Key in your market entry strategy is some market research. Of course there are reports on market size and market growth, but often these are general. Specific knowledge on how your product is perceived and what your competitions is, is harder to get but more valuable.
Our local consultant can advise you on the best way to enter the market, based on market and competition research.
The United States of America has a population of 327 million. In 2022, 83% of the population lived in the cities, and this percentage is slowly rising. The average income per capita is almost 60,000 USD. This is promising to sell your goods, but you’ll have to know where to start.
The United States (the US) has 50 states, five territories, and a federal district. The country is governed by the federal government, having fifty states and the federal district of Washington.
What market entry approach you want to choose, will strongly depend on the type of product that you are selling.
Product type | Possible strategy |
B2B products, high value, small volumes | One distributor or agent for the whole country may do, unless the sales process is complex and local service or maintenance is needed. |
B2B products, high volumes | For logistic reasons and if applicable for service and maintenance, you may choose for regional distributors |
B2C products with regulations per state, like medicines and alcohol | One distributor per state |
Other B2C products | You may start with one distributor first, who is the most eager to test the market for you and support the sales with brokers. Later on you may choose more distributors and set up you local company and do some sales directly. |
In the competitive USA market, you have to convince a retailer why he will make more margin with your product than with what he currently has on the shelves. We help you make the competitor analysis, position yourself in the market and present you in the right way. And we do the groundwork in approaching the right decision makers.
The best preparation for doing business in any country is visiting it. This way you can experience the culture, check the shops and build your network.
If you have a consumer product that you can’t sell directly from your home country to your end customer, you need at least one step in between. This can be a distributor (who also acts as wholesaler or importer), a big retailer directly, or it can be a large web shop. Let’s look at the pro’s and con’s of each option.
For a B2B product that is not a commodity or for customized solutions the story is different. Here sales needs to be done in alignment with the department that actually delivers the service or that determines the price case by case. Also then you have three different options.
As counts for any country: you first have to define the target group that you want to sell to. If these are businesses, then you can reach out directly through emails and targeted advertisements, e.g. on LinkedIn. If this arouses interest and gives a sufficient response rate, then you may have found an easy way to get the market’s attention.
If your target group is more diffuse, or is a consumer group, then you have to rely more on advertising such as on Facebook or Instagram.
With the tooling of our partner Instantly.ai you can define your target group, whether it’s 50 or 50.000 people. Send them a sequence of emails, directly in their inbox, for typically under 10 dollarcents per persoon.
First determine who are the end-users of your product or service. And where do they buy it now? The best way to determine the right entry strategy is to approach these parties. Would they consider your product or service as an alternative? Do they agree with the positioning that you have in mind? And what competitors are they buying from now? These data will help you determine the right strategy.