The instinct when entering a new market is to either translate what you have or rebuild it entirely. Both approaches are usually wrong. Translation fails because the messaging that resonates with buyers in your home market reflects the context, vocabulary, and competitive landscape of that market. A positioning statement that performs well in the UK will sound generic or miss the point in Japan, Singapore, or the US — not because the underlying value is absent, but because the way that value is expressed does not match how buyers in the new market think about the problem.
Rebuilding from zero, on the other hand, discards the positioning work that has been validated and replaces it with something untested and expensive to produce. The companies that localise most effectively treat their existing positioning as a foundation and change the specific elements that require change, while preserving the elements that do not.
What stays the same
The core value proposition — the fundamental outcome your product or service delivers — is usually transferable across markets without modification. If you reduce customer acquisition cost by improving lead quality, that outcome is relevant to a revenue leader in Austin and a revenue leader in Singapore. The commercial logic is the same.
The category you occupy is usually also transferable, though the vocabulary describing it may not be. B2B SaaS companies in the GTM space are a recognisable category in most mature enterprise markets. The specific language used to describe that category varies, but the category itself does not.
Five things that need to change
The ICP definition. The firmographic, psychographic, and trigger-event profile of your ideal customer often differs meaningfully between markets. Company sizes that characterise mid-market in the US are enterprise-scale in Singapore. The technology maturity that defines your ICP in Germany differs from your ICP in India. A local ICP needs to be built from local market conversations, not adapted from home-market data.
The competitive frame. The alternatives your buyer is considering vary by market. Your primary competitor at home may have limited presence in the new market, while a local competitor you have never heard of may be the dominant incumbent. Positioning that defines you relative to competitors in your home market is largely irrelevant if those competitors are absent.
The trust signals. The social proof, credentials, and reference points that carry weight with buyers in one market often do not carry weight in another. Case studies from US companies do not impress buyers in Japan the way case studies from comparable Japanese companies do. Analyst coverage that is universally recognised in the US may be entirely unknown in MENA. The trust infrastructure needs to be built specifically for the market.
The channel vocabulary. The terminology used to describe the problem your product solves, and the specific pain points it addresses, varies by market and by industry. Research with buyers in the new market — actual conversations, not surveys — surfaces the vocabulary they use when they describe the problem to each other. Positioning that uses their language rather than your language earns credibility before the first conversation.
The entry story. Why are you entering this market now? What drove the decision? This is a question buyers in new markets frequently ask, either directly or implicitly. A credible entry story — grounded in specific knowledge of and commitment to the market — builds confidence. A generic global expansion narrative does the opposite.
The research that makes localisation accurate
Market localisation without primary research produces adaptation based on assumptions rather than adaptation based on evidence. The research required is modest in scope: ten to fifteen conversations with buyers who represent the target ICP in the new market, supplemented by conversations with distributors, partners, or advisors who have direct experience of how buying decisions are made in that context. This research takes two to four weeks and changes the accuracy of the positioning work that follows by an order of magnitude.