Once you have (a) developed or adapted your product(s) to meet the requirements of the foreign consumer, (b) gone through a careful costing exercise to ensure that your product is competitively priced (given your planned pricing strategy), and you've figured out how to distribute the product both to, and within, the foreign market, the next challenge you face is to inform your prospective customers of the product's availability and its value. This is known as the "promotion" element of the marketing mix (the 4Ps). Today, promotion is also referred to as marketing communications.

Developing an export promotion strategy really only involves three steps. These are:

• Determining the most appropriate mix of advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, internet marketing, publicity and personal selling for each foreign market
  
• Determining the extent of standardisation of your export promotion effort
  
• Deciding on the core message(s) you will use to promote your product and company
  

Preparing a promotion strategy statement for your export plan

These above-mentioned promotion issues we discuss in more detail in subsequent sections. Once you have worked through these various promotional issues, you should be able to prepare a statement outling your export promotion strategy. This statement should:

• Identify the mix of promotional elements you plan to use to promote you firm abroad, explain why you have made this choice
• Indicate the extent of standardisation you plan to use within your promotion strategy
• Highlight a overarching core message that you plan to carry across to your targey market through your promotional effort
• Explain how this promotion strategy will help your firm achieve its export objectives.

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