'southward the Demographics report for Stripe.com in India.

This data shows stripe is dominated by a male audience, possibly due to cultural gender norms every bit they relate to business and finances. Interestingly, Pinterest is only every bit pop as Facebook in terms of social media preferences in Bharat. And along with retail and business organisation topics, Stripe users are besides interested in reality television shows. All of these insights will come in handy, especially for our marketing efforts.

Adjacent, consider any cultural barriers that may impact your expansion and targeted marketing efforts. Your go-to-market strategy should take into business relationship features such every bit:

• How decisions are fabricated. Is the culture highly individual, or practise people brand decisions as a group?

• What dynamics exist amid the distinct cultures in the region. Understand what groups be within the larger geographic region. What is their history together? How do they interact and coexist?

• What cultural norms and taboos exist in the region. Every place has norms and taboos. Norms are behaviors that are common and acceptable within a culture, while taboos are behaviors that are strongly frowned upon.

• What languages people speak. Often, more than 1 language is mutual in a unmarried location. As well, people in that region may speak more than than one language.

These geographical features may require additional expenses for things similar translating communication materials into the local linguistic communication or hiring bi-lingual sales people.

When expanding across the English-speaking world, also consider English language proficiency in the target region. For example, English proficiency is loftier in Germany, moderate in France, and low in Japan. This means the costs associated with the localization of your production, and all the communication therein, could differ greatly between these countries.

Finally, consider laws and regulations in the prospective geographic area that may touch on your business. Some common legal matters include:

• Tax obligations
• Local environmental policies
• Data and intellectual belongings protection
• Hiring processes and human resource issues
• Realestate
• Marketing and advertizing limitations
• Business concern structure and record keeping

While an understanding of relevant laws and regulations is of import for business concern owners, it always makes sense to get legal help with concern expansion into new markets. Violating business laws, even accidentally, can be costly and do harm to a business'due south reputation.

Stride 5. Benchmark functioning against competitors and runway trends

No thing the depth and quality of your preliminary market research, tracking market shifts and emerging trends earlier, during, and afterwards your market expansion is primal. Studying your competition and audition on an ongoing basis is the best course of action.

The metrics you lot cull to track may depend on your specific industry, though Semrush .Trends offers a number of useful options for benchmarking over time. Hither are 3 examples:

• Benchmark your website's operation in your domestic region to brand sure your business is keeping pace with the contest at home. While expansion into new markets is exciting, stability at dwelling is crucial.

• Compare your functioning against competitors in your new target region. These competitors may be like to the ones from your domestic market place, or they may be specific to your new market. This ensures your gaining traction and allows you to identify and implement your competitors' winning tactics.

• Compare traffic volumes across regions. Compare the traffic dynamics between countries and clarify the differences in online behaviors in each region. Look for patterns based on the seasons or current events to give you lot a better indication of how to compete in this market.

Organize Your Data, Generate Insights, and Develop a Plan

Expanding into a new marketplace requires plenty of research. When gathering data for a number of locations, organization is key. For help, effort our Market place Cess Decision Matrix. You tin copy the spreadsheet to your Google Drive by following the link and then filling in the table with all the data y'all've gathered.

This matrix is a convenient way to assemble all relevant metrics in i place to identify which land receives the highest score and could have the almost potential. Apply information technology to inform your strategy when it comes to identifying your target customers, and benchmarking yourself against your core competitors to ensure your readiness for launch.

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Source: https://www.semrush.com/blog/market-assessment/

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