How to Expand into Foreign Markets

On March 5th 2008 OpenEdit.org saw a huge spike in traffic. Not a small spike, a huge spike. As in the most traffic we have received in a single day, EVER! Like me, you are probably asking the obvious question, "Where did all these people come from?" After a little digging through our analytics, the answer lies within a post on pettinix.org. On March 5th 2008 a simple truth walked up and slapped us in the face. There exists a huge demand for OpenEdit in Spanish and yet we are failing to communicate with this expanding market because we only offer OpenEdit in English.

Here is the good news. This oversight will not exist for much longer.

A todos los miembros de la comunidad de habla hispana, queremos disculparnos. Estamos traduciendo el Sitio de OpenEdit al español en estos momentos. Agregaremos más detalles en español, enseguida que estén disponibles.

Says the teenage boy to the middle aged man who is seeking advice on communicating with his teenage daughter, "Like, dude.. just speak her language dude."

Does this lesson apply to you? I suspect it does. Like most of our enterprise clients, your company probably spends a lot of time, money, and other valuable resources analyzing the competition looking for a competitive edge that will help achieve an increase in market share. Well, perhaps there exists on the internet an abundance of potential clients that are looking to do business with you if only you would speak their language.

For us at OpenEdit this means offering our software and support services in a language that half our company speaks as fluently as they do English. Chris Burkey, CEO and President of OpenEdit spends a few months every year with in Chile speaking Spanish as easily as he does Engilsh. Our Chile office is entirely Spanish speaking and our newest addition to the sales team, Ana Inés Abella (I'll introduce her properly in an upcoming post), is also fluent in Spanish and is spear heading the translation of our site. Heck, while I've been complaining about the struggles I'm having working with our designer, Christian, who speaks only Spanish, perhaps I've been missing out on a real opportunity. Perhaps this is a reflection of someone in need of a little more humility. Je suis canadien et je suis déjà confortable en français. Perhaps it is time for me add Spanish to the list.

In addition to OpenEdit's capabilities to work in Spanish, OpenEdit 6.0 has translation support capabilities that make owning a multilingual site so simple that technology no longer presents a barrier either.

Having removed all other barriers, the only excuses left is the old 'lack of time and resources' song and dance that just about everyone but Google and Microsoft can use as a crutch.

Goal: Translate OpenEdit.org into Spanish before our first User Group meeting on May 20th 2008.

This new venture should prove to be exciting and rewarding. I'll be sure to keep you posted. Since the start of March, we have already landed a large enterprise client from Spain and I expect many more. If you would like to join us as we venture into foreign markets, contact me anytime and we'll be happy to help setup OpenEdit, give you a three minute lesson on managing a multilingual site, and watch as you enjoy the benefits of a high demand market place that will make you the envy of your competition.

Chat soon.