Global Lynda.com

Go-to-Market Plan

Prepared by: Lee Nau (lee@leenau.com)

Overview

Product:

This Go-to-Market plan covers the Lynda.com Internationalization Product Plan, which seeks to implement a multi-phase strategy for globalizing Lynda.com's course offerings. The phases are as follows:

1. Spanish:

   • Tie in course offerings list with video2brain.
   • Initial target markets:
     • Spanish: Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Spain, USA, Venezuela

2. French, German, Italian, and Portuguese:

   • Tie in course offerings list with video2brain materials.
   • Initial target markets:
     • French: Belgium, Canada, France, Switzerland
     • German: Austria, Germany, Switzerland
     • Italian:: Italy, Switzerland
     • Portuguese: Brazil, Portugal

3. Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, and Malay

   • Initial target markets:
     • Chinese (Simplified): China
     • Chinese (Traditional): Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan
     • Indonesian: Indonesia
     • Japanese: Japan
     • Korean: South Korea
     • Malay: Malaysia

4. Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Russian, and Swedish

   • Initial target markets:
     • Danish: Denmark
     • Dutch: Netherlands, Belgium
     • Russian: Russia, Belarus
     • Swedish: Sweden
     • Norwegian: Norway

5. Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Thai, Turkish, and Vietnamese

   • Initial target markets:
     • Arabic: Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates
     • Greek: Cyprus, Greece
     • Hebrew: Israel
     • Thai: Thailand
     • Turkish: Turkey
     • Vietnamese: Vietnam

Price:

International offerings will be made available to all Lynda.com subscribers (monthly, premium, and groups/institutions) without additional fee or cost. Course initiation and completion will be key metrics in the short term, as well as conversions via marketing channels in identified target markets (above).

Place:

Lynda.com international will be available on Lynda.com and mobile applications. iOS and Android applications will be updated via their respective app stores.

Promotions:

• Landing pages:
  1. Identify target market SEO opportunities and ad campaigns to drive traffic to landing pages on Lynda.com to educate potential subscribers about how to activate and isolate internationalized content.
  2. Log ins from targeted countries can introduce language for returning users about how to activate internationalized content or enable subtitles in the end user's language.
• Email campaigns:
  1. Target update email newsletters to current subscribers with callouts to demonstrate changing language preferences.
• Social media:
  1. Announce internationalized options via LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.
  2. Announce internationalization efforts in Facebook pages and forums in the target language.
  3. Encourage internationalized course authors to announce on their social media channels.
  4. Identify bloggers in target marketers, particular those who write about self-education, lifehacks, and specific technologies from the courses. Sponsor guest posts and invite guest bloggers who are not subscribers to try out the internationalized service for key early adopter feedback.
• Ad campaigns:
  1. A/B Test marketing ad campaigns across target markets via DoubleClick, AdWords, and other banner, bug, and text advertising channels.

Messaging

Market Target

This product is targeted at new and existing users at all levels, whose prefered language is not English.

Messaging for Key Personas

1. Lara, 22, administrative assistant, lives in São Paulo, Brazil. She studied English in school, but would prefer content in Portuguese. User Goal: Learn video production so she can post her videos in YouTube. She would prefer content in Portuguese, her native language.
   • Key Persona Messaging: "You can make beautiful videos and share them with your friends and the entire world! Learn how: [LINK: Lynda.com in Portuguese]"
2. Estelle, 39, travel agent and aspiring singer-songwriter, lives in Nantes, France. She doesn't speak English very well and would be grateful for courses in, or subtitled in, French. User Goal: Learn audio production and recording techniques, so she can finish her album herself and embark on her music career. She would prefer content in French, her native language.
   • Key Persona Messaging: "Make and share your music today. Learn how: [LINK: Lynda.com in French]"
3. Alberto, 20, computer science student at the University of Trieste in Italy. While there are many good Rails courses in English, most of them are not subtitled in Italian. User Goal: Learn Ruby on Rails for a school project. He would prefer content in Italian, his native language.
   • Key Persona Messaging: "Learn to build web applications! [LINK: Lynda.com in Italian]"
4. Wen, 32, software engineer at a large corporation in Taipei. User Goal: Learn functional programming for his job as a software engineer. He would prefer content in Mandarin, his native language.
   • Key Persona Messaging: "Learn to develop software or pick up another programming language. [LINK: Lynda.com in Chinese]"

GTM Planning

Pre-Launch

1. Internal:
   • Make sure customer support is in place and available to answer questions in target languages (or a vendor is ready).
   • Beta test course offering subtitles with native or fluent speakers internally.
   • Communications with internal stakeholders:
     1. Finance: Ensure infrastructure is in place to accept currencies from customers in emerging markets. Check with finance about price adjustments, discounts, and partners for foreign markets.
     2. Support: Communicate with vendors to make sure they're ready to support the influx of non-English speaking users. Make sure we have help documentation in place for all of our target languages.
   • Release plan:
     1. Incremental release to increasing audiences: For each language, allow any users on launch day who change their settings to prefer their language to switch.
     2. Introduce local language messaging to portions of the audience: With increasing percentages of target market users, introduce modal popup messaging to introduce the future.
   • External relationships:
     1. Universities and companies: Communicate critical subtitled content introduction to major university and company partners.
     2. Support vendors: Ensure customer support vendors for target languages understand expectations.
     3. Marketing vendors: Work with marketing companies to get the word out in foreign markets, recommend landing pages, and coordinate resellers.

Launch

• Launch press release, coordinated with marketing campaign and engineering release.
• Begin working with marketing on alternate campaigns to drive more traffic and conversions.
• Announce new features on LinkedIn, Twitter, TechCrunch, and Facebook. Consult with marketing about announcement opportunities in target language markets.
• Initiate conversations with content producers about initiating courses produced entirely in some of the target languages on a small scale, to test adoption.

Post-Launch

• Inbound marketing:
  1. Direct new users through an onboarding process that helps set their language in the onboarding flow.
  2. Show existing users courses with new subtitles available in their language.
• Outbound marketing:
  1. Landing pages from search engine or online ad (Facebook, LinkedIn, other sources) directs new users through an onboarding process that lets them know about new foreign language subtitling options.
  2. Landing pages that inform users about exciting new courses subtitled in their language, or targeted for their country or language.