Online Export Success Plan

Going Global 17 & 18 May 2017

ExCel, London

 

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This workbook will allow you to follow our unique 8-step methodology that has helped businesses grow rapidly online. Objectives By answering the questions in each step of the Online Export Success Plan you will:

• Have a thorough understanding of the fundamentals of e-exporting, e-commerce and e-marketplaces

• Be introduced to the best social media networks in the world

• Be ready to make your first export digital sale or generate your first lead

About Actionable Insight Actionable Insight is a boutique digital consultancy that works with businesses who want to be more successful online, both in the UK and in export markets. Roger Jones is a Digital Marketing Consultant and founder of Actionable Insight. Roger understands that developing an effective digital strategy is a combination of asking intelligent questions, paying careful attention to the answers and harnessing the power of data to create new angles of thinking. He then works closely with the key people in the business to create a ‘Go-To-Market Plan’. Since launching Actionable Insight in 2010, Roger has worked with over 80 ambitious and successful businesses in a wide range of sectors. These include business-to-consumer and business-to-business in the UK and international markets. Sectors range from fashion, retail and leisure to IT, education and communications. Roger has shared his expertise, experience and thought leadership in talks and workshops with Department for International Trade, Chartered Institute of Marketing, British Chamber of Commerce, Academy of Chief Executives, the Direct Marketing Association and others. * Department for International Trade Partner * Google Partner Agency

ONLINE EXPORT SUCCESS PLAN

 

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STEP 1 Business Information (With brutal simplicity of thought) Sharing, discussing and understanding Digital Analytics and Growth Hacking principles and objectives to define key criteria for success

STEP 2 Brand (Reputation management) Developing a clear personal and business brand, position and value proposition online

STEP 3 Target Audience (Segmentation) Qualifying and quantifying target audience groups and their buying behaviour

STEP 4 Objectives (Inbound content marketing) Planning the tactics and mechanics to get target audience inbound and engaged

STEP 5 Stories (Blogging/thought leadership) Mapping out digitally efficient video, picture and word stories into an initial 3-month content and conversation plan

STEP 6 Technology (Sharing stories using social media) Understanding, integrating and automating website, search, social media (including monitoring key opinion leaders (KOL)) and content sharing technology

STEP 7 Measurement, Evaluation and Innovation (Rapidly measuring effectiveness) Identifying metrics (including KOL monitoring) to measure the effectiveness of each tactic and mechanic, frequency of evaluation and optimisation levers

STEP 8 Go-To-Market Plan Breaking down the proof of concept activation into steps, defining team roles, time-specific responsibilities and objectives

After using this workshop you will know how to:

• Activate sales and marketing campaigns (made up of tactics and mechanics) to engage with each type of customer

• Measure and evaluate the effectiveness of each tactic

• Set roles, responsibilities and objectives for each member of your team

Find the right people and tell them the right stories for business success.

OVERVIEW

KEY POINTS

 

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BRUTAL SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT Sharing, discussing and understanding Digital Analytics and Growth Hacking principles and objectives to define key criteria for success. QUESTIONS Personal

• What is your job role, your main responsibility and your personal objective? • How is your success measured?

Market • Have you qualified the market, the opportunity and your competitors? • Are there any trends or market information available to analyse? • Are there any barriers to entry? • Is demand driven by websites or e-marketplaces? • Are there any seasonal or external trends or other forces influencing the

market? • Are there any capacity constraints? • Do you understand the market, before the market?

Business • What are your key criteria for success? • Do you have an up-to-date business plan? • Does it drill down to a sales and marketing plan, segmented by city or

region? • Are you aware of financial forecasts? What are they? • Does the product address a pain/immediate need state? • Do you know the margins of your product or services? • What information do you report each day, each week and each month? • Have you assessed and mapped your team and their skill sets? • How does the business scale (at pace)?

STEP 1 BUSINESS INFORMATION

"…offers a sense of how economic power will move as urban expansion takes place…”

Download the McKinsey Urban World Application

 

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Fundamental

• Organisations solving new problems often need to create customers and educate the market

• Organisations solving well-recognised problems often need to focus on getting found at the right time

Transformation • How does your organisation engage change? • When was the last major shift or change? • Are there any reasons not to grow online? • Do you know your online competitors? • How well do you know them? • Do you benchmark your performance against them?

Globalisation • Are you properly set up to supply goods or services and receive payment? • Do you need multiple payment methods for each country? • Have you properly calculated fully landed costs?

