Know your market
The first and most important building block is market intelligence. We want to know where the opportunities are, what the competition is doing, who the best local partners are and what we need to know about local legislation. We worked with companies and the Embassy to identify target groups in both the UK and Spain. We also started to create an overview of local legislation on water quality requirements.
The second building block is about looking for more cooperation, for example in consortia, as you need local partners to export your products to. And the third building block is access to finance, taking into account the differences between large and small companies. We are looking into pre-financing and export financing, as well as the more complex project financing. To this end, we are working with financial institutions that have investigated a number of concrete financing cases and identified gaps.
The last building block is branding and communication. Dutch companies have very innovative technical solutions, but also need to focus on marketing. We have started a pilot with Holland Water and LG Sonic for micro-targeting via social media and running a webinar about surface water. The first results show that we are attracting the right target group with these innovative techniques. We will spread the knowledge we acquire about branding and communication, and help set up campaigns for other companies.