E-EXPORT STRATEGY WITH THE T.O.S.C.A. FRAMEWORK

The website is a critical component of a company's online presence. It acts as the primary point of contact for customers and prospects in both local and international markets, and it must be capable of effectively engaging internet users worldwide. To achieve this goal, companies must develop an effective e-export strategy and the T.O.S.C.A. methodology provides a simple and user-friendly approach for doing so.

T.O.S.C.A., NOT ONLY FOR OPERA LOVERS!

In January 2024, an average of over 66% of people in the world, and 99% in the most connected countries, regularly accessed websites at home, at work, in stores, or on the move provided they had an active internet connection. That represents approximately 5.4 billion people! Yet, when comparing that number to the roughly two billion websites on the internet in the world, the task of directing traffic to a new website might seem like searching for a needle in a haystack. The good news is that a website's mission is not to be the best among about two billion! Its mission is to achieve a specific objective that compels only a specific audience in a specific country and not everybody all over the world.

Therefore, you must concentrate your resources on the right foreign market, on the right objective, on the right channels, and on the right actions. This is the foundation of an effective digital e-export strategy! Unfortunately, that is too often treated lightly. Here is where the T.O.S.C.A. framework, not the opera, can help you define a good e-export strategy. This methodology is based on asking some simple questions. Let’s see which ones.

T: TARGET

Here is the first question: where do you want to export? The identification of the target foreign market must be done before anything else! It is the first step when planning an e-export strategy. You need to assess and rank the key foreign markets for your business based on these factors:

●????? Macroeconomic and microeconomic data and future trends.

●????? Direct and indirect competition.

●????? Cultural and linguistic differences.

●????? Political and financial stability.

●????? Digital environment and local shopping behaviors.

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However, with almost 200 countries in the world, you might ask yourself how… on earth … you can assess and rank them all. Well, you do not have to, simply because there is no need to assess and rank them all!

Once you have gathered sufficient data and looked at them from a bird’s-eye view, you should be able to shortlist the ten or so countries where your product or service has the highest potential for sales. Based on this list, you can now examine each country more closely and compare all the factors in the list above before making the final decision as to which target foreign market to invest in. This market-selection process may seem annoying to some, but it should not be, because selecting the wrong market is MUCH more annoying than that!

O: OBJECTIVE

Now that you have selected your target, you must answer the second question: what do you want to achieve there? All the classic SMART marketing and sales objectives are also valid for an e-export strategy, as long as they are more exact than just ‘selling online’. Some examples:

? Sell surplus items: a simple change in domestic demand can turn a best-seller product or service into a no-seller or a slow-seller, leaving a company with overstock that can have better sales in a foreign country.

? Extend life-cycles and manage seasonality: phased-out items often have new lives in other markets, opening new opportunities that would not otherwise be available at home. Also, selling abroad can allow you to flatten the fluctuations that you might have in your domestic market during specific seasons in the year.

? Achieve economies of scale: increasing production can improve the operational cost, which will increase profits of both domestic and export sales.

? Test different business models: even if you are successfully selling your product or service in your country on a fixed-price basis, other business models could also be as successful, like selling B2B instead of B2C, selling subscriptions instead of fixed prices, etc. Testing them abroad offers the advantage of minimizing the risk of disrupting your domestic business.

S: SEGMENTS … AND PERSONAS?

Once you have your target and your objective, you can answer the third question: what type of clients do you need to achieve your objective in the target foreign market? Many companies, when starting exports, try to sell their products or services to anyone, thinking that if they do not do that, they will never get any customers! That is the wrong approach. It is not only expensive but also counterproductive because it shows to the industry that you do not know who your customers are, which will eventually jeopardize your credibility with your key potential clients. Instead, before entering your target foreign market, you need to set your segmentation. That’s the only way for you to concentrate on and invest where the target customers are.

