Growing from a local or national business to an international one can be a thrilling if often risky venture. To succeed, a new exporter needs a very clear understanding of their goals, one that is based on careful research and, crucially, a realistic assessment of their own capabilities. The first question a would-be exporter must be able to answer is why?

When the objectives are clear, it’s time to get more specific and the big question is almost always where? Some businesses try to take on the whole world at once, and some even succeed, but for most, a well-defined strategy is the way to build success. The most suitable markets are different for every business and need to be identified from a thorough understanding of the business, its products, its resources, and its key success factors. The business that transforms into successful exporting invariably understands what he been the key to succeeding at home and uses that knowledge to seek out comparable opportunities elsewhere.

That’s why you can rarely define your target markets from raw data alone. It sometimes makes me cringe when I hear some expert claiming with all sincerity that a certain country or region is “great for British exporters”. Which exporters do they mean? A feature of a market may be a great selling point for one supplier while being an insurmountable obstacle for another. Devising a winning export strategy is in fact a very personal task, and generalisations are not helpful.

And yet if the business doesn’t have a strategy, attempts to export can be a very expensive waste of time. To target efforts effectively needs careful research. This starts by defining what a suitable export market looks like. There are many possible ways to define this, but it can include factors such as population, incomes, measures of development. It can also include more nebulous features such as culture, taste, and lifestyle. An effective way to compare markets is to identify key factors that are measurable, consider the relative importance of each and build a score sheet for each country. This can be a bit of an onerous task, but there are ways to lighten the task, such as reliable online reports that score countries according to key characteristics including ease of doing business, corruption, spending habits, consumer trends etc. 

All of this is explained in our unique support package for aspiring exporters. It can save weeks or months of frustration and help you to fulfil your export aspirations!