Can You Say What Your International Strategy Is?
Execution without strategy is simply treading water
There’s a classic Harvard Business Review article that recommends articulating your company strategy in 35 words or less.
35 words is short enough for everyone in your company to memorize, yet long enough to be specific and clear about the direction and priority of your business.
The very same logic applies to the international aspirations of any business. Localizing a website or product is not a strategy, nor is hiring a global sales team. Any team operating on international-adjacent work must have clarity of purpose in order to achieve their objectives and contribute to overall company success.
Too many international teams operate on a purely reactive basis. This is a natural evolution of incremental projects and work that is difficult to snap out of. But it’s incredibly difficult to make progress towards long-term goals and ambitions by being reactive.
A carefully-crafted international strategy is crucial to identifying direction, measurement of success and customer focus. Borrowing from the HBR article, let’s break down the aspects of a viable international strategy statement.
Objective
The objective of your international strategy statement should be aligned with your company mission/vision, and provide a clear destination. Simply put, it must answer the question how will you know you have been successful?
An objective is not the same as a vague aspiration or general direction. It needs to be specific, measurable and time bound.
Avoid objectives that are catch-all, such as “improve customer experience for international users” or “localize all Marketing content”. While these might describe some of the work you will do, they are open to interpretation, cannot be assessed and have no end-point.
Above all, your objective should represent the ideal attainment that maximizes value for your company. It needs to be sufficiently ambitious, yet tangible and useful for making priority trade-off decisions.
In the international context, prioritizing trade-offs is essential, considering the myriad demands for focus and improvement. Therefore, consider whether user growth, market share, brand awareness, revenue growth, or something else, is the primary target. Each of these may be relevant at different times in the business lifecycle, and each one will determine a different allocation of resources and project selection.
Scope
International initiatives frequently fail to make the desired impact due to poorly defined scope. There’s a tendency to boil the ocean and attempt to tackle everything. This may be borne out of the size of the opportunity - the prize is too big to ignore. But, more often it’s a result of not understanding what is most important.
This is where scope is helpful: get all teams on the same page and create a framework for saying no to lower-priority activities
There are three key considerations to scope:
1 Customer or Offering
Which customer segments will you target? Is your targeted international customer a mirror image of your existing, domestic ideal customer profile? If you are not sure, it’s worth researching to avoid targeting the wrong profile.
You may determine that your legal redlining SaaS product is a perfect fit for small legal companies in the US, but doesn’t meet some of the regulatory requirements for legal companies in EMEA. But, it may be suitable for in-house legal and privacy teams in EMEA.
Understanding the distinct requirements of your target customers must happen before you make costly assumptions about servicing a new market. In practical terms, this will impact the product and packaging you deliver and the go-to-market channels you select.
2 Geographic Location
Going “global” is insufficiently clear for any strategy. Sure, you want to achieve international revenue growth, but you must begin with some boundaries.
Which regions or countries will you focus on? Do you need to be more specific - perhaps large cities in certain countries or areas with particular characteristics?
There’s an easy test to determine if you have clear geographical growth targets: ask 5 people in different departments to identify your priority markets. If they cannot answer or provide conflicting answers, then you do not have clear priorities.
Creating a prioritized set of markets deserves a deep dive post of its own, but in brief, you should strive to create a discrete list of the markets that you are focused on. Consider a ranking methodology that fits with your company strategy and goals, but may include:
Serviceable Addressable Market
Revenue potential
Competitive landscape
Existing user base
Market growth potential
Geopolitical/legal risk
Economic health indicators
Ease and cost of market entry
Dominant go-to-market channels
You may find that a single prioritized list is difficult to produce. In that case, consider segmenting markets along different categories. For example, any of the following categories would be helpful in grouping go-to-market and planning activities:
Market maturity levels (Under-developed/Developing/Mature)
GTM channel groups (Product-Led Growth markets / Sales-Led markets / Channel-only markets)
Growth expectations (Low/Medium/High)
Do you anticipate “quick wins” from your international expansion or are you building for long term success? And, most importantly, does your company’s senior leadership have the same understanding and expectation for your international strategy?
The benefit of a prioritized set of geographical targets extends to the entire company. Your Product, Marketing, Research, Business Development and Finance teams can rally around the same targets and align their investment and resources accordingly.
