Samenvatting

This research report is created for Innofest. Innofest has indicated to experience a difficulty in convincing innovative SMEs to test their product with Innofest, though they believe to have a considerable amount of reach. Based on the problem presented by Innofest the selected goal of the research is: to provide recommendations on how the external communication can be improved in order to convince innovative SMEs based in the North of the Netherlands to test their product with Innofest by finding out what kind of channels they use, what kind of content is the most effective and how to eventually convince them, by undertaking in-depth interviews with potential and current cooperation partners and by using theories on thought leadership, customer value proposition, the Channel Expansion Theory and the AIDA model.
The main research question is: what has to be changed in the external communication in order to convince innovative SMEs based in the North of the Netherlands to test with Innofest? The preliminary research showed that face-to-face communication was a lot more effective in convincing innovative SMEs than online communication channels. Which led to the hypothesis that Innofest should focus more on offline communication.