The Power of Illusion
E-commerce is flourishing most impressively in English-speaking countries, but a tremendous market is being missed for marketers outside of these countries, as people there are going online fast, especially in Europe. My intent is to encourage the reader to look outside English-speaking countries for online international sales.

Two dynamic forces of our time — globalization and the online movement — combine together to give a powerful new wave of doing business worldwide. However, a tremendous export market exists in addressing foreign markets, as going global is no longer considered an alternative but a necessity for business survival. If a company has not gone global yet, it is probable that some of its competitors have a plan to address the world market, no matter what country they are located in.

The Web has helped remove barriers between countries, but there are still numerous opportunities to address foreign markets. Today, there are only 7 countries where English is the primary language spoken, some half a billion people, and where the combined economies represent 30% of the world’s economy. The combined populations of these countries represent 8% of the world’s population. Companies that continue to target this small fraction of the world market will miss out on capturing a large potential market.

Why then do 99% of U.S. and U.K. Websites continue to address the various country markets as if they were all one enormous homogenized market… and offer only English on their Website?

According to the latest statistics (see below), over 55% of the online world accesses the Internet from countries where English is not the native language. Needless to say, an English-language-only site will not do much to communicate to them.

Unfortunately, American businesses usually have a parochial viewpoint, and consider international sales “gravy”. They brag that without any translation to their Website, they already have 20% of their traffic from other countries (which usually means English-speaking countries). The fact is, when the world market is properly developed, there are twice the sales volume that come from other countries as U.S. domestic sales. The translation of this figure into dollar figures is quite startling. For every $1,000,000 of US sales, a passive approach gives $200,000 in export sales, whereas an active approach to developing foreign markets gives $2,000,000 in sales. Ten times as much! This simple calculation shows how much sales potential is being missed by not taking foreign markets seriously.

Europeans and Asians have used multiple languages for centuries when selling to one another, recognizing that marketing occurs in the language of the target market. As Willy Brandt, the former German chancellor, once said: “If I’m selling to you, I speak your language. If I’m buying, dann muessen Sie Deutsch sprechen [then you must speak German].”

Recent figures from the Forrester Research state that 80% of European-based corporate sites are multi-lingual. With a limited number of U.S.-based multi-lingual Websites available, who do you think will have a better chance of capturing the international online market?

In conclusion, I would strongly encourage you to take international markets seriously in order to stay in the running. Competition is heating up very fast, and if you do not properly address foreign markets, your competitors surely will… no matter which country they come from.

Bill Dunlap is CEO for Global Reach, specializing in building traffic to multilingual Websites to boost international sales. 408/980-7426 or 888/942-6426 (toll-free) +331/5301-0741 (Europe)
Email: bill@global-reach.biz
Web: http://global-reach.biz