3 Vertical Integration
How much of the supply chain will you control in-house vs. delegate and outsource? This question may seem operational in nature, but has a huge bearing on your hiring requirements, ability to scale and the time it will take to penetrate new markets.
To avoid answering the question every time you consider entering a new market, consider the essential components that are required for go-to-market and which of these you wish to retain full control of, or outsource.
Marketing: you you hire a Field Marketing team, use local agencies or conduct all activities from a central Marketing team?
Development: if your product needs modification or integrations to compete successfully in new markets, can you afford to adopt and prioritize this work? Or, will you identify outsourcing partners for faster scale?
Sales: hiring in-market Sales teams is one of the costliest steps you can take and a reason why so many companies go-slow in evaluating new markets. If you cannot commit 100% to a new market, leveraging resellers and partners with local expertise is a lower-risk approach here.
Advantage
Why will you succeed with your strategy? Why do you believe customers in your target markets will choose you over your local and global competitors?
Your competitive advantage is a specific reason you believe you will achieve success. Rally your company around this and point every initiative in this direction.
1 Customer Value Proposition
Your existing value proposition is well articulated and a proven success. Now you are considering international expansion, think about which aspects of this value proposition are most relevant for your new target customers. What changes and adaptations will you make to match their requirements?
Localization: does your product adapt to solve the distinct pain points in your target market? Have you incorporated changes for cultural nuances and preferences? Do you
Differentiation: how are you different to existing, local competitors, or your global rivals in the markets you are targeting? Matching customer requirements to your superior offering avoids taking a “one size fits all” approach to your international strategy
Brand: have you a consistent brand story and strategy for your target markets? How should it differ from your domestic brand strategy? It may need to vary based on the different user profiles or stages of maturity of your target markets
Engagement: do you customers value or need in-person interactions with Sales teams? Do they require chat or phone support or is email sufficient? How much personalization and adaptation will you pursue in your website and social media campaigns? These questions require deep understanding of your market and customer preferences and can set the scene for strong points of differentiation against competitors
2 Unique Capabilities
Consider which of your capabilities will help you gain success in your international strategy. Each of these levers offers the possibility to stand apart from competitors and leverage your company’s intellectual strengths and culture to achieve your growth ambitions.
Finance: can you use capital to acquire local companies and jump-start your market entry? What level of investment can you dedicate toward early-stage growth markets before expecting strong returns? Can you outlast other competitors by lowering margins to drive market share and adoption?
Partnerships: can you secure exclusive partnerships with local entities to accelerate your distribution? Search for local organizations that serve your target audience and explore partnerships to find on-ramps and scale your market entry. For example, telecoms companies or internet service providers or banks have built-in scale and appeal for the SMB market.
Adaptability: does your company have an experimental DNA or is it highly structured in your planning? Can you pivot and adapt based on what you encounter in new markets? You may need to hire individuals with new skillsets to succeed here.
IP: do you have patents or unique technical expertise that allows you gain an advantage in geographical markets? This is where a large suite of integrations or geography-based connections can give you a distinct head-start and raise the barrier to entry for competitors.
Talent: can you capture key local talent or build talent pipelines quickly to enable rapid scaling when growth takes off? Your ability to scale up and down local teams offers an advantage that is difficult to match.
Putting It All Together
Creating your international strategy is not a task for one person. In fact, the process and exercise of creating the strategy is just as important as the outcome.
Your international strategy should not be owned by any one person or team. It must be a statement of ambition and intent for the entire company.
The work to arrive at a single strategy involves trade-off conversations. Will you grow iteratively market-by-market or go broad quickly? Will you control everything centrally or hire local teams? Do you favor partnerships and resellers or control the entire supply chain? What is your appetite for risk and your patience for reward?
Commitment
These conversations require input from senior leaders across the organization. If you can, organize an in-person workshop and spend the time to craft a statement that is jointly agreed and owned by all leaders.
An international strategy statement is useless without commitment from all senior leaders. Achieving this buy-in will help future conversations around priority, and help smooth out difficult alignment and dependency dilemmas.
If you want a starting point, consider an international strategy statement that looks like this: Using the considerations above, customize the template to suit your specific targets, approach, scope and advantages.
The ultimate test of a successful international strategy statement is when others across the company start referencing it for their plans and targets. It can be a powerful rallying call and deserves the effort to construct it carefully.