2. This workbook will follow our unique 8-step methodology that has helped
businesses turn their export ambitions into a reality.
Step 1 | Your Business Information
Step 2 | Your Brand
Step 3 | Your Target Audience Segments
Step 4 | Your Business Objectives
Step 5 | Your Stories, Content & Conversations
Step 6 | Your Technology
Step 7 | Your Metrics, Evaluation & Optimisation
Step 8 | Your Go-To-Market Plan
After using this workbook you will know how to:
• Transform your ambition of online export into reality with our 8-step
plan
• Activate sales and marketing tactics 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
2
AGENDATHE
TAKEAWAYSKEY
3. 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 Business Strategist 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 the “Go-To-Market Plan”.
Since launching Actionable Insight in 2010, Roger has worked with
over 60 ambitious and successful businesses in a wide range of
sectors. These include business-to-consumer & business-to-
business in the UK & 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 UK Trade & Investment, Chartered
Institute of Marketing, British Chamber of Commerce, Academy of
Chief Executives, the Direct Marketing
Association and others.
* UK Trade & Investment E Expert
* Certified Google Partner
3
ACTIONABLE INSIGHTABOUT And Roger Jones
4. Please answer the following questions:
Personal
• What is your job role, your main responsibility and your personal
objective?
• How is your success measured?
Market
• Have you qualified the International 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 trends, external trends or other forces
influencing the market?
• Are there any capacity constraints?
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?
• Do you know the margins of your products or services?
4
(based on Forrester Groundswell and Empower methodologies)
BUSINESS INFORMATIONSTEP 1
Understand your business information to define your key criteria
for online export success
5. • What information do you report each day, each week and each
month?
• Have you assessed and mapped your team and their skill sets?
Transformation
• How does your organisation engage change?
• When was the last major shift or change?
• Are there any reasons not to export online?
• Do you know your online competitors?
• How well do you know them?
• Do you benchmark against them?
Internationalisation
• 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?
5
”
…Offers a sense of how
economic power will move
as urban expansion takes
place.“
Download the McKinsey Urban World Application.
It offers a sense of how economic power will
move as this urban expansion takes place.
6. 6
Digital Tools
Google Trends
Google Market Finder
Google Shopping Insights
Santander Trade Account Online Marketplaces
Hide My Ass
Global Market Research
Comscore
McKinsey & Company Global Cities of the future
Deliverables
After this step you should have the
ability to qualify and quantify key
criteria for online export success.
8. Please answer the following questions:
Brand
• What is your brand position and value proposition?
• What are your gives and gets?
• 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 No.1 statement of fact or endorsement?
• 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?
Internationalisation
Meaning of colours by country and culture
WIPO
8
Develop a clear articulation of your brand, position and value
proposition online
YOUR BRANDSTEP 2
1.7 SecondsDid you know you only have 1.7 seconds for
your brand to make the right impression?
Digital Tools
How Sociable
Intellectual Property Office & WIPO
SEMRush
Brandwatch
Google Alerts
Nuvi
Deliverables
After this step you should have a
clear understanding and articulation of
your brand, brand position and value
proposition online.
10. Please answer the following 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?
10
Find the right people and tell them the right stories for business success
YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE SEGMENTSSTEP 3
11.
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?
Internationalisation
Office for National Statistics (UK)
US Census Data and Statistics
11
Digital Tools
Experian Segmentation Portal
Traackr
Google Consumer Barometer
Google Page Analytics
Lucky Orange
Lead Forensics
Sales Force
Zoho
Sugar
Affintity live
Deliverables
After this step you should have the
ability to find the right people and tell
them the right stories for business
success.
13. Please answer the following questions:
Tactics
Can you map your existing sales and marketing tactics from the
following:
• Unawareness to awareness?
- Search (organic and paid)
• Familiarity to consideration?
- Conversation (natural and paid)
• Purchase to loyalty?
- CRM and community
Integration
• Are you integrating your search, social media and content to the
greatest effect?
