How small and medium-sized brands go overseas to leap through the "triple door" of marketing

With the global supply chain problems in the context of the epidemic, as well as the impact of raw materials, exchange rates, advertising fees and many other factors, the profits of overseas merchants on major platforms have declined last year, and according to the financial report data of cross-border e-commerce listing and sales in 2021, more than eighty percent of cross-border sales profits have declined
to varying degrees.
This also means that the marketing model under the past "traffic play" is no longer sustainable, and focusing on the creation of long-term "brand value" may become the focus of
future overseas sellers.
According to the survey data released by Hugo Cross-Border in 2022, the "Insights and Trends of Chinese Brands Going Abroad Pattern Insight" shows that 49% of sellers' revenue in 2021 is lower than in
2020.
At the same time, 90% of Amazon sellers saw an increase in operating costs, and 21% of Amazon sellers saw an increase in operating costs of more than
50%.

Building brand power is a long-term thing, it is difficult to achieve immediate results, and for most small and medium-sized businesses, on the one hand, the investment of resources for brand building is relatively tight, on the other hand, they have to face the competition of large factories going abroad, and macro also have to face the uncertainty of the global economy, and are under multi-angle operating pressure
.
Therefore, in the upcoming "marketing battle", how to gain the attention and loyalty of consumers and create a good brand experience has become an important test for
small and medium-sized brands going overseas in the second half of the year.
In the vast overseas market, it is not easy to
build a brand and tell a good brand story.
How can we bring the global output of brand value to enterprises and help enterprises continuously accumulate their own brand power?

Increased operating pressure Brand value is the core

In recent years, uncertainties in the general environment have made the cross-border track more intense
this year.
MAK JUNRAN, FOUNDER AND CEO OF KICKS CREW, A CROSS-BORDER TREND E-COMMERCE TRADING PLATFORM, SAID, "THE UNCERTAINTY OF LOGISTICS TIMELINESS AND THE RISE IN CROSS-BORDER FREIGHT RATES HAVE PUT MORE PRESSURE
ON OVERSEAS SALES THIS YEAR.
"Greater operational pressure also means that the wind direction of going to sea is shifting
.

On the one hand, brands going overseas can clearly feel that the ROI of traditional traffic acquisition marketing is rapidly declining
.
This means that the rapid rise in traffic costs also shows that the competition for going overseas is intensifying
.
It can be found that in recent years, in addition to traditional 3C digital brands such as Xiaomi and OnePlus, consumer goods brands such as Yuanqi Forest and Bubble Mart have joined the war at sea, and small and medium-sized overseas merchants in various categories are facing marketing competition
from large manufacturers.

On the other hand, overseas brands can also find that user interaction, brand mention rate and other indicator data continue to shrink.

This usually means that there has been a certain change in user consumption behavior preferences and information touchpoints, and behind this is likely to be due to the rise of new consumers represented by Generation Z, sellers have begun to shift from the traditional traffic acquisition model in an attempt to gain the attention of
new user groups.

From the perspective of marketing strategy selection, small and medium-sized businesses are obviously difficult to "clash" with large manufacturers, and a more pragmatic way is to be more proactive in understanding changes in consumer demand, and to carry out more refined and in-depth operations for vertical target users, all of which require the establishment of a marketing system
with brand value as the core.
Different from the simple and rude operation of the past "traffic acquisition" marketing model, refined brand value marketing often requires the support
of an entire professional team.
However, due to the limitation of their own scale, small and medium-sized sellers often do not have a complete user operation and marketing team, making it impossible to start
with refined and vertical operations.

Specifically, in order to achieve the refinement of marketing, it is necessary to open up each user touch point (the whole region) and connect each user journey stage (full link), but this is often beyond the ability circle
of small and medium-sized merchants going abroad.
In other words, "having marketing strategies and lacking marketing tools" has become a common pain point
faced by countless small and medium-sized businesses when going overseas.

