The Translation Edge: Strategic Advice for U.S. Market Entry
Here are a few relevant reminders for our innovative friends internationally working to enter the U.S. market to help support your success. Understanding your specialty area and its correlating market landscape become even more important when you’re jumping into the weave of language and cultural differences. Every single company’s journey is unique and each solution brings its own barriers to market entry. Let’s face it, entrepreneurial innovation is exciting, but it’s a grind; a grind in the sense that every single day you’re pushing that envelope forward -- doing the doing -- there’s no mammoth corporate team or trusted brand automatically propelling you forward. You work for every conversation, every opportunity, and every product iteration you make to better serve your clients. One day your growth in one or two countries will have been substantial, your revenues will be showing acceptance of your product or service, you’ll have tackled your competitive analysis, and potentially you’ll be looking to the U.S. market. Yes, we get that that’s not always the road and not all solutions need to find their niche in the U.S. market landscape, but just in case, we’ll share a few thoughts from past work learnings.
Do some digging into how your company’s core components will translate
Since English is one of the primary business languages, you’ve probably already thought about how your company name, product or service name translates but you might be surprised how U.S. English colloquialisms differ by age groups, U.S. geographic regions, cultural influence, and more. Words can translate uniquely; this applies to the name of your company, product or service name, and to the way you express its value for the market. Before you spend money reproducing your logo on all materials and building out your website, and approving sales materials, check out reactions to your company’s name, product’s name, and/or service’s name in more international markets than your own and within the U.S., certainly beyond one or two cities. You might be surprised to find out that part of your product’s name has a secondary meaning in some regions or in cultural slang. The name of your company, product, or service could relate to a cultural phenomenon that is comical or otherwise not particularly supportive to sales; finding out ahead of time will save you money, time, and headache.
Explore U.S. organizations, foundations, & associations
Explore U.S. non-profit organizations and foundations that support your marketplace. The U.S. is a market plentiful in organizations that cull information in a specific area of study or service. For instance, if you have a new skin care product, of course you’ve been working with leading researchers already, but be sure to search the web for skin care and esthetics organizations in the U.S. -- you might be surprised at the specificity both in health condition and targeted audience (aging skin, specific skin diseases, skin care professional trade associations, and more). These organizations often have a wealth of information to help you outline market strategies; jump on one of their webinars or become a member to learn more.
Go beyond the spreadsheet
If your “spreadsheet” shows readiness to enter a new market, congratulations, but make sure your team is ready for the strategies that surround the market finances, such as the cultural nuances in a new country’s market. The landscape is always unique, which creates a unique value proposition for your product or service and potentially unique new roles for your team members. The sheer definition of large-size to small-size companies can vary between two countries. Who a product or service best serves in one country might differ in another and it’s important to prep your team. Take the time to talk about these things internally and figure out what insights and strengths your team members might have. Your team might hold essential insights depending on where they’ve lived and where they’ve done business in the past. Articulating a plan and correlating market messaging beyond the spreadsheet to enter a new country’s market truly supports long-term success.
Don’t assume that success translates from country to country
What you think is an appropriate way to communicate your value proposition to a client in your base country can’t be used solely to decide effectiveness in the United States or other countries. You might laugh if this is obvious to you, but we can tell you we’ve had conversations such as “well this idea worked in X country, so it’s perfect for this market too.” Find out how the market might respond through exploratory business development before you blindly dive into spending extensive time trying to create your new client base. This work will be worth the small investment.
EnticEdge’s Cornerpiece™ can help identify U.S. regional and cultural nuances. We’ll work with you to learn more about your company (or what you hope your company will become in new market growth) to draft your company’s story, before catalyzing market traction and acceleration. Fundamentally, your Cornerpiece™ is a go-to document that pulls the pieces of your business together. It will define your company’s mission statement, value proposition and hurdles by targeted client audience, core business strategy, and more as you plan to enter the U.S. market. Moreover, it includes a fresh look at your website information hierarchy and website user journey to make sure your business strategy and user experience design reinforce one another and that your digital voice is effective.
Here are some additional key questions to ask yourself as you approach taking your product or service to market in the U.S.:
What does acceptance look like in the U.S.? Is your strategy specific to one U.S. region? Does that translate beyond that region (midwest to southeast for instance)?
Who are you targeting as clients and why?
What are the barriers you might encounter? What resources will you need to remove or jump over them?
Is your product a software specific to a hardware that is not readily adopted? What challenges will that create? How will you overcome them?
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