Importance of having an export marketing and branding plan and documenting it
An export marketing plan acts as your blueprint for your intended export activities. It guides you in implementing your marketing strategies and executing the critical actions you need to achieve your export objectives.
When exporting to the international market, you will need to define your brand values with your overseas customers in mind, understanding their needs and wants in order for your export sales to be successful. As such, you will need to develop a branding plan to align your brand values to customer needs, aspirations and values. This will help to ensure that you will be able to deliver your brand promise to your intended customers.
Adjust the marketing and brand strategy as it is clearly formulated, By pre-planning and laying out the implementation steps of your marketing and branding strategy before you execute it, and by modifying the target perspective through testing and expansion after entering the market. Preventing deviations from the intended path ultimately helps avoid costly detours.

Issues to consider when developing your marketing plan

When developing your own export marketing plan, some major issues you should consider are:
·Your export market size in terms of demand and consumer characteristics.
·your export market environment in terms of your potential competitors.
·Do you try to predict possible future trends?
·Have you done a thorough market research to better understand the market you entering?
·What are your internal strengths and weaknesses?
·What are the opportunities and threats that you will encounter in your export market?
·Your marketing mix for your product or service in terms of channels, promotion and publicity.
·How are you going to execute each of them?

Issues to consider when developing your branding plan
·Whether you should have a different brand for each export market
·Whether you should have multiple brands with different pricing either across all markets or for each export market
·What your brand values are and how you will be communicating them to your target customers effectively
·Whether your brand is localized to the local culture and is not offensive or intrusive