From the perspective of marketing implementation, in order to build a good brand experience for target users, maximize customer value, and achieve refined long-term operations, advertising, data analysis, brand story, user connection and other links are indispensable
.
It is necessary to help enterprises reach all user scenarios, cover the whole marketing chain, help sellers optimize the overall marketing ROI through corresponding data analysis capabilities and intelligent marketing capabilities, and help merchants build a professional marketing system
.

Find the right market incision to promote global and all-scenario marketing

In the overseas market, small and medium-sized brands not only have to compete with large overseas manufacturers for stock, but also compete with local established enterprises for the popularity of users, and Chinese enterprises going overseas only need to focus on one thing - let more people understand the value of
this brand.
However, to make a small and medium-sized brand seen, understood and trusted by consumers, there are still three major challenges at the practical level:

First of all, there is a lack of understanding of overseas markets and how to find target market cutouts
.

The first step for businesses to go overseas will face the problem of market selection, generally speaking: mature markets have a large number of volumes, high saturation, and obvious competition pattern; Stable market scale, slow growth rate, stable competitive pattern; Emerging markets are small, less saturated, and have not yet developed a clear competitive landscape
.
Merchants usually need to combine their own enterprise competitiveness and the corresponding market demand matching, choose a specific market to enter and layout
.
Overseas sellers can use two tools to select their target market, the first is business analysis tools
.
It is able to rank the most promising markets by product category, and each market has detailed breakdown, and sellers can also compare the opportunities and challenges of different potential markets side-by-side to find incremental markets with greater potential and ultimately make decisions
.

In addition, merchants can also find market entry points
through advertising platforms.
Merchants can view the market report corresponding to the location on the reporting page in the platform, add core metrics such as conversions, etc.
, and get corresponding reports to measure the advertising performance of
different markets.
With customized reports, businesses can see if a particular market has a low conversion rate, a low click-through rate or an above-average
performance in a new market.
Through intuitive data comparison, merchants can consider whether to carry out the corresponding market layout and find the right market cut more efficiently
.

The entry selection of large markets and industry categories is only the beginning, and the specific selection results can better determine the seller's sales performance
in the target market.
Today, sellers can also use a variety of tools to understand current user consumption trends, so as to extract targeted product selection strategies
.

Second, after identifying the market cut, how to maximize the marketing effect
.

If merchants want to maximize marketing effects, on the one hand, they cannot "bet" on a specific channel, but need to promote global and all-scenario marketing to achieve brand user reach in different scene touchpoints; On the other hand, it is also necessary to make the marketing actions of various decentralized channels form a synergy, rather than fighting alone and consuming
separately.
That is, to achieve "global + all-scenario" based overseas marketing
.

In the past, overseas merchants may need to set up advertising plans on different channels, but this is constantly time-consuming and laborious, and it is easy to have problems of low granularity and lagging adjustment in marketing iteration, and it is difficult to improve advertising effectiveness
if it cannot achieve refined marketing.
But today, performance maximization ads are a good option
for businesses.
Expand your reach across multiple ad channels and display methods with a single campaign, and use automated machine learning to improve ad performance
.

Finally, choose to settle in a third-party platform or build an independent website
.

After doing a good job in a series of actions such as market entry, product selection, and marketing efficiency, sellers' products (brands) often have a certain user base in the local area, and there are two paths in front of small and medium-sized overseas merchants: one is to rely on third-party platforms and become simple "cross-border e-commerce merchants"; The other is to move towards DTC mode and build an independent station
.

In the short term, whether relying on a third-party platform or building a self-built independent website has its own advantages and disadvantages, and there is no unified answer
.
However, for a brand that continues to grow and develop long-term, building an independent station is almost the only way
for enterprise development.

In addition, through independent station operation, brands can also analyze user consumption decision data and consumption paths, and carry out targeted user operation and maintenance; Secondly, after the precision marketing strategy obtains stable income, the brand can try to improve its own reputation and expand the scope of radiation and goods based on data feedback in independent stations; Finally, in the highly competitive holiday marketing, small and medium-sized overseas merchants may struggle with how to make their brand stories reach local consumers, and advertising can help brands reach pendant users
.

China Food News (October 18, 2022, Version 08)

(Editor: Gao Na)