After this step, you should have the ability to qualify and quantify key criteria for success. Real Growth hackers should focus on leading indicators (engagement) as opposed to lagging (revenue).            

DELIVERABLES

DIGITAL TOOLS Google Trends Google Market Finder I search from Google Shopping Insights Santander Trade Hub Comscore McKinsey & Company Global Cities of the Future

 

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** Write your notes here

 

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REPUTATION MANAGEMENT Developing a clear personal and business brand, position and value proposition online.

QUESTIONS  Brand

• What is your brand position and value proposition? • What are your gives and gets? (Are you selling the problem you solve rather

than the product? Do your gets increase attention and save time?) • What is your brand story? • Is your brand story consistent across all online platforms? • How does your brand story translate for online export? • What is your brand’s philosophy? • What are your points of difference over your competitors? • Do you need to complete a social media land grab? • Do you benchmark yourself against your competitors?

Globalisation

• Do you understand the meaning of colours by country and culture?

STEP 2 YOUR BRAND

DIGITAL TOOLS IPO WIPO Quintly How Sociable SEMRush Brandwatch Google Alerts Nuvi PIPL

 

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After this step, you should have a clear understanding and articulation of your brand, brand position and value proposition online.

DELIVERABLES

                                                                                     

** Write your notes here

 

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SEGMENTATION

Qualifying and quantifying target audience groups and their buying behaviour. QUESTIONS Existing customers

• How well do you know your customers? • What data do you capture on the customer journey? • How do you currently segment your data? • What data is available to you from other sources that will augment existing

data? • (Facebook and Twitter are blending data with third party providers e.g.

Experian)  

STEP 3 TARGET AUDIENCE

 

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Audience segmentation • Can you create fictitious personas to bring your customer segments to life? • Can you map your customer user journey with points of engagement? • What influences the need state of your customers at each point of

engagement? • What actions are needed to fulfil the user's needs? • How can these actions be prioritised by financial gain and/or business

change?    Targeting

• Can you start messaging by persona along the user journey? • Can you engage with key opinion leaders who influence these personas?

   Globalisation

• Office for National Statistics (UK) • US Census Data and Statistics • EU Data Portal • London Data Store

After this step, you should have the ability to find the right people and tell them the right stories for business success.

DIGITAL TOOLS Experian Segmentation Portal Traackr Google Consumer Barometer Lead Forensics Lead Feeder

DELIVERABLES

 

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** Write your notes here

 

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INBOUND CONTENT MARKETING Planning the tactics and mechanics to get target audience inbound and engaged. QUESTIONS Tactics

• Can you map your existing sales and marketing tactics from the following: - o Unawareness to awareness? Search (organic and paid) o Familiarity to consideration? Conversation (natural and paid) o Purchase to loyalty? CRM and community

Listen online to understand how and where to pull (sharing intellectual property, thought leadership) and push (ads) plus product (feature of benefit)  Pull tactics

• Blogging/guest blogging (with regular frequency) • E-books, guides and whitepapers • Infographics • Webinars • Conference presentations • SlideShare • SEO • Social media • Contests • E-marketplaces • B2B app marketplaces • Deal sites • Piggy backing (Jamie Oliver Food Tube)

   

STEP 4 OBJECTIVES

 

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Push tactics • Display ads • Flip flops (swaps) • Affiliates • Direct sales

   Product tactics

• Leverage networking • Phone contacts • Email contacts • Social contacts • Social sharing • (I do love the way that Spotify worked itself inside Facebook) • Backlinks (Chat links) • Gift (product) incentives • Word of mouth (remember to ask to be shared)

   How to activate members

• Get micro-captures of data • Micro-moment engagement • Landing pages e.g. Basecamp • Landing pages e.g. Dropbox • Copywriting and calls to action • Onboarding for idiots guide • Gamification • Dynamic pricing strategy. (Platinum, Gold and Silver tiered; free trials and

discount codes) • Bundling

How to retain users

• Staged traffic (requires budget) • Getting the user to the ‘Magic Hour’ (the ‘Aha!’ moment) • Email updates, notifications and news. (Have a look at springwise.com and

subscribe to emails) • Alerts and notifications • Exit interviews (with retention plan) • Roll out the red carpet • Add product features (may well be part of the roadmap) • Subtract redundant features • Build a community (sharing customer support, documentation and ask for

social reviews) • Make them happy

 

 

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Integration • Can you integrate your digital funnel? • Do you need to reverse engineer your funnel? • Are you integrating your search, social media and content to the greatest

effect? • (Explain The Jet Stream Methodology) • Globalisation • Can you localise your tactics by language, country, city and persona?

