market entry

We’ve all been the target of market research. Whether it’s a prompt requesting you to remain on the line for a brief survey, a feedback card you receive upon exiting an airplane, or that pop-up web survey you just can’t seem to minimize. How do companies decide on a market research strategy for their company? What steps do CEOs take to maximize ROI? For answers to our questions, we spoke with Michael Vigeant, CEO of Greatblue Research. We interviewed Michael in a webinar on June 25th, 2019 titled What You Don’t Know Can Kill Your Business: Nailing Market Research for U.S. Market Entry. As someone who has been in the industry for close to 25 years, we asked Michael for some perspective on how market research strategies have evolved over time. How have market research techniques changed over the last 25 years? “Twenty years ago there was really two methodologies for quantitative market research: phone surveys and mail surveys. On the qualitative side, there were in-person interviews. That was really it.” All that was changed with the introduction of digital tools. “It gave us some big and much needed cost reductions for the industry to be able to go out and capture information. It also allowed us to do it much faster.” What are the primary considerations when selecting a market research strategy? “There are really three variables that come into play when making the decision about which market research methodology to use. It’s helpful to think of them as a three-legged stool,” shared Michael. The first leg is the audience that you’re targeting with your research. For example, are they CEOs or end-user consumers? Your target audience will immediately determine the language you are going to use and the most effective way to reach them. The second that Michael described is, based on that audience, which methodology will be the most effective for reaching them and be most effective at soliciting the type of information you’re looking for. The third variable has to do with your sample size, which will be determined by the relative reliability of the data. “Speaking to eight CEOs can be much more valuable than speaking to 800 end-user consumers or vice-versa,” depending on the data you’re looking for. Which market research methodologies do firms have to choose from? Michael provided this full scope list of market research methodologies, along with some insights into when certain strategies can be most effective: 1. Email and digital-based surveys Most used to capture feedback from end-user consumers. 2. Phone surveys Still very popular despite the fact that it is harder to capture folks by phone. 3. Mail surveys Recommended for consumers located in hard-to-reach areas with poor reception or Internet access 4. Focus groups Offer the unique opportunity to witness first-hand an audience’s reaction to a visual or prompt. Also allow for follow-up when you’re aiming to dive deeper into a particular area. 5. Home-use testing Used by many overseas manufacturers that are scaling to the U.S. market and want to be able to see how their products or technologies are being used and experienced. Determining the best market research plan for your firm depends on your goals. Just as important is determining which questions to ask. How to maximize ROI “Historically, we’ve seen folks think they need to ask as many questions as they can while they have a captive audience.” This, as Michael suggests, is not the most strategic approach. “In reality, you should be building your market research questions around the precise answers you need to address your most urgent business problem—for example, a specific market need, or how you are going to increase sales in a particular sector, etc.” Get the answers you need to help you make your most pressing business decisions, and move on. When you are strategic with your methodology and audience-selection and take time to select questions that will help you address your most pressing problems, “you compress the time that you engage with your audience and they’ll be more likely to communicate with you in the future.” We’ve all been the target of market research—but the field has evolved. Surveys have gotten shorter and more to the point. “Did we do did well in this specific area?” “How could we improve?” In the long run, this level of precision helps to maximize ROI while keeping consumers happy. In other words, it’s a win-win. For more insights from Michael Vigeant, CEO of Greatblue Research, check out our entire interview here. To check out all of MEET’s webinar content on how to successfully scale your company in the U.S. market and maximize ROI through trade shows and in-person events, subscribe to our YouTube Channel. About MEET (meetroi.com) helps international B2B growth companies soft land and scale in the U.S. through trade shows and in-person events. MEET’s processes help its clients ramp-up sales quickly and maintain a steady stream of high-quality prospects going forward.  Contact Bill Kenney for a no obligation conversation: bill@meetroi.com or +1 (860) 573-4821.

While every company chooses to measure success differently depending on their scope of service and product features, certain KPIs unite all successful companies. For firms scaling to the U.S. on a tight budget and timeline, keeping close tabs on metrics of success can make a world of difference. What are these common KPIs that all scaling firms should be tracking? For the best answers we could find, we checked in with Michael Vigeant, CEO of Greatblue Research. We interviewed Michael in a webinar on June 25th, 2019 titled What You Don’t Know Can Kill Your Business: Nailing Market Research for U.S. Market Entry. How should companies begin to determine which KPIs to measure? Michael was the first to raise the issue of shared KPIs that every successful business has achieved. “Successful companies understand their audience and they’ve taken steps to make sure they’re servicing them well—through competitive pricing, superior service, and/or simply making it easy to do business with them.” “When you start to think about how to determine KPIs, whether you’re a scaling firm or one that has been established in the U.S. for a long time, it’s helpful to understand those characteristics that made your business successful in the first place.” For example, Michael pinpointed satisfied and engaged internal and external customers as a key determinant of success that should be measured and tracked closely. Six KPIs critical for measuring success Michael recommended six KPIs that scaling companies should use to measure success, in relative order of importance. Number of attempts or contacts to solve a problem
. The fewer times it takes to reach a customer and convince them you are capable of solving their problem, the better. Customer and employee satisfaction. 
