Hi everyone !

Last wednesday, during our International Marketing Tools course, one of Finland’s best-known Internet marketing experts and management consultancy has come. Ilkka Kauppinen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilkkakauppinen) went in our class to make a presentation of his company. But which company will you ask? It’s the Arctic Warriors company. Let me introduce it to you.

Arctic warriors is a Lappish health food enterprise which was established in the spring of 2014 by three friends but especially three passionate entrepreneurs who want to save agriculture in the Arctic. The products they sell are tasty herbal hand-made products which are 100% natural ! Indeed, they use Lappish plants like roots of Angelica, roseroot, salidrosid, spruce sprout or nettle which are grown by local farmers and picked by wild herbs pickers. All these natural products are made to fight against low energy or stress but mainly help you feel better in your body.

During this presentation, Ilkka Kauppinen talked first about the story of his company, the plants they used to make their products and after he talked more about marketing issues (which are in my opinion, the main important things to learn about this presentation). To enter in the subject, he first spoke about the importance of looking around and make market researches to know the trends and make sure that you satisfy the needs and expectations of your customers. Another very important things for him is the segmentation, you have to choose the right target for your business.

After that, he talked about the 4P (marketing mix), which are for me one of the most important things to think about when you start a business. About the Place, he said something very relevant. The first question a company has to settle is : “Where am I going to sell my products?” and he added with this that we have to concentrate on two distributors at first. In their case, they especially sell to healthy shops, supermarkets and online.

Finally, Illka spoke about the exportation and some tips to know how to start exporting :

1. You must be sure that you have enough products/raw materials (even if big deal appears you have to make sure that you can deliver products)
2. Sometimes it’s hard to sell a certain type of products. For example, it’s hard to sell herbal products because of the regulation in some countries (In Corea, they can’t sell their honey products because of bacteria and it takes too much effort)
3. You need samples which can be expansive
4. In every country, the distribution channel, the consumption habits or the marketing are different so you have to find them and manage them

A last tips he gave to us is “Rediscover yourself even if you think your brand is excellent”.

To end this post, I will talk about what are the most important points when making your business global via internet and why is digital marketing so important for small business.

Ilkka said that they have used newspaper advertisement at first to advertise, But now, they use more internet marketing and try to use it in the more profitable way. So, here is the most important points when making your business global via internet :

• Have a mobile website
• Have a user-friendly website
• Use multichannel as social media
• Make a good description of your company
• Have a good referencing so that customers can find your website easily
• Show the visual identity of the brand (logos, slogans, …)

Digital business is important for small businesses because today internet takes a huge place in our everyday life. That’s true, we learn, communicate, via internet, with smartphones or tablets and other connected objects. Have a digital strategy is not a richness anymore, but becomes a fundamental to face with competitors and mainly to be on the same equal footing than them. The digital marketing helps companies to be closer to their customers. Indeed, with social media or website we can now create a real relation with customers and talk with them in real-time. Furthermore, the users of internet are more and more numerous, so companies can’t ignore them because they represent a large part of their customers.

It is now finished ! I hope you enjoyed my post and learn more about Arctic Warriors and Digital marketing.

See you !