Have you always dreamed of running your own global business? Well, there’s no reason why you can’t turn a small home-based business into a worldwide enterprise. Of course, global expansion takes time, research, and not a little dedication, but scaling your business from the comfort of your home is not out of the question.
Whether you have an existing venture that you want to take to the next level or you have an idea that’s international business-ready, it’s time to go global!
Here’s all you need to know about scaling your home business.
How Easy Is It to Scale a Home Business?
Today, there are so many resources available for entrepreneurs that scaling up a home business is easier than ever — but that’s not to say it’s easy, of course! To scale your business in the most successful way, you need a well-researched plan that you follow to the letter.
Small businesses are increasingly becoming a large contributor to online commerce. In fact, there are around 32 million small businesses in the US alone. This means that while it is becoming increasingly competitive to scale globally in your market, small businesses are needed for ecommerce growth — and customers increasingly recognize the value of independently-owned businesses.
How easy it is to scale internationally depends on a few factors. Firstly, is your business a fresh-faced startup or an established business? If you’ve already got a semi-recognizable brand, then you may be able to scale quicker than if your brand is new to the market. That said, a completely new home business can establish itself in overseas markets if it’s able to capture the imagination of consumers and investors.
3 Ways of Taking Your Home Business Global
The key to achieving global reach for your business is having a multifaceted strategy that focuses on the most important elements of business growth, such as marketing, SEO, or hiring the right talent.
Hiring International Freelancers
Scaling a business can be done from home, but when you’re trying to crack an international market, it’s a good idea to have some local expertise at your disposal — and this is easier than it ever was now that remote technology is so commonplace. As a small business, you may not have the budget to hire full-time international workers, but with an international contractor management platform such as Remote, you can hire and onboard overseas-based temporary employees remotely and benefit from their unique skill sets.
With a local expert on your team, you’ll have better insight into your target markets and what you can do to establish your business there. From cultural information to market data, an international expert can provide valuable understanding of new markets — as well as bridging language barriers — and help you incorporate this information into your growth strategy.
Targeting the Right Geographical Market
One of the most important aspects of scaling your home business is knowing who your target audience is, especially if you have a very niche product or service. If you already have an established business, then looking at your website’s analytics can help you determine which countries you’re already getting traffic from — these could be the best places to target your efforts, since the data indicates there’s already an appetite for your product or service in that market.
You can of course scale your home business across multiple territories once you’re ready to do so, but in the early days it’s advisable to target those markets where you’re confident you can make an impact. Once you’ve established yourself in more than one market, brand awareness will naturally build.
Creating a Stellar SEO Strategy
SEO makes a huge impact on how well your business reaches your target audience, locally, nationally, and globally. For example, optimizing your website with the right keywords is just one of the ways you can match international search queries. However, when it comes to multilingual SEO, it’s about more than just relying on machine translations — and that’s why it’s important to use a human translation service such as Acolad for performance-driven international SEO.
It’s also vitally important to remember that people from different countries may search for things in a different way. Even if you speak the same language (for example, if you’re expanding to the US from the UK, or vice versa), users in different countries may use culturally-specific keywords you may not have previously considered — that’s another reason hiring remotely in the country you’re targeting is advantageous.
Final Thoughts
If you have big dreams for your home business, then it’s time to put those ideas into action! Create a strong strategy, hire the right talent, target the right markets, and prioritize your international SEO strategy, and you may find that global expansion is not as unachievable as you previously thought.
