My tuto
or
How to crack a
market in 11 steps …
This post
is based on my lattest achievement (24/03/19) at Grakka
where I started from scratch by opening the French office of the group for the European
Southern market.
Let me
explain you the context:
Grakka is a British company specialized in the
distribution of Anglo-Saxon brands based on the gastronomy industry. This
company exists from almost 20years and have never been able to penetrate the
French market and southern Europe in general. My challenge was to crack it down…
In 2015, The turnover for southern Europe was 50Keuros
Cumulated turnover in 03/2019: 900Keuros
I oversaw a
portfolio of 5 Brands: Bradley Smoker, Kamado Joe, Ozpig, Mega Master… With the lines below I will try to
enlighten you on how we enable the brand Bradley Smoker, unknown 3 years ago,
to reach the third place in term of brand awareness into the French market. All
of this was made in bootstrap mode!
FYI, my statement on the ranking is based on
google planner.
To do so, I
had to develop the following skills:
1-
Realize Market Survey:
To
understand my market: The different profiles of final customers, the ideal
profile of retailers to target, competitors and their strategies (online &
offline), customer segments…
To do so, I
used the following tools:
-
Google
planners
-
Google
analytics
-
Google
trends
-
Yodaa
insights
-
Facebook
-
tubebuddy
-
SWOT
analysis
-
Stores
and online check
-
…
Then, establish
the first strategy which was: collect more data to have a better
understanding of our customers…
2-
Creation of Bradley website via
WordPress: To develop a good visibility
online.
I personally did work a
lot on SEO but not on SEA. The SEA was outsourced, I just had to provide a
short list of the most relevant key words.
Here below the website Bradley
3-
Management of social medias and
content creation: Create a community of evangelist
To organize and schedule my
publications, I used buffer in order to save time. Here below some of our
pages:
The idea of those pages was to communicate on
the core values of the brand and how to use or make the most of the products
whatever the situation or context.
4-
Production of videos on youtube:
For a better market penetration,
identify new customers, but also to optimize our SEM.
5-
Creation of a network of bloggers
and influencers:
Here few below.
- Chef Simon: http://chefsimon.com/gourmets/chef-simon/recettes/magret-de-canard-fume-a-chaud?fbclid=IwAR11SRO_6-H4P5VaYHScrLbpLNALmWVnl
- Chef Simon: http://chefsimon.com/gourmets/chef-simon/recettes/magret-de-canard-fume-a-chaud?fbclid=IwAR11SRO_6-H4P5VaYHScrLbpLNALmWVnl
-
Chef Clément: https://www.chefclement.com/?fbclid=IwAR3K9T45shJH0EdV6gFfPzZXzMEiGSOOMGyF2LcXJhd336o3no0LlsjQCMg
-
Le blog de Raffa
-
…
Only one
recommendation to the bloggers/ambassadors, mention at least once the name of
the brand and ideally the website.
6-
A book has been published by a
famous French chef.
The chef Simon used 2 of
our brands to realise this book full of delicious recipes: Kamado Joe and
Bradley Smoker.
The idea was to create traction
on the brands and websites to identify who are the final customer and where is
he located?
7-
Create and organize B2B email campaigns:
To recruit the right dealers.
Around a hundred Email campaigns
were executed. A publication with a link below will explain you how I did
collect email addresses, on which purpose and how I organize in an efficient
way the different email campaigns.
Based on that strategy, at the end
of the exercise: 17% of my “B2B prospects” were following weekly all my
publications. They are now considered as hot leads.
8-
Catalogue creation (photoshop),
Marketing sheet and technical sheet (with Canva):
An example here enclosed.
9-
Data analysis:
Beyond the social media
analysis/insight, I was using google analytics to have a better understanding
of my customers in order to create the right content to the right customer or
hunting the right brand ambassadors. But that was also of great help to
understand customers road map (physical or virtual) in order to bring them smoothly
to the best product able to meet their expectations.
To do so, I pass a google certification:
This approach also enables me to create “persona” respecting the “code” and the values of customers
targeted. The hidden idea is to inspire
them, to help final customer to project himself playing with it and make the
product more “friendly”.
An example of persona (Herve Chasseur) built from the ground
to conquer the following segments clearly identified:
-
Hunters
-
River fishermen
-
Traditional homemade charcuterie lovers
Here below few of his most
successful videos to illustrate the process.
Recipe of truit smoked in the old fashion way – Segment targeted river fishermen
and their wives: https://youtu.be/ARE5TeP88h0
Recipe of ham smoked in the traditional way – Segment Targeted Charcuterie lovers:
10-
Plan events:
Based on the road mapping logic, explained
above, we also had to be present on trade shows, fairs or public demo in
stores, in order to be in contact with our final customers or retailers.
Here below a list non exhaustive of the events
I had to attempt based on customers clearly identified:
-
JDC
in Marseille
-
Belgium
Game Fair
-
Salon de la chasse de la motte Beuvron
-
Ouverture de la chasse St Hubert
-
French smokers days
-
Lille salon culinaire
-
Nuremberg game fair
-
….
11-
Develop the network of retailers
To create and develop
our network and push retailers to join us, we have to convince them on the
following points:
-
Quality
of the products: Endorsements from famous chefs, interviews and good customers
feedbacks.
-
The
versatility of the products: videos of demonstrations.
-
Size
of our market: Google planners, our followers or viewers on social media, the
estimated one from our network of bloggers/ambassadors, the units sold N-1/N-2…
-
Come
with a readymade sales strategy/marketing plan and argument of sales for final customers
or segments targeted…
-
(optional)
Explain your products VS competitors and how they are a better match
Here below a link with
our dealers’ location for
the brand Bradley smoker:
To sum-up everything, I
would say to unlock and open a breach in the southern market, I proceed in the
following way:
-
Gather data to understand the market: Its organization, opportunities
and Threats.
-
Use the local players (brand ambassadors, bloggers…) who understand the core values and
speak with the code of customers targeted, in order to make the brand/products more familiar. Then scale, duplicate, automatize the spreading of the message via
social media.
-
Once you understand how and why the final
customer buy the products, it is time to find
the right dealers sharing the customers values and codes. When you identify the best way to recruit
retailers… Scale it, duplicate it, automatize the spreading of the message via social
media or B2B email campaigns (chimp mail).
Well you know now almost
all my secrets. I hope those 6 pages of my “manifesto” were quite useful and explained
well enough to make you understand my way to conquer new markets.
I will be glad of course
to share with you my skills and experience for your present or upcoming
projects. I remain at your disposal for further information if need be.
Best regards,
Sebastien Vanhoecke
No comments:
Post a Comment