Globalisation

• Can you localise your tactics by language, country, city and persona?

After this step you should have the ability to develop sales and marketing tactics that drive your target audience segments to your website or e-marketplaces.    

DIGITAL TOOLS SEMRush Brandwatch Similar Web Audiense

DELIVERABLES

 

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** Write your notes here

 

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BLOGGING / THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

Mapping out digitally efficient video, picture and word stories into an initial 3-month content and conversation plan. QUESTIONS Interesting stories

• How do you tell your brand story? • How do you articulate the gives and gets of your product or service? • What 3 things can you talk about above and beyond the sell? • How can you position them along the user journey? • (Going viral usually counts on a media owner backing the story e.g. Daily

Mail) • Simple viral Growth Model for Marketers

 Video content

• What is digitally efficient content? • How do you optimise your video, pictures and (500) word stories? • How do you balance paid media distribution against the creation of

interesting stories? • How can you map your content and production plan?

   Joining the conversation

• How are you going to listen to meaningful conversations and engage with etiquette?

• Can you identify and engage with key opinion leaders? • How are you going to manage the 1:9:90 ratio? • Do you have a coherent social media policy?

STEP 5 STORIES

 

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Globalisation • Can you create international profiles and conversation? • Can you do this by country, city and language? • Can you identify key opinion leaders and local area networks? • Can you create local content, engage in conversations and quickly manage

enquiries in the local language? • Can you localise and test your calls-to-action to measure the likelihood to

purchase?

After this step, you should have the ability to map out your stories into an effective content and conversation plan.

DIGITAL TOOLS Google URL builder Sky AdSmart Camtasia Canva

DELIVERABLES

 

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** Write your notes here

 

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SHARING STORIES USING SOCIAL MEDIA Understanding, integrating and automating website, search, social media (including KOL monitoring) and content sharing technology. QUESTIONS Existing

• What platforms and tools do you currently use? • Do you ask for data capture (email) at every opportunity to multiple email

list options? • Do you have the correct technology in place, considering your personas and

user journeys? • What technology do you need to add?

Globalisation

• Is your responsive website, content management system and e-commerce platform capable of dealing with the online expansion?

• What is your server, hosting and domain registration setup?

STEP 6 TECHNOLOGY

MASTER SEARCH ENGINES Google AdWords Google Shopping Bing Ads Advertising on Yandex Baidu Paid Search Amazon Merchant Words

SOCIAL NETWORKS Social Media Cheat Sheet Facebook Business Manager Instagram Qzone Google+ Google My Business LinkedIn Twitter and Brand Hub Sina Weibo VK Snapchat

DIGITAL TOOLS Google Search Console Google Analytics Google Page Insights Sitebeam Screaming Frog Optimizely Add This Lucky Orange Wappalyzer

STEP 6 TECHNOLOGY

 

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After this step, you should have the right level of knowledge of the platforms and tools that will help you reach your export objectives.

                                                                                   

** Write your notes here

DELIVERABLES

 

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RAPIDLY MEASURING EFFECTIVENESS

Identifying metrics (including KOL monitoring) to measure the effectiveness of each tactic and mechanic, frequency of evaluation and optimisation levers. QUESTIONS Measurement

• What key performance indicators are needed in your measurement dashboard?

• Do they include the following: - o Cost per acquisition of a new customer? (Cost of labour, production

and media divided by the number of customers acquired in a time period)

o Average (or first) order value? o Customer lifetime value or number of customers buying again within

a time period? (Japanese culture understands that a customer is someone who has bought from you twice)

o Conversion rate of your website? o Engagement ratio (the number of likes, comments and shares

divided by the number of posts x 100 divided by the number of fans) o Return on advertising spend

Digital tools

• Google sheets advanced dashboards • Create Google sheet • Get add-on • Create new report • Use custom views NOT raw • Metric x dimension • Use the formula = start date > end date to play with date ranges • Add goals required • Publish chart (embed) • Google Sites • Create pages (or use Wordpress) • Share (optional) • Schedule reports (automatically update)

STEP 7 MEASUREMENT, EVALUATION AND INNOVATION

STEP 7 MEASUREMENT, EVALUATION AND INNOVATION

 

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Next generation is Google Analytics 360 Suite (Paid-for enterprise-level service) • Audience centre (mix Google Analytics with data from other data providers

e.g. Experian) • A/B testing (smashing Optimizely) • Data Studio (visualisation) • Attribution (on and offline ad)

After this step, you should have the ability to create your own measurement and evaluation dashboard of key metrics.

