In a world where global business landscapes are constantly shifting, how do leaders and entrepreneurs successfully navigate these changes to expand into new markets, particularly the US?
According to Cameron Heffernan, the strategic use of marketing and the cultivation of authentic relationships are crucial. He emphasizes the critical role of adapting to global shifts, like Mexico’s emergence as a leading exporter to the US, and tailoring marketing strategies to fit new economic realities. Cameron suggests that understanding these dynamics and employing a genuine, insightful approach to marketing can significantly impact a company’s ability to establish and expand its presence in foreign markets.
In this episode of America Open for Business, Cameron Heffernan, joined by Chad Franzen, explores the challenges and strategies of entering the US market. They discuss the significance of Mexico overtaking China in exports to the US, the pivotal role of strategic marketing in global business expansion, and how authenticity and understanding of market nuances can lead to success in foreign investment and business growth.
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Narrator: 0:03
Welcome to America Open for Business, where we talk with high-growth entrepreneurs and leaders who have found success in one of the world’s most important markets.
Cameron: 0:15
Hello, I’m Cameron Heffernan, and this is America Open for Business, where I talk with high-growth entrepreneurs and leaders who have found success in one of the world’s most important markets. This episode today is brought to you by us, your B2B marketing, a truly global marketing and media agency. Many mid-market B2B companies face challenges in clearly defining their value proposition and articulating it to customers, so we help founders and leaders understand what makes their products and services invaluable to customers and help them put that front and center. Discover how we can drive your expansion by visiting yourb2bmarketingco. That’s co, not com Past. Guests of the show include Brian Smith, founder of the UGG brand that became a billion-dollar consumer footwear brand. Ben Tietje, founder and CEO of Earthly Wellness, which is a $21 million-plus direct-to-consumer e-commerce brand, and then, most recently, paul Jarrett, who is a fantastic guest and the founder of BuluBox, a curated online subscription service and 5PL company.
Cameron: 1:24
I wanted to introduce today’s guest of guest host because we’re doing a little bit differently today, flipping the script. It’s Chad Franzen, who is with Rise25. Chad has interviewed thousands of entrepreneurs and CEOs over the years and today he’ll be interviewing me. Before I do that, I want to give a shout out and a thank you to the doctor, dr Jeremy Wise of Rise 25. He is, excuse me, the host of Inspired Insider. He got me into this fantastic podcasting journey and I’ve been enjoying it ever since Today. Let’s welcome Chad Franson to the show.
Chad: 2:05
Hey, thanks so much, Cameron. I appreciate you having me today, looking forward to talking with you. Let’s talk a little bit about global business. I know a few things have caught your attention. What’s kind of happening in the world right now? Maybe that’s particularly important in your eyes.
Cameron: 2:19
One was an announcement. It was an article that I read yesterday, popped up on my screen from the New York Times, and the news was that Mexico had overtaken China as the top exporter to the US. So, if you flip it around, america’s biggest source of imports are now from Mexico versus China, and New York Times reported it based on different metrics and data. Some outlets even had reported it last year. So it really depends whose data you go with. I think economists had it a little bit earlier, not really the point, but it’s that these are big shifts that are happening. What drove that To me? You go all the way back to Trump entering office the tariffs come into place, but that also was something that built up going back further, because more and more companies whether they’re actually doing manufacturing or more services-based the benefits of China were eroding over time and the tariff for many companies was the kind of sort of the final straw to say it’s just harder to be in china. Now we need to look at alternatives.
Cameron: 3:34
What are those challenges were, uh, you know, the tariff itself. Intellectual property protection, uh, the long supply chain, delays, um, wages in China kept creeping upward. And Mexico, you know, going back, say, five years or longer, mexico was quite competitive. Labor, labor wise. Mexico has also had these challenges. You know, labor there has crept up 15 to 20 percent per year over the last handful of years because, again, politics, a populist president in Mexico trying to raise the conditions of the working poor.
Cameron: 4:11
So oftentimes these seismic shifts at a geopolitical level take some time to play out and trickle down but ultimately lead to differences in where our goods are produced. Differences in where our goods are produced. Another statistic I had seen was about a similar topic was about China is now the fastest growing source of foreign direct investment into Mexico. So, like Chad, get your head around that for a minute. It’s sort of here’s this Chinese good that I’m going to be buying at the supermarket or the electronics store to get around the tariff. It’s now produced in Mexico within the USMCA tariff-free not completely tariff-free, but the region, and that’s another workaround for the Chinese. Part of the reason that it’s the highest, fastest growing, is because the bar was so low. There wasn’t a whole lot of Chinese investment into Mexico before, but that’s another interesting dynamic with this whole situation.
