How Digital Marketing Can Help to Kickstart Your Expat Business

Moving your business or starting a new venture as an expat in the UK presents a unique challenge that allows you to enter a completely new market. Before you make the move, you must secure the appropriate visa before you can legally reside and work to operate your business in the UK, such as a British Citizenship. Getting the legal aspects out of the way can allow you to focus on the most important parts of your business, such as digital marketing.

Creating the perfect digital marketing strategy when moving your business to the UK is essential, as without proper planning you could be destined to fail. It’s all about building a community of customers that believe in your products or services by producing localised content, targeted advertising and more. It makes the whole process easier, as it allows you to establish a credible, authentic and highly visible presence in the competitive UK marketplace.

This guide will give you advice on how you can navigate digital marketing to help your expat business find success in the UK. Continue reading to find out more about how you can kickstart your expat business today.

Digital Marketing Strategies for an Expat Business

Localisation

For an expat business aiming to succeed in the UK, the primary objective is to signal legitimacy and local relevance to both customers and search engines. Achieving this starts with establishing a local presence by securing a domain that ends in ‘.co.uk’ and adopting British English conventions on your website. This builds instant trust and affinity, as people in the UK will be more inclined to buy products or enquire about services from a UK-based business.

You must master local SEO to capture the nearly 50% of Google searches that have local intent. This involves optimising a Google Business Profile (GBP) to appear prominently in local map searches and focusing your content on geo-specific keywords that include specific cities in them.

Social Media Community Building

Social media is the most effective tool to rapidly establish a local identity and connect directly with the British audience, as an expat. LinkedIn is key for professional services, while Facebook and Instagram are important for consumer products. TikTok can also help you to discovery among younger demographics.

Your content must adopt a localised tone that favours subtle British humour, referencing local events and acknowledging UK bank holidays. A more relatable reserved approach often resonates better than overtly aggressive sales tactics. You can also accelerate trust by actively encouraging User-Generated Content (UGC) from UK customers, as showcasing real experiences builds authentic social proof.

Targeted Paid Advertising

Paid advertising (PPC) is an immediate way for expat businesses to gain visibility. This is invaluable when starting without a local reputation, as it allows your products and services to reach more eyes. New UK businesses can also use Google Ads, which allows you to focus your budget on high-intent local keywords so customers can easily find your website.

Use platforms that focus on geo-targeting and demographic segmentation, enabling expats to efficiently target specific UK regions to get a more localised audience. While doing this, you should track metrics like conversion rate, so you can then adjust your campaigns based on real-time data.

Reviews and Content

Online reviews are so important for businesses, as it influences around 68% of purchasing decisions. Getting a profile set up on Google and Trustpilot will be the most beneficial, as these are the two most trusted platforms when customers are looking for reviews. Having a lot of reviews on these will add to the authenticity of your expat business, so you can be seen as relevant in the UK market. A mixture of positive and negative reviews will make your business seem authentic, but you of course want more good and bad.

Having high-quality content on your website will show Google that you are providing valuable content for users. This can help with deciding where your website ranks on search engines results pages, after Google released their EEAT update that prioritised content that showed Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. Blog posts are great for this, especially if they address UK-specific problems that will resonate with a local audience. Video content is also good for keeping users engaged on your website and increasing the average time spent on the website from potential customers.

Final Thoughts

Initial success for your expat business in the UK can be achieved through localisation and targeted paid advertising, but sustainable growth needs more than this. You need to follow UK marketing trends like AI-powered hyper-personalisation to tailor every customer interaction, focusing on building a reliable database of customers that will return to your business time and time again.

Micro-influencer marketing can also be great for leveraging authentic trust within specific British niches, especially if you want to attract a younger audience. Expat founders must overcome initial market anonymity and establish a thriving business that successfully resonates with the UK audience.