A Step-by-Step Guide to Market Assessment

Expanding into markets in other countries is an important step for any business that wants to grow fully. By reaching new places, businesses can increase their share in the market. If a business offers a useful product or service, entering a new market can also open up new chances to succeed.

But just like any big move in business, going into new markets comes with some risks. There can be challenges such as different languages, different ways people shop, and changes in how the industry works in other countries. Everyone in the company—from top managers to sales and marketing teams- should know both the good and the risky parts of entering a new market.

Before making a final choice, it’s helpful to do a few important things: study the market, understand the possible success, and create a clear plan. These steps can lower the risks and help you choose the best time and place to enter.

This guide will help you learn how to study a market. It will also help you feel ready to create a plan for selling your product in a new country.

Looking at Global Markets for Business Growth

To start, it helps to check each country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP shows the total value of goods and services produced in a country in a certain time. This gives a simple picture of how strong a country’s economy is, which is key when thinking about growing your business there.

Right now, the United States has the highest GDP. It makes up almost one-fourth of the world’s economy. This is good news if your business wants to grow within the US. But if you are thinking beyond that, there are other countries to consider.

Countries like China, Japan, Germany, India, and the UK could have many chances for growth. At this stage, it’s best not to rule anyone out, because things will likely change over time.

Experts believe that by 2030, there will be big changes in which countries have the highest GDP. China may rise to the top, and India might also grow fast, along with other countries. In 10 years, the world’s economy could look very different.

If this growth happens, there may be great chances for your business. Choosing the right places now could bring big success later.

Many big US companies—like Mattel, ExxonMobil, Apple, and GE—are already growing in other countries. Nearly two-thirds of their total sales come from outside the US. Netflix, for example, gets about 56% of its users from other countries, and 90% of its growth comes from these markets.

This shows that many parts of the world may need different types of products and services. The big question is: how do you decide which country is best for your business to grow into?

How to Do a Market Check Before Expanding

Doing a step-by-step market check helps us make sure we don’t miss anything important. We need to look at a few key things, such as:

• How strong or weak the economy is
• How big the market is and how much competition there is
• Who the competitors are and how much of the market they control
• How customers behave and how the buying process works
• Language, culture, and other local challenges

Before looking into new markets, we must make sure our product is doing well in the current market. This is very important for small businesses that don’t have a lot of money to spend. If things aren’t growing where we are now, moving to a new place might not help.

We should first improve our product, learn more about our customers, and make our message clear at home. Then we can follow the steps below to get ready to enter a new market.

Step 1: Look at Different Markets for Growth and Opportunity

Before picking a place to expand, we should study different markets and compare them. The goal here is to find out which market is the best fit for our business. We need to think about:

• How big is the market?
• How many businesses are already there
• Who the top companies are and how much control they have

By collecting data and comparing countries, we may find new chances we didn’t expect, prove that a market is strong, or notice risks we hadn’t seen.

Using the Semrush Traffic & Market Toolkit, we can get a simple summary of a market. For example, when we entered Paypal.com, the tool showed details about the payment processing market in the US.

Even though the US market is big, it’s hard to join because just a few websites—like Paypal—control most of the market.

When we change the location to Brazil, things look a bit different. A few companies still control most of the market, but their shares are more spread out. The market in Brazil is also smaller, which means there is less demand overall.

Next, we looked at Japan. This market seems to be the most promising. The market share is more evenly divided among more companies, which makes it easier to enter and compete. Even though the market is smaller than the US, it may grow faster because it’s not too crowded yet.

Step 2: Understand the Competition in Top Markets

Once we find the best markets to expand into, we should learn about the competition. Knowing how strong the other companies are and what they are doing helps us get ready for what’s ahead.

A competitive chart is a great tool to understand the whole market. One good example is the Growth Quadrant in the Market Overview dashboard. It shows us who the strong players are and who is growing fast.

In Japan, paypal.com is already a big name. It gets a lot of visits but is not growing quickly. Some other companies fall into the “Game Changers” group. They are growing steadily and might be the ones to watch.

