International Business and Technology Blog

Brazil - The largest economy in South America and with exciting potential for further growth. No wonder exporters have Brazil firmly in their export destination sights. While its size and potential growth are tempting, it is not for the inexperienced exporter. Brazil is a difficult market to enter, subject to a history of complex protectionist policies.

But for the persistent exporter, Brazil holds out the trophy of a lucrative and growing market. Use online tools to your advantage to be found, understood and transact your business in Brazil – one of the most internet-aware markets in the world. The infographic below will help you grasp and understand the potential of Brazil’s online environment, social media, and ecommerce.

This is the second in our 4-part blog Service Company Exporter Series that explores the challenges service companies face when exporting and what tools and support service companies might benefit from. Previously, we looked at the importance of the service sector for the U.S. economy. The current blog compares the most common barriers to export faced by service companies versus manufacturers.

If the U.S wishes to maintain its global stature, it needs to support its service exporters more as they compete in international markets. Traditional federal and state export assistance programs need to acknowledge the economic shift in favor of services and adapt their resources and activities to support the growing number of U.S. service companies that are looking to export. This blog series will discuss the different resources service exporters need compared to manufacturing exporters and will make suggestions on how U.S. state export development programs can address the exporting needs of service firms.

New to China and wondering how to get brand recognition? One of the fastest and most cost-efficient ways of building brand awareness in China, particularly for B2B companies, is to use SINA Weibo. The name Weibo means microblog in Chinese and the app is sometimes likened to a Chinese version of Twitter. But that comparison undermines one of its key attributes: from an online marketing perspective Weibo is more like Facebook. Weibo allows companies to post content to specific targeted audiences in China. It gives you a segmented audience base to grow page likes, create social buzz and to drive traffic to your website. This is the main reason why Chinese businesses are increasingly using Weibo for their online marketing and why savvy non-Chinese companies are joining in. 

Canada is a great market for US companies testing the international export waters for the first time, but equally offers a great long-term international business growth opportunity. Canada is the go-to export market of many US companies, not only thanks to its close proximity, which allows for easier, more affordable shipping and order fulfilment, but also thanks to lower language and cultural barriers. But how about the barriers of the online world? What should you consider when building a website(s) for Canada?

Googling away on my iPad mini, while stuck at yet another airport somewhere, I found reference to a book called “Think Outside the Country”. The subject matter looked interesting, promising to be “A Guide to Going Global and succeeding in the Translation Economy”. I wanted to know more, clicked to my Amazon account and for $29.00, two days later in yet another hotel somewhere, the hard copy was mine to hold and read.

IBT Online provides website localization and international online marketing services to help companies grow their sales, brands and businesses online globally, and that since 2002. So at IBT Online we all think outside the country, and perhaps more importantly, we all do Online Global outside the country, as we have delivered more than 1,000 localized country specific corporate websites through our succesful Online Global program. 

When I read about the author, it stated that John Yunker is “the world’s leading expert on web content globalization”. Now that is an ambitious claim that sets expectations. So this blog turns out to be something of a book review.

Mexico is arguably Latin America’s most dynamic market for ecommerce for both the B2C and B2B worlds. Retail and ecommerce giants Amazon and Wal-Mart clearly think so and are backing their ambitions with huge investments. Amazon launched in Mexico in June 2015 and according to Juan Carlos Garcia, CEO of Amazon Mexico, the company sees “a big opportunity in the Mexican market. It’s a market which right now is at $12 billion and growth has been in the double digits.”

Google's perpetual drive for innovation means more disruption is coming our way. An example is Google’s new translation system that has delivered measurable improvements in the fluency of Google Translate. Google has begun rolling out the service across all its languages, chat boxes, web pages, articles, blogs, emails, social media, message forums…First updated were the most commonly used primary languages (English, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, French, Korean and Turkish), as well as Google’s >192 country specific search engines, the Google Translate website and the Website Translator plugin. Our research shows that Google Translate is now better than ever for personal use, but remains bad for business!

The land grab for internet users in India is in full swing and nowhere more so than in ecommerce. India now has the second largest number of internet users in the world, behind China, but this still means that about 65% of India’s population is not yet on the internet. While there are many Indian tech companies there are surprisingly few independent internet players, leaving the field open to the internet giants of the world. Google, with a historically impenetrable 96% market share in India, is facing serious competition from Chinese search engine giant Baidu. Amazon and Alibaba are dividing up online retail, gobbling up homegrown talent while Uber, Facebook and others all look for a slice of the cake.