This boils down to how well you treat your employees. High satisfaction rates among employees and strongly correlates to strong satisfaction amongst customers. Cost of products and services in terms of value. This can be as simple as asking the question: “Do you feel like you are getting value for the price?” At the end of the day, your goal is to determine whether your customer feels that every service you offer is worth the investment—no matter the price point. For more on the importance of value to the U.S. market and general expectations, check out this post. The speed and reliability of your service. 
High levels of competition and innovation in the U.S. market have made speed of service and reliability increasingly important. Role as a community partner. 
Customers want to understand that you’re a good community partner and corporate citizen and that you’re committed to minimizing your impact on the environment. They also want to see that you’re engaged in the local community and that you’re giving back, whether philanthropically, through volunteering, or by sponsoring events. Awareness versus perception
. These are actually two KPIs grouped together to measure their correlation. They reflect how much people know about your product or service in relation to how they evaluate it. If your company is able to offer the right solution to a customer’s problem but they aren’t aware of you, that’s a lost opportunity. Understanding how much your customers know and how they relate that knowledge to feelings about the quality of your offering are two important variables. What kind of approach delivers the best KPI results? For Michael, the best results come from companies that are authentic, open and honest about how they conduct business. “If I know who I’m serving, whether it’s a B2B or B2C scenario, and I know what they expect of me, I can have an honest conversation with them about the value we deliver and our unique solution.” These qualities (honesty, authenticity, and openness) go a long way according to Michael. They also cut down on the time and the energy it takes from having an initial conversation to closing a deal in that they accelerate the speed of trust. And for scaling businesses on a tight timeline in a foreign market, accelerating the speed of trust is vital. By the way, if you haven’t read it, The Speed of Trust is an amazing book. Every human should read it. For access to our entire interview Michael Vigeant, CEO of Greatblue Research, check out this link. To check out all of MEET’s webinar content on how to successfully scale your company in the U.S. market through trade shows and in-person events, subscribe to our YouTube Channel. About MEET (meetroi.com) helps international B2B growth companies soft land and scale in the U.S. through trade shows and in-person events. MEET’s processes help its clients ramp-up sales quickly and maintain a steady stream of high-quality prospects going forward.  Contact Bill Kenney for a no obligation conversation: bill@meetroi.com or +1 (860) 573-4821.

Americans have a reputation for going big—big cars, big houses, big portions…the list goes on. But for firms entering the U.S. market, this inclination to “go big” can actually be counterproductive and destructive. In our recent webinar: SCALE NOW: Entering the U.S. Market through Trade Shows and In-Person Events, we reviewed a number of strategies to help international firms achieve success. Among these is resisting the temptation to go “all in” on major industry events when seeking new prospects. Too often we watch scaling firms deplete their entire budget on massive industry events with the hope of scoring big results. There are a variety of problems with this approach, the first of which is that firms entering the U.S. market are tiny fish in an extremely large pond stocked with competitors. This makes gaining any sort of traction extremely difficult. Additionally, these events only happen once a year, which makes it difficult to drive consistent growth, and exceptionally difficult to learn from and adapt marketing strategies around with only one datapoint a year. Instead of betting big right from the start, here’s what we recommend. Narrow your focus In our recent post How to Solve the 6 Most Common Challenges to Trade Show Success, we talked about the value of thinking like a fisherman in terms of narrowly defining your target and aligning every aspect of your strategy with the needs and preferences of these individuals. It is more normal than not that we see companies exhibiting at trade shows with poorly defined, or missing, buyer personas out of fear that a narrowly defined scope will cause them to miss out on valuable opportunities. This could not be further from the truth. At MEET, we recommend approaching each trade show opportunity with a narrowly defined buyer persona. This buyer persona should detail who the buyer is, their goals, challenges and anything else that might help you understand how to relate to them, as well as which high leverage channels you will use to attract them. Leverage your geography Armed with a narrowly defined buyer persona, your next step is to leverage your geography such that you are taking full advantage of local, regional, and statewide resources, as well as neighboring cities. Within the first 6-12 months of scaling your venture, think of where you’ve landed as your center. One of the benefits of entering the U.S. market is that many high-value organizations run major national and international trade shows and their state and regional-level chapters host a full event schedule as well. Instead of looking at these major annual events, look for smaller opportunities like chapter events that are easy to access from your center and allow you to sleep in your own bed at night. These opportunities require fewer resources, are more sustainable for you and your team to participate in, and deliver far more opportunities to test your hypotheses about the market and refine your strategy to maximize ROI. Test and iterate quickly The key to successfully scaling into an unknown market is to test and iterate quickly. With the goal of gaining early traction, these tests will help to inform your buyer persona and reinforce the efforts of your team to systematically achieve small victories. Want to learn more about the importance of early traction in international scaling ventures? Check out this post. At MEET, we recommend classic A/B testing to test various hypotheses about your buyer persona, your value proposition, and which offer converts these individuals to the next stage in your marketing funnel. Carefully documenting the results from these tests will provide valuable data to directly inform your trade show strategy and build a system for attracting high value customers that is certifiably successful. Curious about how to A/B test your trade show marketing strategy? Contact us today. Americans are prone to the “go big or go home” mentality. But for international firms scaling to the U.S., it’s important to remember that gaining early, sustained traction in a large market requires small wins and smart growth. About MEET (meetroi.com) helps international B2B growth companies soft land and scale in the U.S. through trade shows and in-person events. MEET’s processes help its clients ramp-up sales quickly and maintain a steady stream of high-quality prospects going forward.  Contact Bill Kenney for a no obligation conversation: bill@meetroi.com or +1 (860) 573-4821.