DELIVERABLES

 

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** Write your notes here

 

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Breaking down the proof of concept activation into steps, defining team roles, time-specific responsibilities and objectives.

QUESTIONS Plan

• Can you complete the “go-to-market plan”? • Are you clear on how to present the plan internally? • Can you agree on a budget, scope of work and lead-time for your plan?

   Roles and responsibilities

• Can you define (RACI) the roles, responsibilities and objectives of your team?

Any other business

• Can you activate a new digitally efficient email signature? • WiseStamp

STEP 8 GO-TO-MARKET PLAN

 

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After this step, you should have the ability to create your online export strategy and go-to-market plan with new roles, responsibilities and objectives for your team.

DIGITAL TOOLS Google Analytics Solutions Gallery Hootsuite Buffer Sprout Social Zapier IFTTT Yammer Trello Basecamp Slack

DELIVERABLES

                                                       

** Write your notes here

 

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• Biographical? • Geographic profile? • Demographic profile? • Psychographics – social class, lifestyle traits, motivations and personality

characteristics? • Webographics – online characteristics (tenure of online usage, device and speed)? • Persona relationship to the business – employee, partner, supplier, customer? • Products/business relationship to the persona – usage rate, loyalty, attitude, projected

brand relationship? • Specific goals/needs/attitudes – usage and emotional goals, motivations, needs,

frustrations triggers for action? • Specific knowledge – language (including local dialect, slang and jargon), computer

proficiency? • Context of usage – seasonality, culture, task context, user’s role, responsibilities,

benefits sought, environment, security, trends, legal, learnability? • Interaction characteristics of usage – frequency, regularity, continuity, timeliness,

complexity, scenarios? • Information characteristics of usage – information flow and presentation? • Sensory/immersive characteristics of usage – brand, identity, style, genre, appeals,

memorable, pleasurable? • Emotional characteristics of usage – brand personality – sincerity, excitement,

perceived and experience, point of time and sense of place? • Accessibility issues – physical, mental disabilities, assistive devices used? • Design issues – appreciation of style and design? • Persona relationships – general interaction?

APPENDIX 1 QUICK IDEAS FOR CREATING A PERSONA

 

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• Image file names – Name your image Charlie-walking-down-the-road.jpg not

img45rt.jpg • Add metadata and key phrases in image properties • Always use high resolution imagery (at least 72 dpi) • Upload to image sharing sites (Pinterest/Instagram and link back to <your brand

name> website and where possible add relevant text around the image • Use descriptive alt and title attributes when linking to the pictures • Link to the image wherever you can using descriptive text

APPENDIX 2 HOW TO OPTIMISE YOUR PICTURES

 

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Overview

• Create original content that entertains and educates (How to) • Use your experience to engage the community • Concise messages may be delivered in two minutes or less • Use audience retention reports to determine what users find engaging • Update content regularly • Read user comments for new ideas

How to optimise video

• Title • Make the video title the same as a webpage title (including any key phrases) • Use all of the 120 characters • Place <your brand name> at the end of the title (if at all)

Description

• There are 5000 characters available • Include full transcript and/or long form article • Include URLs (http://) to more information and/or main site

Tags

• Use all 120 characters • Put <your brand name>, places, topics and key phrases you wish to rank for here

Other

• Watermark your video with your target URL (in edit where possible) at the start and end (first 5 seconds is free branding if the video is skipped in ads)

• Jumpstart the view figure by sharing on social media, ensuring they watch the complete video

• Interact with other videographers on YouTube – comment on their videos and/or create a video response

• Embed the video on <your brand name>.com (and any other relevant websites possible). Build links to the video from press releases

• Add an open question in the comments to engage watchers

APPENDIX 3 BEST PRACTICES FOR CONTENT ON YOUTUBE

 

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If you’d like to know more about any aspect of our 8-step plan to online export success, or have something you’d like to discuss about your business, please don’t hesitate to talk to Roger after the seminar or contact him below. Roger Jones Digital Strategist

+447970623946

roger@actionableinsight.co.uk

www.actionableinsight.co.uk

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