The internet has simplified expansion into new markets, providing businesses with unprecedented opportunities to operate across borders. It has made it much less expensive to research new markets, build connections in new jurisdictions, and to start exporting your actual product.

One challenge that the internet creates, however, is in the presentation of your brand. To make any kind of market impact, you will need to connect with potential customers and convey your unique selling points. However, different market environments call for a change of marketing emphasis – the brand that works in Britain may need some tweaking to make an impact in other countries. Previously, this was not particularly difficult as each market could be looked at as a separate entity. But connectivity has complicated the matter.

A simple search allows your potential customers in one region to discover that your product is marketed differently in different jurisdictions. When you begin to export, therefore, your brand must be both cohesive and malleable – something that you can subtly adapt for new markets without contradicting yourself. So what can you do to make your brand cohesive but avoid alienating potential clients?

Understand your strengths
Honesty is at the core of good branding – communicating what you offer to your customers rather than trying to pull the wool over their eyes. When you’re considering your brand, whether you are offering a consumer-facing product or a service to businesses, the first step should be an honest consideration of what you offer.

Can you beat competitors for value? Do you produce the most reliable product in your industry? Is your after-sales support second to none? Whatever the unique selling points are, your brand should communicate them in a concise way through your company name, the imagery you use, and the slogan you adopt.

Don’t skimp on a good translator
This seems self-evident, but many major companies have made mistakes in this regard.

If you are looking to do business in non-English speaking countries, then one of the first things that you need to do is look at your company and product name. Will it sound professional and reflect your brand values in every country that you’re looking to do business in? To make sure get the name translated into all languages that you will be operating in. Developing a universal product name that conveys the right message in all your markets can take time, but it is worthwhile.

It’s also important to have all your business literature and advertising materials properly translated. To fail to do so can sometimes cause offence and/or confusion. For effective translation you need to use someone who is comfortable with formal, informal and idiomatic registers in both languages. From an advertising perspective it is not enough to be merely understood: you need to be persuasive, and word choice and register plays a huge part in achieving this aim.

Research your new consumer
For your export business to be viable, it is important to understand how your potential consumers like to operate. A big mistake is to assume that there will be no cultural differences between people who want your product in different countries, or that your product can itself create a major shift in business or consumer culture. Even large corporations with a lot of spending power can make this mistake. Time and money spent researching your market as it stands could help prevent expensive mistakes further down the line. Find out how your company’s product or service could operate within a particular culture and find a way to cater to it.

Another aspect to this is that your core demographic may be different in your new market. Just because your product mainly appeals to professionals in your domestic market, for example, doesn’t mean that they will be your most likely consumers elsewhere. In fact, having too rigid an outlook in this regard could lead to you missing out on a lucrative opportunity. Understanding your consumers, their lifestyles and priorities, will allow you to fine-tune your brand.

Be adaptable
Adaptability is one of the most important aspects of business. While it is important to have cohesive brand values, you may need to alter your approach to fit in with the culture of another country, but also to make sure that you have a unique selling point that sets you apart from similar products in your new market. Also cultural norms should give you some idea as to how to market your project. Countries such as Austria can prove very status conscious, and appealing to this facet may help your product or service gain ground. In other countries, such as the Netherlands, ostentatious wealth is frowned upon, so flashy branding may give the impression that you’re all style and no substance. In certain Asian countries, a food product is more likely to get traction if it is connected with a notable chef or well-respected industry person.

This approach does not work so well in Sweden and Italy, where food products are more likely to do well if the artisanal and traditional elements of the food are emphasised. You may need to take a different angle than you do with your existing market.

Be aware of cultural symbolism
Branding is about more than just language: it’s about all the visual and auditory cues that go along with it. With this in mind, it’s important to think through colour usage, as well as any acronyms or numbers that could be interpreted differently abroad, and may cause confusion. An example of this is the colour orange, which is seen as being an energetic, vibrant colour in the Western world. However, in countries with a large Buddhist population, the colour is associated with humility and renunciation.

Similarly, seemingly innocent numbers can have a more loaded meaning elsewhere, particularly in Asia. Japan and China both have lucky numbers and unlucky numbers, and the number 4 is considered unlucky in both because it sounds almost the same as the word for death in their respective languages. Many buildings in South East Asia will not have a fourth floor, and Japanese camera company Canon skip the number in their product series. Nokia, a Finnish company, followed suit in order to fit in with the market.

Don’t assume that this just extends to single numbers, how you combine them can also change the meaning. In Hong Kong some residential businesses avoid having floors with 4 in the name, meaning that a building with a highest floor of 50 may in actual fact only have 35 floors. Using two unlucky numbers together however, such as 54, can neutralise the effect. To really understand the nuances of colours, images and numbers, you may well need to tap local branding expertise.

Utilise your local employees
A 2011 study by Tarnovskaya and de Chernatony emphasised that when moving a brand into another country it is helpful to look for the opinions of your local employees, who can give you invaluable feedback on how your service or product is being received in their market. The ability to build a network where honest feedback is collected and acted upon will be a hugely important factor in your future success.

Global branding is not a new concept. It was first discussed by Harvard Business School Professor Theodore Levitt in his 1980s article, The Globalization of Markets. Levitt put forward the idea of a lowest common denominator approach that would prove effective over a number of different cultures, an approach that – where it has been deftly implemented – has yielded many benefits for both consumer-facing multinationals and niche businesses.