This is part of a series of seven posts. The first can be found here.

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#2. targeting too many niches:

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America is big: big cars, big people, and big opportunities. Many exporters and small American companies make a fatal mistake when trying to grow their sales: they bite off more than they can chew.

This common American phrase means that often people take on more than they can manage. This is especially true when you’re trying to enter new markets. Many of America’s niche markets are larger than some countries gross domestic product (GDP):

• Georgia GDP is US$10.7B (2009); US spent $15B on Bottled Water
• Costa Rica is $30B; US spent $32B on Tobacco
• Israel is $200B; US spent $213B on Advertising

While you might not be interested in bottled water or cigarettes, there’s a wide range of niche markets that you can focus on, exclusively, to generate sales. With many billion-dollar niche markets in the US, there’s a temptation is to focus on many of them.

That would be a grave mistake.

Many US companies fail every year because they try to sell their products in far too many markets. Exporters are at greater risk of doing the same.

Those who succeed tend to have a very narrow focus. They may select only one industry, they may limit themselves to one geographical area, or they could do both. The large size of American niche markets offers a lot of room to specialize products to better meet needs, instead of needing to generalize them to sell into more than one.

But succeeding in any one niche market takes time, effort and a fair amount of marketing dollars. Exporters who focus on entering their products into more than one of them at the same time will fail.

So before you consider exporting to the US, you need to invest the time and research on figuring out which one niche market to enter first. A great place to start is looking at where you succeed locally with your own customers, and evaluate those US markets first.

Next Sin: Being Product and Not Customer Centric