How to expand your eCommerce brand internationally?
More and more brands want to expand their business to new markets, but most of them fail.
Normally it’s because of one of the reasons below:
- Just guessing where to go next without any proper research or testing
- Treating a new market as an existing market
- Lack of localization
- Lack of social proof and credibility
- Unrealistic expectations
- Unknown local eCommerce specifics
- Poor budget predictions
That’s why I prepared this article about:
International market expansion for ECOM brands 🌍
In this week’s edition of my blog, you will learn the following:
🧠 Fundamentals of localization
🧠 How to choose the market
🧠 4 stages of growth in a new market
🧠 Goals, key results, and tactics for each of these stages
🧠 Proven framework how to do it in practice
Those of you who know me well know that I used to be known as Mr. GLOCAL 😎 Hehe
Going global with a localized approach.
This has been my mindset since day one.
I also wrote a knowledge bomb article on what it takes to successfully localize your ECOM brand and expand to a new market.
Localizing and Scaling up eCommerce in Europe
A Brief Guide to Success by Jure Knehtl
You can find it here: https://jureknehtl.com/blog/localizing-and-scaling-up-ecommerce-in-europe/
In the article, you will learn about:
✅ Choosing the market
✅ Doing the research
✅ Preparing the ground for entering the market
✅ Running test
✅ Doing the marketing the right way
Now, I want to share with you my practical, proven framework for:
ECOM BRAND new market launch strategy
We will start by defining the
4 Growth stages
- Waiting list
- Launch to PMF
- Growth
- Scale & Expansion
Let’s break down these stages
#1 Waiting list
GOALS 🎯
- Build an email list of people interested in the products
- Build an audience for retargeting and re-engagement
TACTICS 💪
- Landing page
- Klaviyo list and automation
- Meta ads
WHAT WILL BE DONE 🫡
We will set up a landing page based on the inspiration, build up the flow in Klaviyo, and set up FB & IG profiles with the new ad account.
The projected budget is 3,000 € (TBD). We begin advertising on __. __. ____.
We will test messaging, newly produced creatives, angles, and targetings with ads. Retargeting will be activated a few days before the launch.
KEY RESULTS 🏆
- +35% LP conversion rate
- Get 1,500 people on the waiting list
- Convert 100 of them to customers
#2 Launch to PMF
GOALS 🎯
- Benchmarks for performance metrics
- Profitable acquisitions
- Understanding ads creative’s winners
- Understanding the sales trends (products, sizes, colors, bundles)
- Gather feedbacks
TACTICS 💪
In this stage, the focus is getting traction and generating profitable results.
Planned channel structure:
- Meta ads (90-95%)= main focus of marketing investment
- Google (5-10%) = Branded + YouTube (RTG)
- Email = Main flows (TBD)
WHAT WILL BE DONE 🫡
When we launch, we will email the VIP waiting list + set up dedicated Meta ads for this list with a secret -15% OFF promo code.
Next to this, we will start pushing paid ads with Meta, with the following structure
- 70% TOF campaigns that will push acquisition
- 20% Retargeting and re-engagement campaigns
- 10% Engagement and video view campaigns to build brand
Google ads and main email flows will be set up on day one.
Ads will be segmented based on the marketing angles we are going after:
- Angle #1
- Angle #2
- …
*combination of creative and ads
The main focus of the Meta TOF conversion campaigns will be scripted videos.
Retargeting > Objection killers, social proofs, main benefits & offer with bundles
Engagement & Video view optimization on Meta + YouTube > Branding purposes
One of the significant factors of success at the beginning will be creatives. That’s why we will use:
- Lifestyle and studio content
- Influencer content for TOF (+ passion page?)
- UGC content (Influee)
We will set up a creative testing framework that will lead to scaling based on the results achieved with the naming structure, analysis & flow of testing (BIG first)
*Additional retargeting tactics*
Catalog sales, Instant experience, buy more and save more (bundles), Passion page, reviews from customers, UGC content + linking on best-selling products
Daily, we will track blended performance on the brand level.