  We know—you’re thinking there can’t be one solution to solving the six most common challenges to trade show success. In fact, there are many different strategies one can use to improve ROI at trade shows and in-person events. But they all boil down to one mindset. Mastering this mindset will not only help you solve your greatest challenges, it will fundamentally change the way you approach marketing. That mindset—thinking like a fisherman. Don’t worry, we’ll explain. But first, let’s review these challenges. The six most common challenges to trade show success With 75+ years of experience in trade shows and in-person events, we’re well aware of the barriers to maximizing trade show ROI. In fact, we see these same challenges across a wide variety of marketing efforts. Here they are, in order of when they typically take place: 1. Lack of a clear target focus
 Many companies select and attend trade shows without a clear picture of precisely whom they’re aiming to target with their marketing efforts. They have not developed clear and accurate buyer personas. 2. Misguided or missing strategy 
 While everyone hopes for big wins at trade shows, this isn’t Monte Carlo. Too many companies push all their resources into one big event and hope for success instead of investing time and resources into a solid annual strategy. 3. Poor alignment Large investments in marketing resources are wasted when companies fail to align these modes with each other and with specific outcomes in the target market. 4. Communication and methodologies that are not localized
 Small differences in language, culture and time zone can make a big difference when trying to connect with prospects in a foreign market. 5. Placing salespeople in the booth 
 Though seemingly counterintuitive, we’ve got strong evidence to prove that salespeople have a higher purpose at trade shows and in-person events and can deliver much better results when placed outside the booth. Also, the booth will be much more productive, when salespeople are removed. 6. Poor follow-up
 Too much potential energy is squandered by no or a poorly executed follow-up strategy. Unfortunately, a companies lack of professional post-event communication leaves many high-quality opportunities on the sidelines. For more details on each of these challenges and tips for achieving trade show success, check out our Special Report: How to Maximize ROI with a Trade Show Strategy Plan. What can we learn from fishermen? When a fisherman decides to go fishing, there are three basic decisions he/she makes: Which fish is he/she going to catch Where is he/she going to find them What bait is he/she going to use to attract them With 34,000 species of fish in all the lakes, rivers and oceans in the world, it is no small feat to make these decisions. In fact, many fishermen will determine not only the species but the sub-species they’re aiming to catch. The takeaway: fishermen are highly specific when setting goals. The mindset that anyone aiming to scale through trade shows and in-person events can learn from fishermen is how to target their efforts towards one very specific goal—reeling in clearly defined, high-quality prospects. The trick to employing this mindset is learning how to eliminate the 33,999 fish (or trade show attendees) you don’t want to catch and aligning every aspect of your strategy with the target species (or buyer persona). Effective alignment requires testing In fishing terms, deciding on the species you want to catch leads to a set of hypotheses about which body of water you suspect this fish inhabits, at which depth, and using which bait. Effectively aligning your strategy for reeling in prospects starts with a similar set of hypotheses, each of which must be tested. That means testing different booth offers, different messaging and different shows. You’ll know you’ve achieved ultimate alignment when only high-quality prospects self-identify to engage with your team. This level of alignment, achieved through rapid A/B testing, will help you create more measurable, and ultimately, more successful and repeatable results. And for companies endeavoring to scale to the U.S. market, creating replicable systems can go a long way. Curious about how to implement A/B testing in your trade show strategy? Email us today. Looking for better results from trade shows and in-person events? Thinking like a fisherman can get you there. For more tips and resources on MEET’s approach to effectively entering the U.S. market, check out our latest webinar: SCALE NOW: Entering the U.S. Market through Trade Shows and In-Person Events. About MEET (meetroi.com) helps international B2B growth companies soft land and scale in the U.S. through trade shows and in-person events. MEET’s processes help its clients ramp-up sales quickly and maintain a steady stream of high-quality prospects going forward.  Contact Bill Kenney for a no obligation conversation: bill@meetroi.com or +1 (860) 573-4821