Build Export Success - Marketing Tips for Service Exporters

Marketing Tips for Service Exporters

Marketing your services abroad is similar to strategies for expanding into another Canadian province. Depending on your business, there are a number of ways to enter a new market. In general, you will want to select ones where you can draw on personal referrals rather than making "cold calls."

Many small service firms achieve success abroad in carefully selected niche markets by leveraging Internet, telecommunications and other computer technologies. Service exporters should also consider additional options to ensure export success.

One possibility is to respond to Requests for Proposals (RFPs) from organizations in the foreign market or International Financial Institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank or the regional development banks. Ideally, you would want to be involved with the IFI at the pre-feasibility stage when you can help shape the project to be funded.

Remember that when an IFI is involved, you will have two clients, the IFI and the national government. The Canadian government has a representative at each IFI who can help you in marketing your services.

Another possibility is to identify a need that is not being met and design a service to fit that need. In this case, you will want either to have an almost guaranteed customer or someone to invest in promoting the availability of the new service. In such an endeavour, a local partner can be very helpful.

Three Tips for Setting Export Objectives

Short-term objectives: aim to establish a foothold in the market.
Medium-term objectives: establish your company as a supplier.
Long-term objectives: deal with making you a major supplier.

The easiest scenario is to be referred into the foreign market. To do this you will want to talk with your present and former satisfied customers to determine whom they could refer you. Similarly, you can talk to foreign students studying in Canada or recent immigrants to Canada about contacts they have in their home country to whom they could refer you.

The easiest of all is becoming so visible in the foreign market that potential customers approach you. To do this, you will want to adopt strategies such as (Note: "local" here refers to the foreign market you are targeting):

join a local business/trade association and become active on a prominent committee
volunteer as a speaker for a local trade association or business/professional school
apply for and secure an award for excellence and then promote that award in the local market
become a speaker or panellist for a trade event or professional conference in the market area
develop and execute a virtually-free demonstration project
present an educational seminar on an industry trend of interest, linking the presentation to what services you can offer
retain a media consultant and get articles placed in the local media about your firm

Because service exporting usually involves the movement of personnel across the border, you need to become very familiar with immigration regulations and work permit requirements.

You need to build credibility in the foreign market so that customers there will take a chance on your service. Find opportunities to showcase your expertise, network with local contacts, establish a profile in the media - in general, become visible. At least initially, you need to be building the profile of your firm, rather than focusing on advertising a particular service offering.

For professional service firms in particular, your top professionals have to do the marketing - not a sales rep.

For many service exporters, attendance at trade fairs will not be time-effective. Instead, you may need to find conferences, etc., at which to speak and build visibility.

In order to be accessible to customers, many service firms need to establish some form of a local presence.

Remember that services can be exported in several different ways:

providing a service from a Canadian base to a foreign country (e.g., architectural drawings created in Canada for a foreign client)
traveling to the foreign country to deliver the service (on-site construction project management)
providing the service to foreign clients in Canada (e.g., a training program in Canada for foreign executives)