Boosting digital marketing Indonesian natural ingredients exporters

Due to the pandemic, Indonesian natural ingredients exporters must optimise their digital marketing and sales channels to keep up and increase visibility toward international buyers. In doing so, they face the following challenges:

• Lack of knowledge and skills in e.g., usability, content and social media marketing, SEO, and advertising.
• Little exposure to international good practices.
• Underestimation of the importance of the website as a focal marketing platform for conversion, with social media as awareness raisers and traffic drivers.
• Unfavourable conditions for local web services and IT support and lack of skills to effectively instruct in-house or external web developers.

To help these SMEs become future-ready, Globally Cool was commissioned by CBI to assess their digital channels and intensively train and coach them on enhancing their digital marketing.

Globally Cool developed a methodology to assess the performance of the websites and social media channels of the 29 participants. The assessment consists of two pillars:

1. Assessment by our team, resulting in a report with recommendations and quick wins.
2. Self-assessment of website and digital marketing performance as part of the training.

Each participant received a report of about 10 pages including our manual assessment plus an annex with further (technical) findings from an automated site audit. Each report included a summary of the findings on 14 key requirements using traffic light icons (red/green), followed by an overview of recommendations & quick wins, and the assessment checklist with scoring and explanation. For this project, we also added a social media assessment checklist. The assessments were based on years of experience and hundreds of assessments for other companies. For the training, we used our online learning platform – the Globally Cool Academy, customised for CBI – with a blended learning curriculum, including live and recorded webinars/inspiration sessions, video learning and individual or small group coaching of the companies. We conducted 10 live webinars of around 60 minutes each, on the following topics:

1. From marketing strategy to website strategy, homepage success factors, UVPs
2. Website goals, product pages, about us
3. Website usability
4. SEO: keywords and content
5. SEO: keywords and metatags
6. SEO: other success factors
7. Social media: LinkedIn and company pages
8. Social media: Facebook and Instagram
9. Social media: YouTube and social media management
10. Towards a digital marketing strategy

Each webinar was facilitated by one Globally Cool trainer and where needed a moderator. We included best practices from the three sectors for inspiration and proven didactical approaches such as interactions (polls, discussions, games) at least every 10 minutes and knowledge tests. The companies also conducted their own self-assessment as part of the training. Each webinar was followed by an assignment that included a self-assessment on the subject. Our coaches provided feedback on each participant’s assignment in the e-learning system based on their own assessment. The written feedback was followed by five 1-on-1 meetings via Zoom for further clarification, steering on quick wins for all channels and creating the digital marketing strategy. Step by step, the participants arrived at a complete action plan, with priorities and quick wins. By attending the webinars and by doing the self-assessment with us, the awareness, knowledge and skills were developed and enhanced. This has led to an individual approach per company with differentiated learning paths. Globally Cool also drafted a job description for managing a website and digital marketing channels, including social media. This includes suggested activities, as well as targets/indicators at the operational and senior management levels. That way sustainability of the enhanced digital marketing performance can be further guaranteed. We integrated the job description into the training package and coached the companies on embedding it within the organisation.

Activities

• Development of assessment tool.
• Assessment websites and social media.
• Drafted a job description for a digital marketing manager.
• Conducted 10 webinars on digital marketing.
• Set up of self-assessment with 1-on-1 coaching, intertwined with the webinars.
• Coaching on developing a digital marketing strategy.
• Coaching on implementation and quick wins.
• Coordination locally and with CBI.

Results

• Digital marketing assessment tool for reviewing websites and social media in place.
• 29 assessments of digital marketing performance, including quick wins and recommendations, plus 29 self-assessments and improvement plans, co-created by the participants and our team.
• 29 companies have improved their knowledge and skills of online marketing channels, implemented quick wins, and piloted various channels with customers.
• 29 companies have a digital marketing strategy.
• Improved websites, digital marketing and/or social media performance of 29 companies.
• The participants have an empowered attitude towards online marketing opportunities.
• Good practices in digital marketing were identified and shared for the three Indonesian sectors at hand.