Hey, ECOM growth community!

I hope May has been going well for you and you are already preparing for the summer.

Do you know what the best DTC brands do during the summer?

Turn off the ads or lower the budgets until September? Big NO.

They:

1) Launch new seasonable products

2) Develop new travel or vacation bundles

3) Test new seasonable angles (example: traveling hacks)

4) Run limited-time offers, like Christmas in July, Summer sale

5) Focus on acquiring new customers to whom they can sell aggressively during the Q4

Usually, these brands aim for lower overall KPI metrics, as they focus mainly on acquisition during the summer months.

So their focus is to:

💪 Expand the product portfolio with limited seasonable products

💪 Sell to new customers so they can grow their customer database for Q4 profitable scaling

What is your plan? 🏝️

Let’s move to the topic of the week.

Actually, I want to share a practical example with you.

It’s connected to the email I got from my 🇸🇮 ECOM friend in late April.

I will talk about:

How can poor performance in a new market be avoided? 🛫

So let’s start with the email. 📨

I checked my email after my 3-hour deep work session and it went something like this:

Subject: JK, we need your help 🚨

Text:

“Hey Jure,

it has been a while since we last saw each other at the ECOM event. Our conversation was super valuable as you provided us with some awesome tips on how to grow our ECOM sales in Slovenia.

We hit 70K monthly revenue for the first time last month 🏆

Thanks!

In March, we also tried to open up the Czech Republic, but somehow it didn’t work.

Could you check it out and let me know what you think is the problem and what you would do?

I hope you will be able to give it a look as we see the potential but don’t know what to change 😰😰😰

Really appreciate it, man!

All the best!

Tilen P.”

So, let’s check out the behind-the-scenes. He agreed that I could share the learnings with my community if they would be valuable to someone.

He added me to his Shopify, Klaviyo, Google, and Meta accounts so I could review the data.

And here are the takeaways:

ABOUT 🤓

> After two years of being in the Slovenian market, they decided to expand to Czechia with Meta ads

As Meta ads were the main driver of the results on the Slovenian market, they rely on that channel to find new customers in the new market – Logic move ✅

> They invested 5K € into Meta ads in the first month and 10K € in the second month

They had the budget ready for the international expansion, 15K € for 2 months – Great ✅

But it’s essential to have in mind not to spend no matter what, but the goal is to see week-over-week improvement on the main KPIs, like:

a) Conversion rate

b) Add-to-cart rate

c) Cost of acquiring a customer

You will see what I mean when we check the results section.

> They localized their best-performing ads with voiceovers they got from the translation agency and used a localized landing page

It could be part of the strategy, but not the whole, as in the Slovenian market, they are already known, and in the new market, it often happens that

So take the learnings but don’t rely 100% on them; let them be just one of the potential directions that could work.

PAST RESULTS 📊

Target KPI for entering the market :

💸 CAC: 20 €

💸 Net ROAS: 2.5

💸 Profitability: 7-10%

Results in the first two months:

😬 15K € investment

😬 CAC 55 €

😬 ROAS 1

😬 Losing A LOT of money

Here I ALWAYS want to understand, if it is a website problem or ads problem (or both).

So let’s see them:

Website metrics 🖥️

Conversion rate 2,5% – Solid ✔️

ATC rate: 10% – Solid ✔️

AOV: 55 € – Solid ✔️

Time on site: 1 min 30 sec – Solid ✔️

Meta ads metrics 🎯

CTR 0.57% – Poor ✖️

Cost per outbound click 1,3 € – Poor ✖️

CPM 17 € – Poor ✖️(for the CZ market, advertising the home & garden niche)

Hook rate 12% – Poor ✖️

Hold rate 3% – Poor ✖️

What is it then? It’s an advertising problem, for sure.

PROBLEMS 👻

So what were their main problems, you ask?

Let’s list them here:

> They tested only twelve videos, nothing else

> One of them got some traction, but they didn’t scale it

> They invested < 5% of their total budget on retargeting and re-engagement ads

> They tested everything with a super narrow down audience and with only Facebook feed placement

> They had AI voiceovers that didn’t resonate with the target audience

> Captions were missing from all the videos

> Only long-form copy was used

Besides the Meta ads, some things popped up during my audit:

> They didn’t collect email leads

> Missing email flows for the welcome, abandoned cart, and post-purchase

> They didn’t have Google ads running

> Surveys were missing

> No behavior tracking tool like Hotjar or Clarity

> No landing pages were tested; everything was linked to the home page or the product page

> They had no idea what bothered the potential buyers before buying

> They should make bigger changes earlier and not spend the whole budget as they didn’t see the week-over-week improvements

POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS 🛠️

We had a bit of a hard conversation with Tilen when we had a video call three days later, as he was too passive, and I saw so much potential to improve results.

Nothing personal, just my performance marketer DNA hehe

In summary:

“Make better ads that will convert.”

– Easier said than done, right? 🤣

Let’s break it down what I suggested:

+ Start testing 10-15 creatives per week

+ Test formats with videos, photos, and gifs

+ Prioritize testing new angles and hooks

+ Set up retargeting campaigns

+ Set up audience testing campaign

+ Set up scaling campaigns (6-10 active ads)

+ Implement surveys on the website

+ Set up Google ads (at least for branded search)

+ Build email flows and pop-ups to collect leads

+ Copy testing

+ Get content from 5 local content creators

+ Set up daily and weekly reports in Sheets to check the progress

+ Ask existing customers for feedback and reviews

+ Create an inspirational list of local brands to collect creative ideas

+ Build an acquisition-based landing page, like five reasons why listicle

WHAT THEY PRIORITIZED 🏃

Within the first week, they:

+ Start testing 10-15 creatives per week

+ Test formats with videos, photos, and gifs

+ Set up retargeting campaigns

+ Set up audience testing campaign

+ Set up scaling campaigns (6-10 active ads)

+ Set up Google ads

+ Build email flows and pop-ups to collect leads

MAY RESULTS 😎

This is an update on the results I got from him yesterday.

Results from 1st to 27th of May:

🏆 12K € investment

🏆 CAC 22 €

🏆 ROAS 2.35

🏆 5% profitability

On the right track, I believe!

🙏🙏 Keep growing, my ECOM friend Tilen, and I hope you, my valuable member of my ECOM growth community, also got some value out of this breakdown as a reader.

Does some of these resonate?

Please let me know if you have any questions regarding this case or your market expansion.

________

And that’s a wrap for today’s ECOM growth community! 

If you have any questions or you want to break some of this further, DM me on LinkedIn

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Talk soon and as always …

Happy scaling! 🚀

BESTS,

Jure (JK) Knehtl

Founder @ JK GROWTH