We were delighted to be back at Slush – one of the best people-watching opportunities in the tech world. Our talk this year at the Expand to England event provided advice on how to get yourself ready for market entry in terms of PR and marketing.

We also presented the latest results of our UK Market Entry Index. We carry out this research to coincide with events or visits we are making and so far we’ve looked at Australian, Danish, Canadian and now Finnish companies attitudes to the UK.

Key findings include 83% of Finnish companies claim the vision for their companies has always been global rather than local, in contrast, for example, to Australian companies which so far trails in last place with 52%.

In terms of main challenges facing Finnish businesses – from a choice of six options – they chose (in descending order)
• Understanding the business culture/way of doing things
• Competition against brands with a stronger local presence
• Time taken to win customers
• Amount of competition in the UK
• Lack of contacts
• Financial and regulatory eg bank account, HR, tax

You can see why, given this scenario we recommend that PR and marketing is pretty essential. If you’d like to know more detail of our Finnish results or the other countries we’ve researched so far, get in touch via our contact page.