The increasingly virtual nature of business, sales and marketing mean that expanding your tech business into and across Europe has never been easier. So much so that the opportunity cost of not doing so, should concern you far more than the potential cost of doing so.
There are five reasons for this increasingly accessible European marketplace for tech businesses.
First, the cloud delivery of business products and services means that often no physical fulfilment is required. Even those businesses shipping a physical product can usually always support onboarding and set up remotely. The ability to deliver your product and service remotely from another part of the world removes a significant cost barrier to entry for overseas expansion.
Second, the cultural acceptance of global business means that at almost every level of society we have become used to buying products and services from throughout the globe. Do you know where your various apps are developed, do you really care? At a privacy and security level you might, but the reality today is we are all much more trusting than we were even 10 years ago. Most businesses will not think anything of buying a product or service from a company they have heard about and trust irrespective of where that company develops and distributes its product from.
Thirdly, in terms of promoting your product or service, the cost of experimenting with selling your products and service in a new territory has never been easier or more affordable to do. If you don’t need to set up offices across Europe or recruit an army of employees, the market entry costs for expanding into Europe have been slashed to a fraction of what they used to be. You are essentially looking at the cost of promoting your product through PR and marketing, and you can partner flexibly with an agency to achieve this.
Fourth, if the upfront sales and marketing costs have been slashed, I would argue that the opportunity cost of not testing the European market outweighs the cost of doing so. Just imagine how silly would you feel if you found out that there was a burgeoning market for your product and service in Europe, but you didn’t know that because you hadn’t even tested the waters. Doing PR and marketing around your products and services is possibly one of the cheapest and most effective forms of market research you can do.
Finally, new agency models like Tyto’s PRWithoutBorders™ model are providing businesses with the opportunity to set up and run fully fledged pan-European multi language PR and marketing programmes at a fraction of the costs of traditional agency models with expensive offices and bloated management strictures.
So pack your bags and come and test the water, Europe is bursting with opportunity. Just think of what you might learn and what you are missing out on in terms of addressable market.
Featured photo by Suzy Hazelwood