13
YOUR BUSINESS OBJECTIVESSTEP 4
Plan sales and marketing tactics to drive your target audience
segments to your website or e-marketplaces
14. Internationalisation
• Can you localise your tactics by language, by country, by city and
by persona?
14
Digital Tools
SEMRush
Brandwatch
SimilarWeb
Deliverables
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.
**Write your notes here
15. Please answer the following questions:
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?
Content
• What is digitally efficient content?
• How do you optimise your video, pictures and word stories?
• How do you balance paid media distribution against the creation
of interesting stories?
• How can you map your content and production plan?
Conversation
• How are you going to listen to meaningful conversations and
engage with etiquette?
• Can you identify and engage with key opinion leaders who
influence many others?
15
YOUR STORIES, CONTENT & CONVERSATIONSSTEP 5
Map out your stories into an effective content and conversation plan
16. • How are you going to manage the 1:9:90 ratio?
• Do you have a coherent social media policy?
Internationalisation
• Can you create International profiles and conversation?
• Can you do this by country, by city and by 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?
16
Digital Tools
Google Trends
Google Alerts
Brandwatch
Google URL builder
Sky Ad Smart
Screencast-O-Matic
Camtasia
Deliverables
After this step you should have the
ability to map out your stories into an
effective content and conversation
plan.
18. Please answer the following questions:
Existing
• What platforms and tools do you currently use?
• Do you have the correct technology in place, considering your
personas and user journeys?
• What technology do you need to add?
Internationalisation
• Is your responsive website, content management system and
ecommerce platform capable of dealing with the online
expansion?
• What is your server, hosting and domain registration set up?
18
Understand which technology platforms and tools you need for
online export, and how to target audience segments
YOUR TECHNOLOGYSTEP 6
Digital Tools
Google Search Console
Google Analytics & Page
Insights
Sitebeam
Screaming Frog
Optimizely
Add This
Search Engines
Google AdWords and Google Keyword Planner
Yahoo Advertising
Bing Ads
Advertising on Yandex
Baidu Paid Search
Amazon Merchant Words
Uber Suggest
Global Social Networks
Facebook
- Facebook Power Editor
(inc. Instagram)
Qzone
Google+
- Google My Business
LinkedIn
Instagram
Twitter and Brand Hub
Tumblr
Sina Weibo
VK
Snapchat
Deliverables
After this step you should have the right level of
knowledge of the platforms and tools that will help
you reach your export objectives.
20. Please answer the following questions.
Measurement
• What key performance indicators are needed in your
measurement dashboard?
• Do they include the following?
• Cost per acquisition of a new customer
• Average order value
• Customer lifetime value or number of customers buying again
within a time period
• Conversion rate of your website
20
YOUR METRICS,EVALUATION
& OPTIMISATION
STEP 7
Which key metrics do you need to measure, evaluate and
optimise?
Digital Tools
Google Sheets
Google Analytics Solutions Gallery
Tap Analytics
Tableau
Cyfe
Performance
Pulsar
Deliverables
After this step you should have the
ability to create your own
measurement and evaluation
dashboard of key metrics.
22. Please answer the following questions.
Plan
• Can you complete the “Go-To-Market Plan”?
• Are you clear on how to present the plan internally?
• Can you get agreement on a budget, scope of work and lead-
time for your Go-To-Market 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?
22
YOUR GO-TO-MARKET-PLANSTEP 8
Transform your online export strategy into a Go-To-Market Plan,
communicate your proof of concept and define new roles,
responsibilities and objectives for the team
25. Roger Jones | Digital Strategist
•+447970623946
•roger@actionableinsight.co.uk
Ben Thomas | Business analyst
•+44750173221
•ben@actionableinsight.co.uk
25
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 workshop or contact him below.
MORE ACTIONABLE INSIGHT?NEED
26. 26
Appendix 1
Creating a Persona
• Biographic?
• 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 goals, 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, users 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
personality, perceived 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 2
How to optimise pictures
• Image filenames
• 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
APPENDICESTHE
27. 27
Appendix 3
Best practices for video content on YouTube
• 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 users 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 and 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 and with social media community – 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
