Matt Taylor from Action Cameras shares his experiences of operating across multiple countries and how to use social media successfully. Want to sell abroad? Understand the cultural variations across Europe? Essential reading…
For the 3rd instalment of our ‘60 seconds with…‘ series, we welcome Matt Taylor from www.actioncameras.co.uk who gives some fascinating insight into the challenges of operating across multiple territories and shares his learnings from using social media to drive awareness of the Action Cameras brand.
We would like to thank Matt for sparing the time to respond to our questions and would strongly encourage anyone thinking about buying any form of helmet / sports camera to head over to Action Cameras straight away as you can be assured of a massive choice and excellent advice. Helmet cams are great fun (see footage from recent ski trip, all taken on equipment from Action Cameras) and nobody will give you a better service than Action Cameras.
Without further ado, here is what Matt had to say:
What do you feel are the biggest challenges associated with managing multiple international domains, and how do you deal with those challenges?
Everyday there are new challenges thrown up by managing multiple international domains – attitudes, seasonality, translation, price erosion, geography and local infrastructure to name but a few.
Understanding the issues and planning for them is all you can do. We have native country managers for all of our domains who are able to offer greater insight and we have to think hard about dealing with local trust in e-commerce, delivery times and product selection etc.
Can you give any insight into the cultural differences across European countries and how that affects online retail?
Culture and attitudes vary wildly across Europe particularly when it comes to willingness to trust e-commerce sites, purchasing habits and payment.
Many countries are untrusting of parting with money before they physically receive their goods, some much prefer to place an order over the phone and have good haggle, and some are used to purchasing online but collecting from a store – it’s important to have a transparent payment system and a clearly explained purchasing and delivery structure – as well as enough resources to deal with the extra phone calls and enquires.
How does Action Cameras use social media and what are the most important lessons you have learned from doing so?
We use Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in, Google+, YouTube and Vimeo. But the lion’s share is definitely focused on Facebook and Twitter. Both lend themselves well to positioning and awareness, enabling us to be part of the “Action Sports Conversation” by posting interesting videos, news and photos. They are both great customer service tools, allowing us to engage with customers, answering questions and providing up to date and relevant advice in real time – people are very receptive to the quick, informal response we can provide through these channels and it definitely makes us appear approachable.
Having grown our Facebook following from 1,500 to 5,600 in the last year we definitely learned that the big sales push is not an approach that works for us. Although social media offers a great platform for letting people know about offers and new products, we try to do it in an informal way and carefully think about the frequency of promotional messages.
Keeping the conversation going through interesting content, great customers service, competitions and the occasional giveaway allows us to build a relationship with our customers, which means they are more receptive when we do promote a product every now and again.
It’s easier to spread the word about Action Cameras through getting people to share a cool video than trying to get them to share news of a new camera mount.
It is the Ski season right now – what is your number one ‘must have’ accessory when heading to the slopes?
There so much cool stuff for the mountain right now – the GoPro Hero2 came out in October, the Drift HD last summer. I guess the coolest bit of kit around right now is the Recon MOD, which fits in you’re your goggles to measure and display your speed and jump height, run counter, vertical, altitude, distance travelled, location and temperature.
And if that wasn’t enough it also has smartphone connectivity, a music player, wireless camera connectivity, a configurable dashboard and downloadable apps – it’s a serious James Bond stuff.
