In this episode, our Founder & CEO Mark Magnacca is joined by Michael O'Hara and Martin McGovern to discuss what are the key steps to succeed in a new market. They talk about a range of topics you should consider before expansion, including:
1. Why companies expanding to Europe are more scared of violating GDPR than the impact of Brexit? 2. How do you avoid being seen as an easy target with endless pockets - a problem often encountered by American and British companies expanding to new regions? 3. Although the UK, US and Canada share the common language, many companies neglect the fact that they have different cultures - which causes them to painfully fail.4. China remains a huge market with a completely different digital world.
How do you overcome these challenges?
Click to listen to the episode or read the transcript below!
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Mark: [00:00:00] Hi. I’m Mark Magnacca, the founder and CEO of gigCMO, and welcome today's discussion about entering new markets. With me today I have two of our Fractional Chief Marketing Officers: Michael O'Hara, who is based in the States, and Martin McGovern, who is based in the UK. Michael, would you please like to say hello so people can recognise you?
Michael: [00:00:20] Hi Mark, Martin. I’m delighted to be here, looking forward to our discussion today.
Mark: [00:00:25] Very pleased to have you here today as well. Martin?
Martin: [00:00:26] Yeah, same from me. You know, glad to be here and hope for a good discussion.
Mark: [00:00:31] Fantastic. So, we have an interesting group today because I’m originally from Canada and of course now I live in London. Martin is also from the UK, worked internationally, and Michael’s based in the States. So, we’ve all worked with, in our own careers, with different companies, helping them grow, and most of us have worked internationally and live – lived – around the world in different countries, and we’ve all helped businesses reach their first new market. And one of the challenges for any business, whether they’re selling a product or service, is how do you end up going abroad? You know, when you read a lot of case studies and you hear somebody describe what happened after they had this great plan and they approached and were successful. However, for most businesses that's not how it happens. You know, for most businesses, I think, you know they get their first order from somebody abroad and everybody is happy because they don't know these people that just came in out of the blue; they didn't have to work for it but they've already got an order. Is that your experience, Michael, and Martin?
Martin: [00:01:42] Not my personal experience. I mean, as you suggested no work internationally, but really I guess with mature businesses and the lessons learned from there... but hopefully a lot of those lessons apply to new businesses are also looking to reach out, and I guess for me that starts with questions around, you know, why they’re going internationally. It may be, as you suggested, in response to, you know, a one-off order or a one-off contact or it may well be because, you know, somebody sat down and started to ponder “Where next? Where do we go next? How do we take this business forward?” And, you know, what the criteria are for doing that.
Mark: [00:02:23] I guess one of the challenges is, it also comes back to what size your business is because, you know, you’ve worked at large organisations and, you know, they do have the luxury and the people to ponder things. They think, “Hmm, how do we play this big chess game?” Whereas, early in my career, I was in some small businesses and there was no time to ponder. You are just happy to get an order and if it came from somewhere outside your home market then somebody probably had a bright light and said, “Well, if we sold something, maybe we should make an effort.” What about you, Michael?
Michael: [00:02:56] Yeah, that's much more my experience as well. I... most of the work that I
