This article is based on Becky Park’s talk at the Product Marketing Summit in Austin. As a PMA member, you can enjoy the complete recording here. For more exclusive content, head over to your membership dashboard.

Let's be real – most American companies struggle with international business. I'm looking at you, Amazon, as one of the very few exceptions! From the smallest startups all the way up to massive multinationals, we just keep getting it wrong when it comes to optimizing for global markets.

But all's not lost! As a product marketer, you have a vital strategic role to play in helping your company crack the international nut. That's what I'm here to talk about today.

The truth is, the US's chunk of global GDP is shrinking proportionately, and expected to keep dwindling. While the US makes up about 4.2% of the global population, it generates over 15% of global gross domestic product. Sounds great, right? Well, that percentage is on the decline.

The US accounts for 4.2% of the global population and 15.5% of global GDP.

The great news is there's a lot of other territory to cover – literally a whole world of possibilities! 

Companies can take different routes to tapping into these fresh global markets. Maybe you're working for a “born global” company selling a product with universal appeal from day one. 

Or, perhaps your company started doing what I call “accidental exporting” in the growth stage – international customers just started finding and buying from you organically.

At a certain point, you look at that customer base and think, “Wow, there's crazy interest for us in Turkmenistan!” That's when the “accidental” turns into an intentional global channel strategy. You start getting sophisticated with international partners, resellers, local offices, and teams.

So, whether you're going global by design or falling into it accidentally, the opportunities are endless for an enterprising product marketer. You're the one scouring data, talking to customers, and sniffing out those potential new markets – at home or abroad.

Understanding cultural context

I can't emphasize this enough – when you're operating in global markets, cultural context is everything. On the surface, cultural differences may seem small – little quirks about how people dress, eat, or celebrate holidays, – but those are just the tip of the iceberg.

Let's use Valentine's Day as an example. In the US, we celebrate that classic Hallmark holiday on February 14th, along with parts of Europe and South America. But in Brazil? They have to wait four more months for their Dia dos Namorados love-fest in June. 

In India and the Middle East, Valentine's Day is viewed waaay differently. Some Indians see it as a crass example of Western influence run amok. Several Middle Eastern and Asian countries have straight-up outlawed the holiday. 

And get this – in Germany, the animal most associated with romance is… the pig. 

Image of an iceberg overlaid with text. Underlying cultural differences: values, assumptions, beliefs, expectations

My point is, these seemingly small cultural novelties are just the tip of a much bigger cultural iceberg. The really impactful differences lie beneath the surface in the depths of values, assumptions, beliefs, and expectations – VABEs, if you're looking for a funky acronym.

How culture shapes pricing strategies

These deeper cultural currents shape absolutely everything about how people think and behave – including how they buy products and services from companies like yours. Ignoring them can completely throw critical business elements like pricing strategy and the entire buyer journey out of whack.

Take pricing, for instance. If you're selling in a culture where haggling and discounting are the norm, you're going to have to rethink your pricing approach entirely – maybe inflating your sticker prices by 50% so you can realistically negotiate down from there.

Building trust across cultures

What about building trust – the critical first step for any buyer's journey? Americans are the fastest trust builders ever. Why? Because we skip the “building” part! We give trust right away. That's why people think we're the friendliest culture – we dole trust out freely, based on little more than a firm handshake. And then, if you violate that trust, we'll yank it back. 

In most other cultures, trust has to be earned through demonstrating consistent words and actions over time. Meaningful relationship-building has to happen before anyone's willing to do business. Trying to rush that process is a surefire way to scare off potential international customers or partners.

I have an example from when I lived in Denver. There was a group of Chinese commercial real estate investors coming to meet with agents on the Denver side. They came and stayed in a hotel, and this local agent took them around to see different properties for a week – five whole days of his time showing this group around. At the end of the week, the investors went home without investing.

What went wrong? Were they not serious about investing? Were they just there to waste the real estate agent’s time? Of course not. 

The problem was that this real estate agent didn't realize that he had to build a relationship with the Chinese investors before he could sell them anything.

The investors were expecting to be taken around all the tourist sites. They wanted to see Mount Evans, feel the history at the Colorado History Museum, and check out the college town of Boulder. They wanted to be wined and dined every night to build a relationship before they could decide to do business with this agent. The agent didn’t know that, so he missed out on the deal.