Selling or Marketing to Expats?

The global expat community is attractive to many businesses not least because it comprises some 40 million high-income earners (Source: OECD). Until recently, reaching expats could be patchy and involve joining various online communities in different cities.

Fortunately, marketers today have a more complete solution for targeting. Internations.org is a relatively unknown social network dedicated to the expat community. You don’t actually have to be an expat to get involved, you can simply join a community in a city near you.

The platform has many useful social features (albeit paid) including the ability to search on a wide range of criteria (nationality, occupation, interests etc.) and view the details of members visiting your profile.

Each Internations city community holds a monthly meetup – usually at a local bar or restaurant. Attending members get the opportunity to socialise and network. In most cases a broad range of nationalities take part, and prior to attending you can review the list of those who have accepted the invitation including their place of work and nationality. This is particularly useful to businesses targeting products or services at specific nations.

In addition to online social and face-to-face networking, businesses can also use the Internations platform to advertise to specific communities in cities, regions or globally. HSBC, Lufthansa, CNN and Worldfirst are current global partners.