Chad: 5:09
Yeah, absolutely so. Given those two things that you just discussed, how does that kind of affect global marketing or B2B marketing, which is exactly what you do?
Cameron: 5:18
Well, I guess it’s thinking about today’s sources and supply and demand of things, where things are coming from and going to. It’s a much more when I started my career initially a much more global world. Companies are relying a lot more on automation. It applies to both physical production manufacturing, but all the way through to creative and professional services, which is a lot like what we do. So at our core, we are a marketing and media agency. We do so at our core, we are a marketing and media agency.
Cameron: 5:48
But I don’t know, but about a year ago I came to the realization that more and more agencies are just becoming more and more commoditized. So you really have to do something different and special and, just like any company, like we advise our own clients, if you want to be unique, you know, identify your true product, market fit in the marketplace, you’ve got to look at what, what is it that we do that’s absolutely best in class, and really lean into that and really emphasize that in all of your outreach and your campaigns and your strategy, because then your customers who you’re reaching out to in the field, these guys really get me and that’s exactly what we need for whatever it might be. So so I made the decision to kind of lean into our expertise in overseas markets, with helping companies that are based offshore to either set up in the US and transition to the US for the first time or, more likely, to expand their existing presence that’s in the US and support their marketing and their communications outreach.
Chad: 6:48
For somebody who is setting up shop in the US for the first time and they’ve already kind of done marketing wherever they’re from, would their marketing tactics or strategies, in whatever country they’re in, be automatically transferable to the US, or we’ll just do the same thing there?
Cameron: 7:04
Right, that’s a great question. I think that is the common, based on my experience from living and working in both Africa and Europe. That’s the common thought or perception. Great, it’s as simple as going over to the US, opening an office, launching it. Pick a place where somebody would want to live as an expat you make the move from. Let’s just pick on one region of Europe, the Benelux region. You move to the US for a certain amount of time and we’re going to open a new presence there. We’ll take the case studies, the marketing, the same strategy that we had from back in Benelux, and just do it translate. Translate it from, say, dutch or French or whatever language you may be in English. We’re good to go. Challenge there is. It’s not that simple, because the the market, the marketplace, the landscape is different, the competitive factors and forces are different and you’ve brought over someone or individuals plural that have never lived and worked in the US environment before. Right, or they have, or it’s a more limited window of time. How’s that person gonna succeed?
Chad: 8:18
we will get back to a little bit more about that in just a moment, but I know that a select USA is coming up. Tell me about that.
Cameron: 8:27
It’s in. It’s every year. It’s put on by, I believe it’s department of commerce, but it’s put on in the, you know, may to June timeframe every year in the Maryland or DC area and it is, I would consider it, a foreign direct investment showcase. In fact, the name of this podcast, america Open for Business, is sort of inspired by that concept. Why is it important to be here? Yes, one of the world’s most important markets and growing and expanding has a lot of advantages. The US market China’s also a big market that’s growing and expanding has a lot of advantages. The US market China’s also a big market that’s growing and expanding. India is also a big market that’s growing and expanding, but they’re not as globally integrated and they’re not as strategically important from a worldwide perspective as the US. And I’m not saying the others are not important. Of course they are. But US, if you want to grow your brand, your presence in your company, you really need to think about how are we going to get there, how are we going to succeed there. And SelectUSA is a good showcase for that.
Cameron: 9:30
It’s a huge event. The first time I went was over 10 years ago and it’s just a great showcase for other people and companies looking at some of the same challenges getting into the US. What are we gonna do here? The speaker for that year, the keynote, was Richard Branson fantastic. Just told his story of origin about Virgin Airways and how he started the airline because a bunch of people stranded. They were doing a vacation in the Virgin Islands and the flight was canceled and this light bulb clicked and they had this realization there’s a whole plane of people here that are going to be stuck and miss their holiday. Put together a charter and the airline was born. And I think that’s a lot of the spirit that’s at that show, a lot of the spirit that’s in this very podcast.
