Project Background
The Client, a US-based trade services provider, decided to enter the European market with the goal of establishing a sales presence in the UK.
To support the Client's objective, Evalueserve developed a comprehensive go-to-market strategy, based on a thorough understanding of the competitive landscape, market dynamics, and relevant customer segments.
Additionally, the Client gained relevant insights into the threats and opportunities within the chosen market and created a sales and marketing blueprint for a successful market launch.
The Challenge
The Client’s primary goal was to gain clarity on how to successfully position itself in the UK market by identifying potential challenges and unlocking opportunities for growth.
The project objectives were centered around four key areas:
- Market understanding: Gain a clear understanding of the UK trade market, the main competitive forces, and the trends shaping it.
- Uncover customer decision drivers: Analyze customer preferences and behaviors related to trade services providers among UK importers and exporters, across focus industries.
- Identify key customer segments and personas: Identify and uncover relevant customer and buyer personas to enable a targeted approach, prioritize segments, and tailor product offerings.
- Define the strategy: Develop, along with the Client, the ideal route to market by outlining actionable steps for a successful implementation.
The Solution
Evalueserve developed a rigorous multi-phased approach, combining desk research, primary research, competitor benchmarking, and customer segmentation analysis.
The research framework encompassed:
- Market and competitive intelligence: evaluated market potential by analyzing competitive dynamics, regulatory landscape, emerging trends, and overall market size by deploying extensive desk/secondary research and expert interviews with relevant stakeholders in the industry.
- Customer understanding: Uncovered prospective customers’ unmet needs, pain points, decision drivers, and barriers to engaging with trade services providers. Leveraged a mixed-method research approach—conducting 15 in-depth interviews across priority industries and a quantitative survey of 300 respondents—to deliver a comprehensive and data-backed view of customer expectations and behaviors.
- Customer segmentation: Identified core customer segments and buyer personas by integrating external databases, advanced clustering techniques, and primary research. The findings were based on relevant criteria such as firmographics, transactional data, trade patterns, and purchasing behaviors.
- Marketing strategy: Developed a customer-centric marketing approach that prioritized entry strategies and tactics in high-potential regions and industries, based on customer segmentation and a digital marketing audit of selected competitors.
"Well done! Not the easiest subject, steep learning curve, and comes with high expectations. The dynamic you collectively bring to meetings is effective!"
The Outcome
Evalueserve’s systematic approach equipped the Client with critical insights for entering the UK market:
- Gained a deep understanding of the UK trade services market landscape, current competitors, and emerging opportunities.
- Uncovered current service gaps, expectations, and the decision-making process in trade services across diverse industries and business sizes.
- Refined and prioritized customer segments, pinpointing the industries with the highest potential based on current trade business operations.
- Developed targeted marketing strategies and optimized positioning for digital communication.
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Overview & Impact
Evalueserve assisted a US-based trade services provider in entering the European market by developing a comprehensive go-to-market strategy. This enabled the client to gain market insights, identify prospective customers, and optimize expansion strategies.