Weekly, we will follow JK’s Inspo sheet template (create a copy and adjust ti to your needs) to gather new ideas.
Email flows:
- Welcome Flow
- Abandoned cart
- Post-purchase
- + Anything else ??
One of the key metrics we will follow is AOV, and we will be proactively making changes on a daily/weekly basis to improve it, like promoting different hero products, link testing, offers for RTG audiences, upsells & cross-sells.
We will implement Microsoft Clarity and surveys on the website to understand the customer’s behavior better and optimize it.
*Survey tool (Formtoro, Typeform, Hotjar etc.) – to get insights from visitors.
KEY RESULTS 🏆
- Daily orders
- Cost of acquisition (% CPA = Marketing investment/(Revenue – VAT))
- Projected profitability
👋 If you are an ECOM brand that is stuck or you want to scale beyond 7 and 8 figures,
book a call with me to see if we fit.
We are not done.
Let’s learn about the last 2 stages.
#3 Growth
GOALS 🎯
- Scale acquisition
- Build retention
TACTICS 💪
- Email marketing newsletters
- Upgraded post-purchase flows & experience
- Meta upgrades
- Influencer marketing
- Google upgrade?
WHAT WILL BE DONE 🫡
After achieving the PMF ✅, it is time for profitable growth 📈On the acquisition side, we will do:
- META – dark posting, dedicated landing pages, faster & better creative testing, ASC+ hard pushes, BIG sale
- INFLUENCERS – Work with local Influencers, using story sets with promo codes to start building an additional acquisition channel
- YOUTUBE – PMAX, potentially more video advertising
Retention: Start sending regular newsletters + upgrading post-purchase
Community: Start regularly posting on the main SM channels.
KEY RESULTS 🏆
- % of returning customers
- NC-CPA %
- Blended profitability
#4 Scale & Expansion
GOALS 🎯
- SCALE AF
- Become a market leader
- Expand the brand to a new market(s)
TACTICS 💪
- Open new markets
- Optimized processes
- New tools?
- Brand’s content creators group
- Launch new products?
- Ambassador program
WHAT WILL BE DONE 🫡
EXISTING MARKET
When we reach stage #4, we are ready 2 SCALE 🚀
Understanding what works best for us, the main focus is to get better at things that work on the acquisition and retention side, optimize it, and automate what is possible.
To get us from A brand to THE brand on the market.
What we believe will make a difference:
- Become even more local
- Upgrade existing channels
- Optimizing processes and adding tools
- Following the RIGHT metrics
- Get better at creatives
- Optimize AOV, CAC, CR and LTV
- Organic social media community push
- (?) Adding new channels to the mix
- Launching new products and ambassador’s program
- Setting up a marketing calendar for themed campaigns
ADDITIONAL MARKET(S)
By proving traction in the existing market, it’s to expand.
In the new market, we will revisit this strategy from stage #1, starting with the waiting list for the launch.
The projected markets that we can potentially expand to are (list countries here). We will upgrade our go–to–market strategy based on what we have learned from our core market.
Potentially, we might add an ENG website for 🇪🇺 later in 2024 to use it to test additional markets.
We will have an MVP approach that enables us to test the market with a 5-15K € budget with the best-performing tactics on the acquisition side to get early traction ASAP.
As scheduled for the core market, we plan to open the market with a Meta-first approach in the #2 Stage.
KEY RESULTS 🏆
- % Profitability
- New vs. returning customers
- LTV 90 days
- MoM growth & seasonality
- Channel split
READY? SET! LET’S SCALE 🚀
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And that’s a wrap for today’s ECOM growth community!
If you are interested in working together, submit this form.
Talk soon and as always …
Happy scaling! 🚀
BESTS,
Jure (JK) Knehtl
Founder @ JK GROWTH