Customer segmentation requires large-scale quantitative research for grouping people (i.e., potential customers) based on their distinct needs and features. Segments are usually done based on demographic and psychographic data like age, gender, socio-professional category, lifestyle, location, hobbies, etc. It is important to keep in mind that a segment provides insights of a group of customers on a wide macro level, and not on a narrow micro level, which is what ‘personas’ do. A persona is a semi-fictional character created to simulate a real client’s behavior. It is made by analyzing and collecting data on real people’s behavior through one-to-one interviews or focus groups with people in a specific segment group. It is the representation of a customer group that shares similar behaviors. So, even if segments and personas are both groups of customers, they are different. Where segmentation measures people in a group at a wide macro level, personas provide a richer understanding at the real customer level by analyzing their context, emotional needs, motivations, behavior, and the associated threats/opportunities. Personas are part of segments, and different personas can be in the same segment.?

C: CALL-TO-ACTION

The next question: when you have your target, your objective, your segments, what action do you want your personas to take when they arrive on your website? This answer allows you to set your call-to-action strategy. But what is a call-to-action? For websites, it is simply a hyperlink element, such as a button or a text, that is meant to trigger an instant reaction from a target audience prompting them to click on it. This hyperlink element is most often made of words or short phrases that must compel your visitors, personas, or prospective clients, to act in the specific way you want. The words or short phrases are usually imperative verbs such as ‘call now’, ‘visit our store’, ‘read more’, ‘order today to get -50% off’, ‘request a demo’, etc. They have been used in marketing materials for long, and not only on websites but also on social media, brochures, flyers, emails, TV ads, etc. The advantage of digital calls-to-action compared to those on offline marketing materials is that the triggered reactions are faster, and their performance is measurable almost immediately. Effective calls-to-action are those that convert visitors into leads and leads into customers, or visitors directly into customers!

For your digital e-export strategy, the important thing is not only to find the local best-performing words and phrases for your calls-to-action. You must also make sure they are relevant to your local personas if you want to achieve the objective you set in the ‘O’ step. For example, providing a podcast in English to prospective clients in Spain will bring a very small CTR! On the other hand, if the same content is offered in a video format with Spanish subtitles, the CTR will be in the average values. So, call-to-action must be relevant for the specific combination of target-objective-segment/personas.

A: ANALYTICS

Any strategy, in order to qualify as such, needs a precise measurement system to analyze the performance of each action undertaken to achieve the set objectives. It is the sole means by which one can know if the strategy is effective, or whether the actions need adjustments, or if they are unsuccessful. This also applies to your digital e-export strategy, and one of the best systems available to you is Google Analytics, the initial letter 'A' of which completes the T.O.S.C.A. acronym. Google Analytics is an ally to see the countries and languages that have traction for your digital e-export project. Yet, its potential extends far beyond that, assisting you in monitoring the KPIs of your international development and in enhancing the performance of your project.

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Click here to read the full article including the case studies, tips, and the most relevant considerations regarding Google Analytics for e-export!

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Highlights and takeaways

On the 8th, 15th, and 22nd of March 2024, our first training program in partnership with BPIfrance and FranceNum!?

Last time, we announced our collaboration with Bpifrance and France Num . Together, we prepared a special online training program to help SMEs start selling online internationally.?

This opportunity is open to French SMEs. Throughout the program, businesses learn how to optimize a website for export sales, whether B2C or B2B. And the best part? It's entirely financed by Bpifrance and France Num!

Although this first program is almost over, we are preparing a second edition possibly before the summer. Interested? Pre-registrations are open, so contact us as soon as possible: places are limited!

A new EBRD project with the STEP in Tunisia!

On Feb. 28th, a new EBRD project kicked off for STEP, Société Tunisienne d'élevage de poissons, one of Tunisian leaders in premium-quality seabass and seabream production.

My EBRD project team’s mission is to help STEP deploy better production practices to reduce its cost and increase its competitiveness on the European markets, challenging the dominant Turkish and Greek suppliers who currently hold 90% of the market share.

Do you want to know more about this project? Follow ToWebOrNotToWeb page on LinkedIn to receive the latest updates!

This newsletter takes its name from my new book “Digital E-Export - E-Commerce, Marketplaces, SEO, SEA, Social Selling and E-Marketing”, now available on Amazon worldwide!

Do you want to know more about the possibilities of E-Export for your business? Contact me at [email protected] or follow ToWebOrNotToWeb page here!