The British Government’s Department for International Trade has an ambitious target to reach £1 trillion in inbound trade and investment – yet the approach relied too heavily on individuals in key outposts rather than data and on broad-brush marketing efforts rather than targeted messaging.
We built a blended framework to solve the problem, using advanced data modeling with expert insights and B2B interviews.
We quickly realized that the data that stakeholders needed – the key sectors and markets where its exports perform well in, and those where it performs less well – was missing. This required intensive modeling of data.
We developed a solution and universal methodology, applied consistently across markets and sectors, that unlocked the key trade and investment opportunity areas by modeling UN COMTRADE data.
Working with leading thinkers in trade and investment decision-making, we then built a model – the propensity to buy – and used it to conduct extensive fieldwork to identify perception and policy change requirements annually to plan for – and measure the impact of – improvements.
This allowed us to uncover a range of sectors and markets where marketing investments should be prioritized (as they have room for growth) and where marketing shouldn’t be – helping shift from a blanket approach to a targeted approach. Further still, we isolated key decision drivers and measured their impact across different businesses to inform the creative messaging.
Our result built an infrastructure to help DIT focus its global marketing budget away from a blanket strategy towards focused markets and sectors, and messaging to key targets. It was so successful that it was presented in Whitehall.