Starting to trade in new international markets may sound like a daunting task, even for those companies that have been successful in other foreign markets, but it’s an exciting opportunity with huge and proven rewards for the taking.
Surprisingly, operational tasks such as shipping processes and logistics aren’t the most challenging aspects of selling your product overseas…
We’ve identified the 3 key challenges that UK manufacturers face in developing their export business and how we can help you solve them
1. Identifying a Suitable Local Partner
Over the past 10 years and with 1000+ clients, we’ve developed some great relationships and we understand the value of partnerships. Our top 50 clients have been with us for over 5 years on average (we love them for it and continue to deliver a great service!) and these partnerships are (almost) always drive by 2 things: meeting expectation and operational alignment. But when you’ve got a language barrier how do you solve this?
Partner suitability comes in many shapes and sizes, but we believe translation services can help identify the partners with most reach and visibility in the local market and then help you qualify their claims. It may sound simple, but you could look to perform keyword research translation for your products for the local search engine then analyse the first few pages as a gauge of who is most visible in this digital age. Keywords in search are a sign of intent, not just a word on its own and professional translation services can help you define and refine the context of the search. The same can be said for social media!
Once you’ve narrowed down the search, you can use translation services for contracts, terms and conditions and legal translations to ensure you get clarity of expectation and the alignment we mentioned earlier. We know it’s difficult to get to talk to potential customers and partners and build relationships with influencers and decision-makers, but we’re here to help you translate the essence of your brand and the features of your product to minimise this time investment.
2. Finding time to devote to the business overseas
We can’t say that we’ll invent time travel for you, but we can certainly help streamline your communications so that you’re not sat in endless meetings! We’ve found that by translating standard sales documentation, presentations and technical product specifications your time can be used more efficiently.
Got an FAQ on your website? Translate them! This could save lots of time in repeating the same solutions to standard customer problems. Just because your potential new customer is in another country doesn’t mean that they won’t have the same experiences, thoughts and barriers to transaction that domestic ones do. Customer journeys are often very similar across continents, try to translate for all of the journey and not just the pretty sales brochure!
3. Protecting intellectual property overseas
For many manufacturing companies, intellectual property (IP) may be your most valuable asset. Making sure that you have the right protection is important when operating in unfamiliar markets.
The UK is seen as an “innovation nation” and intellectual property protection is there to give you a guaranteed competitive advantage. You need to think about getting hold of your international rights as early as possible and part of this may involve translation services.
Apart from the obvious competitive advantage, holding IP protection for a product or service is associated with a 10% increase in the likelihood of reporting overseas turnover for SMEs. For those companies that already export, being IP active beyond the UK also tends to raise the % share of overseas turnover as part of the whole company income.
At Bubbles Translation Services, we’ve helped hundreds of UK manufacturers break down the barriers of international trade. From attracting new customers via marketing translations to producing detailed technical manuals to help deliver a great customer experience post-sale – we can help. We’ve got 3,800 translators speaking 280 languages across the globe from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe!
Get in touch today and see how we can help you deliver global revenue growth.
