Martijn Lutgerink is the CMO of Trust International B.V., who offer digital accessories primarily for two different product groups; the home & office and gaming segments. He has over two decades of previous experience with Samsung and Sony Eriksson. Now at Trust, he discusses being the value-for-money-player, claiming your position, and how you can plan your success by being excellent in just a few things.
You said that you believe you can plan your success. How do you go about doing this?
We clearly define what we’d like to achieve. Who are our target customers, and then how to action goals in target countries. We get as specific as possible.
We’ve clearly defined the area of service in which we’d like to play. We want to be the value for money player. We want to be the alternative for the A brands. So we don’t need to have billboard ads and TV commercials- we can leave that to the A brands.
We offer consumers value for money and we prioritise sustainability in our products. That’s our value proposition. And we know that.
It’s equally important for us to know who we’re not. It would be a mistake for us to target every area in the world and to go above certain price points.
How does knowing who you are make your brand more successful?
We put more into the things that matter. Our best-seller is this ergonomic mouse. We’ve seen from the research that 90% of people buy it online. And if you look at the gaming consumer, 80% of all gaming products are bought online.
So part of our strategy is to have best in class content. To be visible and effectively sell our products on Amazon. And to get serious about reviews. We put resources into this with an advertising team dedicated to Amazon and a content creation team whose numbers surpass any other division within our company.
We have photographers, videography, 3-D animation, and we make everything ourselves so we can produce and adapt it quickly. This is one of the core elements with marketing content.
What is some advice that you’d offer?
I’d recommend being excellent at a few things. As mentioned, content is one of those things that we have top of mind. And this includes making sure the content is findable on Amazon with the right team to optimize your Amazon spend and your search. We’ve got 7-8 people working on this.
“You can claim your position by simply improving a few things. Don’t try to be everything to everyone.”
Also look at the market as well as your audience. Inflation and cost of living right now means that value for money is more important than ever to our customers. So we actually want to be positioned next to A brands. That doesn’t scare us. When we’re placed next to an A brand, consumers can see that they’re getting the same quality for 20-30 Euros cheaper.
Also sustainability is more important to our audience than ever. Consumers want to buy greener where possible, so we get more and more products that are made of recyclable plastics. We make sure our packaging is certified.
Lastly I’d say to avoid complexity whenever possible. Make it clear to people what their responsibility is, and enable them to execute and implement. Get things done. And I try to keep our marketing team lean and mean. Sometimes having more people on staff can add complexity because you get lost in meetings that are not clear and layers of decisions that extend execution time.