Cameron: 10:18
There’s an opportunity there. That’s to me what business is all about, particularly small business is. There’s an opportunity there. There there is that. That’s to me what business is all about. Particularly small business is. There’s a problem or a challenge.
Cameron: 10:26
We have that solution and what we’re trying to focus on is companies that, by virtue of their presence in another geographical market or location, could bring it to the us, could import it here and have an advantage in place. Examples might be in Europe the aviation aerospace business the Airbus is a conglomerate Got a lot of funding from EU governments. The US government and Boeing aren’t crazy about those advantages. They want to have a level playing field. But there is an advantage to that Airbus consortium of how they’re funded and how they’re built and put together.
Cameron: 11:05
Another example could be the way European governments have funded industries where they have a big headstart renewables, sustainability, anything to do with wind turbines not so much solar panels those all come from China, but different. This whole renewables and sustainable ecosystem got a huge advantage over there. Why not look at the US market as an opportunity for that technology and that head start and bring it here to leverage? So the SelectUSA conference is a great way to come here, sort of get your feet wet, understand what the opportunities are and see what your next step would be. Plus, you’ve got people from all over the world literally looking at their providers that are focusing on the actual soft landing getting yourself set up as a company, compliance, all that stuff In addition to what we do, which is the marketing strategy and the focus on identifying our, on the identifying our you know unique selling points as a company.
Chad: 12:04
In terms of foreign direct investment. What are some different entities doing to encourage that or discourage that, or you? Know, handle that.
Cameron: 12:13
Yeah, I wouldn’t touch the discourage part. We did that for a different discussion. But I would say what you know, different entities do a lot of different things and I would credit in particular the way the Europeans have done it. We did that for a different discussion, but I would say different entities do a lot of different things and I would credit in particular the way the Europeans have done it and I think we did it in this country differently and probably better, maybe a decade ago or longer. And again, here we’ve got not just one system for doing things, 50.
Cameron: 12:36
So each state is going to have its own approach, focus, strategy. There’s two that I’ll point out just because I know them, because I’m here in the Midwest now. You’ve got Jobs Ohio. Jobs Ohio traditionally will have a presence and a booth at SelectUSA, in addition to other events and the equivalent in Illinois as well, because I understand the importance of being there, having a presence in an event like this where companies are coming in bringing technologies and approaches from overseas to look at the us market.
Cameron: 13:05
Should we go? Consider illinois to shut up, to set up our operations? Should we look at the different parts of ohio and the midwest in particular has a decent advantage well situated logistically, a little bit more affordable uh, cost of living and ability to to leverage labor for that and different talent. So that’s how it would work from our side. Then you’d have the equivalent from say let’s use Europe again, these EDO Economic Development Officers from all across the world that would come and have a presence at SelectUS or any kind of other event like that to to showcase what’s possible for a belgian company coming to the us. Or flip it around, let’s bring some foreign direct investment into belgium. That would be probably a different event, but the select usa focuses inward fdi foreign direct investment into the US, and again, state by state.
Chad: 14:02
We were talking a little bit about kind of how you interact with clients and things like that. Let’s talk a little bit more about that in your process. So when you first start working with a client, how do you handle that? Do you just start doing marketing stuff for them, or? What happens there, when you first start working with a client?
Cameron: 14:19
Yeah, that’s a good question, I think that is the knee-jerk reaction or concept of we’re doing this initiative, we’re launching a new product. Let’s pick something a solar-powered battery Okay, well, we need to go to this show, we need to go to that event, we need to get ourselves in Cabela’s. We need to get an online e-commerce site up and running quickly. All those things are important, but they’re a little further down the road, I think, because those are also the exciting, fun things that you want to do. You’re thinking about all the ideas. Let’s get on Kickstarter. Let’s look at partnerships we need to be aware of.
Cameron: 14:53
I would advise our what we do is advise our clients to say step back a little bit and take a sense, take a pulse for the landscape. You’re coming from a place with a different market makeup. Let’s take Europe again. Some of my friends will kill me, but whatever the number is 22 member states, let’s use that as the number right now 22 EU member states. Each is a different market. The things you’re thinking about there initially are localization. We’re going to publish this. We’ve got to translate it to all these different languages. Those elements don’t necessarily exist here, so the things you’re focusing on first are different. So what we would do with a new client is to encourage them and sometimes insist.
