How to penetrate a new market without having to invest big budgets and in local fixed costs

An example of our work in Marketing

An example of our work in Marketing

Entering new markets is a fundamental activity in business development, and for many companies/industries, very often the only possible source of growth. The key issue is that developing a new country means investing first, and seeing the returns (hopefully) only later on, even years later on. Not all companies have the financial strength (and, many times, patience) to be able to sustain such a key business activity. This is even truer for companies that have to address not only a single new country but an entire new geography. Or, even more cumbersome, a development on a global scale.

The following example – taken from our direct experience with a key client of ours, based in South Africa – illustrates the competitive advantage of our approach, and the impact that our work delivers to our clients.

The leading airline company and the national tourism organization of the Country had as a target to boost their presence and commercial traction in Europe. To do this, they asked Reelev & C. to assist them in the development of such geographical area. Prior to our intervention, they were convinced that in order to succeed, they had to build local structures and also to invest a huge budget in Marketing, thinking otherwise impossible to communicate in the market.

We used with them our Interim Management approach, the one that allows companies to leverage our capabilities and resources to do their job without having to build an own organization and spend a high fixed cost for several years.

First of all we translated the overall target of our client – enter the country – into specific, measurable objectives. In particular:

Raise the awareness of the country as tourist destination
Promote the travel destination to specific, actionable targets.

We then identified two sets of specific, actionable targets:

Consumers’ targets
Trade Targets.

We then analyzed in details the two above targets being able to identify that:

as to Consumers’, the best segments for our client were honeymooners and families
as to Trade, the best targets for our client were a set of key Travel&Tourism players in the country on the one hand and selected Media players on the other.

Then the key question was how to reach those targets. To accomplish this, we formed a team of experts (of different skills and competencies: media, creativity, sales,…) who have worked together to implement a detailed action plan tailored to the specific needs of our client. In particular, we:

designed and deployed a consumers’ advertising campaign (with large distribution press, billboards in subway stations and airports, ads in national radio networks,…)
organized a cooperation with the key national media representatives (with presentation of the client, response to inquiries,…)
managed to participate to the key journalist associations and their events
prepared the press releases and organized their distribution to a detailed media contacts base
addressed the key national representatives/influencers of traveling, culture and lifestyle, also being able to have our client participate to radio and TV shows
prepared travel contents to be distributed with travel guides
managed a dedicated full fledge on-line advertising campaign (Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Youtube,…): with posts, videos, response to readers’s comments, dedicated content,…
prepared dedicated newsletters for both consumers and trade segments
represented the client to the key thematic national Fairs and Trade exhibitions.

All our work allowed our client to successfully enter the new market that they had targeted, and with a fraction of the investment that they had initially thought it would be necessary.