A very big and important question that every entrepreneur faces, or that they must ask themselves if it doesn’t come naturally, is: What is their target audience?
In answering that question, entrepreneurs mainly get into details about certain demographics and break down their target market into numerous categories; which is all great, really necessary and very important.
In a web context, it gets even more complicated, because it adds a bigger factor of location into the decisions that have to be taken, and entrepreneurs have to decide how open or closed to the world their new business should be.
If we take the case of Arab entrepreneurs launching their online businesses:
Should they target local internet users in the country they’re based in?
After all, they’re close, they have access to them offline too, they know more or less how they think, or at least it’s easier to get the information they need through local market research and studies, and well they’re part of the market and they know it pretty well; in other words: it just feels safer.
Or should they expand it just a bit to the whole Arab region?
Even if every Arab country has its own different considerations and unique culture, they’re not really all that different, they more or less share the same economic situations, they have the same backgrounds and very close traditions: it just feels quite predictable and controllable.
Or should they just take the jump and try to take it global?
After all, they’re online, they potentially have access to every connected person around the world, it’s an ocean of opportunity, so why limit themselves?