Let me share a case with you first. In 2012, I led a team to do a consulting project for a well-known office furniture company in Zhejiang. One of the projects was to improve the effect of its Guangzhou exhibition in March 2012. One of the strategies we used was to require all exhibitors to be equipped with iPads, which received strong support from the company’s leaders. In less than 10 days before the exhibition, we assisted the company to put a large number of pictures and video materials that could not be displayed in the company’s manuals and websites into iPads, and conducted appropriate interactive demonstrations at the exhibition in combination with the products and the interests of customers. This achieved very good results and left a very deep impression on customers. The effect after the exhibition also created a historical high. At the same exhibition, more than 90 customers expressed their intention to cooperate, an increase of more than 50% over previous years. Of course, this is not entirely the effect brought by the iPad. At the same time, we also saw that the iPad can very well help salesmen demonstrate product features and retrieve necessary information, assist in introducing the company’s advantages to potential customers at the exhibition, and also show the company’s image very well.
Let’s talk about the preparation for export marketing, including talent preparation, hardware preparation, software preparation and material preparation.
The first step in the preparation for export marketing is to select an export marketing manager. This manager can be concurrently a sales manager, but he or she should have some basic marketing knowledge, such as a certain understanding of market research, market segmentation, and the 4P combination of marketing, as well as some knowledge of strategic marketing (including Porter’s 5 forces model, positioning), planning, and management. In other words, the export marketing manager is required to have professional knowledge in both international trade and marketing, and marketing knowledge is more important. It can be said that hiring an excellent export marketing manager often means that the company’s international market goals have been half achieved.