Cameron: 15:38
We will only work this way, which is let’s start first with what we call a brand positioning exercise. It’s usually ideally in person, a two-day sort of workshop, where you go through a very detailed sort of process, asking them a whole bunch of questions. You want to think about it as like a focus group for your executive team or a focus group for your company. Some marketing consultants and firms think of this as a positioning exercise. Where are you in relation to the market? So there is a really well-known positioning expert named April Dunford has a whole book and a consulting program on this approach. Often she uses consumer examples because they’re most tangible. One is when, when the starbucks product came to life, it’s now called cake pop. Right, the initial initial idea for that was cake on a stick. So does that sound appealing to you? Does that sound enticing to maybe jab yourself in the in the throat with a stick? Not particularly okay. So they okay, let’s, let’s turn this around, let’s reposition this, and people right away got okay, kind of stick, okay, I understand that. Now Something very different. So a positioning exercise we would do with our clients with those kinds of things.
Cameron: 16:51
Are you a SaaS provider? Are you a services provider that has a SaaS tool? Where do you fit into the marketplace? The competitors from Europe will be different than they are here. How do you fit into the marketplace? The competitors from Europe will be different than they are here. How do you fit into that landscape? And again, what makes your company absolutely essential, what are unique selling points and what makes you the right fit? Only by doing that can we then look at campaigns, events, linkedin posts, tweets, blog posts. That’s the fun stuff. People want to do that first, but you’re better off getting a sense for where you stand.
Chad: 17:26
So how do you kind of engage them with your client Once they’re kind of past that initial onboarding stage? How do you kind of work with them? Maybe you could give me an example of a client that you are working with and kind of give me a feel for how you engage and work with them sure, um, the way we think of ourselves is an extension of your team.
Cameron: 17:48
So there’s a client of mine that fits this mold quite well. They’re called e plus e electronic. They’re based in austria. They’re a manufacturer europe is maybe one of the most expensive places in the world to make anything so they make, in this example, internet of Things, sensors that go into different production environments. But they have a team here, a smaller team, a managing director and who I’m hoping I’ll get to have on this show at some point, and he has some operations, he’s got some salespeople. He doesn’t have the marketing piece, so we work with him directly. We are an extension of his team.
Cameron: 18:22
So, after we go through the initial foundation setting and the strategy component, we would work together on an annual strategy, an annual roadmap for what we’ll be doing. That’s where it gets to be different. It’s tailored to their needs, to their strategies, to their life cycle of the company. So, for instance, it could be partnerships with media outlets that cover their sector. What do you would consider paid content? We would have an arrangement with a partner like that, a joint webinar with a vertical outlet or publication. So again, you’re building credibility through those third-party kind of outlets, perhaps it’s even earned media. We’re going to pitch a story or a white paper or a study we had done with the client. We’re going to pitch those results to different outlets to get more coverage and, hopefully, get more interest. So the challenge there is entering a new market for the first time. They’re competing with companies already here that are established. So what kind of campaigns, and whether it’s digital or in-person at an event what kind of strategies and elements do we need to put together to raise their profile?
Chad: 19:30
can pitching those things to media outlets be challenging.
Cameron: 19:33
Yeah, I think it is. I had a. My earlier life was a journalist and then did some PR work and what I like now about the clients that I work with, you know they’re B2B, mid-market companies and what I will often say to clients is leverage that, that you are what you are right. So you could say it’s a weakness. We can’t afford to work with a huge PR firm and that has a, you know, $10,000 a month budget, but so you don’t have that as a strength. What is your strength? Well, your strength is authenticity. So oftentimes I will pitch, or the client will pitch, a reporter or a journalist and they like to hear directly from the principal, the owner of the company, to be able to really ask them questions. And sometimes it doesn’t lead to an article right away, but there’s a relationship there because they do prefer having been a journalist and talked to journalists, reporters now that ability to meet directly with somebody who started a company and built it into a $10 million plus company. It’s a unique, fresh angle. Oftentimes the reporters covering that space are covering mid-market size companies, so they love to look at hey, who exactly should we meet with?
Cameron: 20:45
There was a person I had in the podcast this week. Give him a shout out. It’s Paul Jarrett from Bulu Box and when I was researching him and looking into him, well hell, he’s got a whole PBS special called Start it Up on his site. The guy from PBS came to their facility and Lincoln did a whole half hour special and it was fantastic and that is such a great way to tell the story of what your company is. Not everybody can get PBS to come to their facility but it is possible when it’s the you know the right sort of angle and story to be told.
