Global strategy is a type of plan businesses craft to operate beyond their home countries.

Due to the rise of hyper-connected information technology, pursuing a global strategy is—at least in some ways—easier now than ever. Still, it often remains essential to build or rent actual physical spaces in different countries if you plan to manufacture and distribute goods in each of them.

In business school, you might see academics define global strategy more precisely as a standardization strategy as opposed to an international or multinational approach. More colloquially speaking, global strategy can refer to each of those styles of expansion.

Pursuing a global strategy often gives companies an inherent competitive advantage over other businesses only pursuing a domestic or local strategy. Of course, in order to reap the benefits, executives must still run these companies shrewdly.

For example, if a company in the United Kingdom starts to sell goods in South Korea as well, it now brings in revenue from two national markets rather than just one. In general, the more companies spread into international markets, the greater impact they can have as a brand and the more profits they can accrue.

Spreading out operations into multiple countries can help take your business to the next level. Keep these five benefits in mind when considering whether or not to pursue a global marketing strategy:

1. Better brand awareness: Global brands garner far more recognition than merely domestic ones simply by virtue of their international scope. When a company begins to distribute its products in different countries—either through subsidiaries or its own stores—it starts to build brand awareness elsewhere in the world, rather than only in its homeland.
2. Greater access to resources: As an international business shores up its global presence, it gains access to resources from each new country in which it starts to operate. In other words, you’ll have a far easier time reaping all the potential benefits of the global market once you start spreading your business’ operations and distribution to different parts of the globe.
3. Improved flexibility: Global scaling diversifies both the supply chain and value chain for a business, leading to a greater amount of flexibility and potential to withstand downturns. If you operate out of many different countries, one can serve as a backstop if you start to see problems arising within another market.
4. Increased revenue: Entering new markets in different countries can bring in far more revenue than operating solely in a domestic market. As businesses take initiative to distribute product offerings in multiple areas of the world, more consumers have the option to purchase these goods, thus raising the businesses’ revenue levels.
5. Lower costs: Global companies generally have more efficient, effective, and inexpensive economies of scale and economies of scope. As a company reaches out into different parts of the world, it gains access to lower-priced markets for both labor and materials. This then allows the globally minded company to pass on these lower costs to consumers as well.

Global strategy manifests itself in different ways for different companies. Here are just three global business strategies worth considering:

1. International strategy: In this business model, international companies might sell or buy goods in different markets (or countries) occasionally, but the focus remains on keeping most operations and sales internal. This allows businesses to remain dedicated to the home market while still reaping some of the benefits of globalization.
2. Multinational strategy: If a business tailors its products uniquely to different countries, odds are good it’s pursuing a multinational or multidomestic strategy. Multinational companies take the needs and desires of local markets very seriously, developing distinct products and services for each rather than offering one standardized good for them all.
3. Standardization strategy: When companies pursue a standardization strategy, they branch out into foreign markets by offering the same standardized goods and services rather than developing unique products for each country. A standardization strategy forgoes the local responsiveness inherent in the multinational approach to benefit from a more concrete and scalable form of strategic management.

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