After picking the companies we want to study more, we can use tools like the Traffic Overview dashboard. This lets us go deeper into how much traffic they get and how fast they are growing. We will talk more about this in Step 5.

Step 3. Study Customer Behaviour and Funnel Data in New Markets

Knowing what your competitors are doing is helpful, but it’s only part of the picture. We also need to understand how people behave and shop in the markets we want to grow into.

Let’s start by looking at the data we already have. Check if there are any trends linked to the markets we are thinking about. For example:

• Are we getting more leads from a certain country, even without spending much there?
• Is the time between first contact and sale shorter in some places?
• Do people in some areas spend more per order?

Most tools that track website data can show us where visitors come from, what they do on the site, and if they end up buying something. Semrush has dashboards that show country-based or state-based traffic patterns, which help in seeing what’s happening in each market.

The Sources & Destinations dashboard on Semrush also shows how users move between websites. For example, it shows where visitors come from before reaching PayPal’s site in Germany and where they go afterward.

In Germany, some visitors come from food-related services. If we wanted to grow in this market, we might think about working with food service businesses to promote our payment service.

To find out which products or services are popular in a region, we can use the Subfolders & Subdomains dashboard. This tool shows what parts of a competitor’s website are getting the most visits from each country. For example, if a subfolder gets a lot of traffic from Germany, it tells us what people there are interested in.

We can also go back to the Traffic Overview dashboard to see funnel data. One key number to check is the Purchase Conversion rate—this tells us what percent of visitors are actually buying something.

The Top Pages dashboard helps us understand which pages get the most visits and where that traffic is coming from. This helps us learn how people move through the site and what content gets their attention.

When we put this all together—location data, user journeys, top pages, and conversion rates—we get a clear picture of the market and how to reach people better when we expand.

Step 4. Think About Language, Culture, and Society in Each Market

It’s not just about numbers. Culture, language, and local customs also play a big role when entering a new market. We need to approach each country with an open mind and try to learn how things work there.

We can start by looking at general information about the people in each area using the Demographics dashboard. This shows age, gender, and location.

If we are moving to a country where English is not the first language, we need to know how well people understand English. For example, many people speak English in Germany, fewer in France, and even fewer in Japan. This means we might need to spend more on translating our website and customer service, depending on the country.

We should also learn about the local laws and rules in each place. Some common areas to think about include:

• Taxes
• Environmental laws
• Data and intellectual property protection
• Hiring rules
• Property or office space
• What’s allowed in ads
• How to set up and run a business

Even if we try to understand these rules, it’s smart to get legal help when moving into a new country. Breaking a law, even by mistake, can hurt our business and our name.

Step 5. Check Performance Against Competitors and Watch Market Trends

Even if we do good research before entering a new market, we still need to watch how things change over time. It’s important to follow both market trends and what our competitors are doing—not just at the start, but also during and after our expansion.

The numbers we track might depend on our type of business, but tools like Semrush Traffic & Market can help us stay on top. Here are three ways we can use these tools:

• Use the Daily Trend dashboard to check how our website is doing in our home market. While growing in new places is exciting, we still need to make sure things are running well at home.
• Compare how we’re doing against others in the new market. These businesses might be like the ones we compete with already, or they might be new to us. Watching them helps us learn what’s working and how we can improve.
• Check traffic differences across countries. This shows how people in different regions use the internet. We can also look for changes during holidays or big events, which may affect how people shop or visit websites. These patterns help us understand how to do better in each place.

Keep Your Data Organized, Get Insights, and Build a Plan

To grow in a new market, we need to do a lot of research. When collecting data for different countries, it helps to stay organized. One tool we can use is the Market Assessment Decision Matrix.

This is a simple table we can copy to Google Drive. We can then fill it with all the data we’ve gathered. It helps us keep track of important details in one place.

Once the table is filled, we can see which country has the highest score and might be the best choice for our next move. This also helps us understand our main competitors and check if we’re ready to move forward.