8 Steps to Successfully Incorporate Exporting into a Business
For lots of businesses, exporting is the natural evolution of the company and marks are brave expansion into new territory. However, incorporating an exporting process into your business can be very challenging. There is a lot to consider, and plenty to get wrong if you’re not careful.
To help provide export control advice, we have put together a few steps that you can follow to hopefully make exporting a little easier. Let’s get started.
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1. Market Research
Market research is an important part of any business expansion, especially if you’re going to look into exporting. Businesses should get into the habit of doing regular market research anyway, so this probably shouldn’t be new territory for you.
You will want to do market research to identify the potential target countries you can work with and the customers you can reach. You need to have an understanding before you start exporting.
2. Develop an Export Plan
You need to make a comprehensive export plan that you can use to move forward. Once you’ve done the market research, you can take the information that you get and apply it to your plan.
Ideally, you need to look at your objectives as a company, your pricing strategy, the distribution channels for exports, and your target market. If it’s information that will be relevant in any way, it needs to be part of the plan.
3. Compliance and Legal Considerations
As part of your normal business operations in the UK, you most likely learned how to follow rules and regulations for this country, but with exports, you need to go abroad. This means you need to understand the trade rules and regulations for every country that you intend to export to.
Take a look at the requirements for each of your target markets to make sure that you are going to be compliant. There’s nothing worse than trying to explore and discover your product isn’t compatible with the country you want to export to.
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4. Adapt Your Marketing Strategy
As part of exporting internationally, you will need to develop a branding marketing strategy. Your existing strategy will be designed for use in your original country and won’t be suitable for an international audience.
This means that you will need to tailor the materials that you use in your marketing strategy to meet other languages or cultural norms. You don’t want your product to come across as offensive or confusing to a foreign audience.
5. Establish Partnerships
Identifying partnerships that you can form as part of your export strategy is key for success. You need to look for local agencies and distributors in your target market, so you can use them to get your product out to the right people.
It’s important to take your time with this because you need to make sure that you are forming the right relationships. You need to do plenty of research to make sure that your planned distributor is reliable and can handle your business.
6. Logistics and Shipping
As part of exporting, you will need to design a logistics and shipping system which is fit for purpose. Not only does this need to be cost-effective, but it needs to be capable of handling whatever volume of orders you are expecting.
Make sure that you take your time with this, because if you get the export system wrong, then everything comes crashing down around you. You need to have ironed out the logistics perfectly.
7. Secure Financing and Insurance
As part of exporting your products to other countries, there will be new financial obligations. You need to be ready to meet them.
Not only do you need to have the funding available to export internationally, but you also need to be able to secure the correct business insurance and handle any shipping and logistical costs. It’s important to run the numbers and make sure that you can afford to do this before you get started.
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8. Continuous Evaluation and Improvement
It’s important to make sure that your export plans are going well, and that your business is continuing to improve.
You should regularly review all of the export activities that you undertake, analyse their performance, and evaluate how successful they are. Don’t be afraid to make changes if something isn’t performing properly.
Exporting Can Be Profitable
Exporting can be a highly profitable venture, and it’s definitely something you could try. However, you need to make sure that you approach them sensibly. Don’t be afraid to take your time and plan your exports carefully.
