Robin Campbell-Burt – Director at Spreckley
Whether you’re a completely new British company or a start-up from abroad, the rules for breaking into the UK market apply in the same way. Each company will face its own unique challenges but it’s crucial that a solid marketing plan is drawn up in order to achieve success.
Before implementing any strategy, ensure you’ve considered these points:
Be tough on yourself. How unique are you?
If you are launching a new product or service it is very likely that you will be emotionally, physically and financially invested to the hilt in its success. So by the time many people come to us to launch them into the UK market, they often have quite a bit of tunnel vision about the uniqueness of what they have done. But you need to be hard on yourself. Are you really unique? Who are your competitors and how do you compare to them? You need to really understand what your market differentiation is.
Match your campaign to the customer’s journey
Know your customer’s journey from where they will first hear about you, to coming to your website for the first time, and ending with them buying your services. Think about the information they want to consume at different stages of the buying process. For example, they may want to start with an insightful video into the future of the market you’re operating in. This can then follow on to a piece of expert opinion or practical guidance to challenges they’re facing. You can then link to a customer case study and so on.
Ensure they can access what they want, when they want it and on which platform they want to consume it on.
It is not about shouting about your features and benefits
The early stage of communication is not about shouting the benefits of your products. Marketing communications through news publications and on social media platforms is based on talking about the problems your target audiences are facing and showing that you understand their concerns. When they are engaged and can see that you understand them, you can then have more detail available on the products and services that you provide.
Everyone will look for you online so make sure that you can be found
It goes without saying that a strong digital presence is vital in today’s market. Not only do you need a user friendly website, designed with your customer in mind, but you also need to think about SEO and have a presence on social media too. These elements cannot be ignored, regardless of who your potential customer is.
Be diverse in the content that you produce and integrate everything
It’s important that you are offering your customers up-to-date insights. This means consistently creating varied content. You should deliver this through video, media relations, social media, your website, and integrate everything so it’s seamless for customers to take a journey around your company.
Match expectations to your budget
This is crucial! For many startups, there is a constant battle of wanting the world to know about you but only juggling a small budget. You therefore need to match your expectations to the budget you have available and ensure you’re optimising the ways that will give you the most bang for your buck.
To see how we helped launch a B2B brand in the UK, take a look at our case study of the work we completed with TelcoSwitch: Click here for the link
To discuss how we can help you further, contact [email protected]