5 steps to export marketing success

Digital transformation removes barriers between countries and continents: how export-ready are you? 

We share our framework to assess your company’s readiness for international trade and exporting your solutions outside your domestic market.  

What is export marketing?

Whatever your proposition, product, service or solution, preparing to sell in another country requires planning, preparation and importantly, marketing, to ensure both you and your new market are ready. Export marketing is the strategy, planning and delivery of marketing to the new location, ensuring there is a demand for what you deliver. And that it will be profitable after additional factors and costs such as shipping, compliance, localisation, and adapting to cultural differences.

To determine your export readiness, you can apply our simple strategic framework for export marketing, with its five steps to success. There are many frameworks and models in the academic literature and marketing textbooks, some developed by enterprise support agencies and by various commercial organisations. We’ve used the best of the theory, merged with over three decades of hard-won experience, which includes both failures and successes, to identify what is actually important.

Strategic framework for export marketing success

From the outset, think about three key stages: why you want to become an exporter, differentiating activities for the new target market and transforming activities to prepare business resources for delivering internationally. We implement these key stages in five elements:
 
1.    Is there actually an export market? Will customers thousands of miles away benefit from what we offer? Do we have evidence of this demand? Analysing demand, sales, profits, the business case, through marketing research, insight and modelling.

2.    Is our organisation ready? Having determined that there is demand for what we do, are we in a fit state to deliver it to customers a thousand miles away in a different legal jurisdiction, with local regulations and cultures, who probably speak a different language? This involves capability and resource gap analysis. 

3.    So, do we want to do this? Following the insights from 1 and 2, do we really want to export, invest in developing the infrastructure, and what strategy do we adopt? 
Local companies would be unlikely to accept the new competition readily and already have the advantage of first-hand insight into local culture. 

4.    What capabilities and infrastructure do we need? It’s a ‘go’, so from everything we have learnt so far in stages 1, 2 and 3, what specific investments, resources and activities are needed to prepare the business and to launch it into export markets.

5.    What is our export marketing strategy and campaign plan? Finally, we get to do some international marketing! We’ve concluded there is an export market, and the business is ready for it, so what’s our launch plan? 

These have been summarised in the figure below.

In practice, the above stages will not be completed in total isolation, they will be achieved in an integrated and overlapping process with continual feedback and refinement as interim stages are completed. So, don’t try this at home.

What support is available to help with exporting?

We would always recommend you get support with international exporting. If you have never operated outside of your local market, it is unlikely you’ll be successful without additional expertise and experience, unless you are very, very lucky, or your proposition is uniquely global already and can be delivered digitally.

If you are UK-based, start with the Department of International Trade, which provides excellent support for UK exporters (anyone remember Passport to Export? We did it twice, and it works!). Most other countries have a similar organisation – Austrade for Australian companies, Canada’s Trade Commissioner Service, and so on. You’ll find most states in countries such as Australia and Canada also have state organisations that help with exports. We’ve worked with what used to be Trade Victoria, but has now become Global Victoria, in Australia. These guys are amazing at supporting exporting into SE Asia. Look for similar organisations that may not be an obvious source of assistance.     

However, free or subsidised state support only goes so far, so at some point you’ll need a specialist, in fact several, to support you. Identifying those capability gaps is part of stage 2 above and deciding how to fill your gaps with legal, financial, regulatory, technical and other support, like marketing and sales, is part of stage 4. 

At some point, although you can try and build the capability in-house, you will need a marketing agency that can support your international marketing and has, or can develop on your behalf, local partners. An agency that understands how to communicate your message within a different culture, possibly in a different language, and probably to buyers who have different values to those you’re used to. If you still want to export internationally, you’ve got your work cut out for you. But that’s why we’re here.

Contact us now to learn how we can help you create and deliver strategies and content to ensure your international marketing success. 

If you need support to write engaging, audience-driven content for your B2B brand or agency, contact Copestone today.