Chad: 21:17
Hey, as we kind of wrap things up here, let’s talk about one more kind of global current event that has to do with marketing. I know, I know Boeing is kind of dealing with a branding issue right now. Can you kind of give me some background on that and give me your thoughts? Sure.
Cameron: 21:34
I guess I would flip it around to you to ask when you get on a plane, do you ever look to see what the model of the aircraft is?
Chad: 21:41
You know, I really don’t.
Cameron: 21:42
Right. So I didn’t either. I did it a little bit in the past because for a while we had some private aviation clients. Look and see, oh, it’s a Pilatus. It’s an Embraer, it’s a Boeing. It’s a pilatus. It’s an umbrella. It’s a boeing. Most people don’t, but as this has been happening with boeing, it did cross my mind. In theory, you’re supposed to be able to go to make your booking, go to see it and then indicate what is the model of the aircraft. Would you get on a boeing max airplane with your family right now?
Chad: 22:10
um not not knowing, any not knowing any background. Yeah, I probably would sure.
Cameron: 22:15
Okay, because I at least thought about that. Would I feel confident getting onto an aircraft that basically the door came off mid-flight and the CEO of Alaska Airlines recently came forward saying they have a real Boeing is. Alaska Airlines is a client of Boeing. They’ve got some real quality issues. We have a real day boeing is you know. Alaska airlines is a client of boeing. They’ve got some real quality issues. We have some real reservations.
Cameron: 22:38
What’s that going to do to their, to their future orders, you know? Um? So I would not want to be putting up that mess. And then I heard an interview on uh the radio recently of a former engineer who had worked there saying that one of the challenges is that you had business people running the airline as opposed to engineers. It used to be engineer-driven and engineer-led and it became more and more of a bottom-line focused business. So what are you doing to cut corners to maximize profitability? So I would not want to be dealing with that as a reputation management issue. It’s a big challenge. There it would be, I would imagine. Staying in front of that, what are they going to have to do to win back customer trust? It’s going to be quite an uphill fight.
Chad: 23:23
Yeah, yeah, I would imagine. Where do you think they would start, oof.
Cameron: 23:29
Probably showing one of the things that aviation as an industry, the sector, does is. They will highlight the smaller stories first, maybe telling stories about the people who work at the factory and the quality controls. It’s really hard to beat up on an individual or a couple of people. Rather than Boeing is this big, massive, multi-billion dollar company and the executive team, the ceo they, they’re going to get a beating. But if you look at who are the people working on the line, who are people doing the quality inspections, who are the people, uh, in the r&d labs doing the different testing and the different development, that’d be a place perhaps to start and to say here’s what we’ve done, here’s the measures that we put in place, here’s the checks and balances.
Cameron: 24:17
I mean, it’s so extreme that the faa is getting hammered for not being hard enough on boeing. When’s the last time you’ve heard that ever happen? I think that’s stunning to me and, um, I think, uh, you’d look at past uh crisis communications plans. They have them set up ahead of time, these big companies, and we’ve got to dig into that. You know, what did Tylenol do when they had the big scare in the eighties? I think with poisoning of the, of the, of the product and companies that that overcame those challenges. But it’s not going to. It doesn’t happen overnight.
Chad: 24:51
Do companies need to change their entire operation or do they just change their messaging, or both?
Cameron: 24:57
You have to do both. You have to do some serious inward looking at what led to these issues. And it’s tough because look at how many moving parts there are and elements to a single flight, so they’re going to get even more scrutiny from regulators, from customers, and then ultimately again, like example I gave, it’s really hard. Most people don’t look and see what’s the model of the aircraft I’m going to be on, but, like now, there’s actually an incentive to do that, so it’s going to be the up their internal quality game even more.
Chad: 25:28
Yeah, it sounds like it. Hey, uh camera, it’s been great to talk to you. Thanks so much for having me today. Oh, wow, thanks.
Cameron: 25:34
Thanks to you, chad, for the questions. I really appreciate it. This has been America Open for Business. Oh sorry.
Chad: 25:40
What were you going to say? No, I’m handing it over to you, okay, thanks?
Cameron: 25:45
This has been America Open for Business, chad. I really appreciate your time, great questions, and I invite people to subscribe and join us for the next episode and thank you very much for listening so long everybody.
Narrator: 26:03
Thanks for listening to the America Open for Business podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.
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