International growth — how do you effectively and efficiently scale up marketing from domestic markets into a successful international growth story? There’s no simple answer to this question, but a framework for scaling international growth marketing can be defined. By following these marketing development guidelines step-by-step, you can ensure your marketing aligns with your business growth goals and strategy, supporting your international expansion as effectively as possible.
Define scalable processes in your domestic market
Don’t venture into new markets trying to learn new processes; that’s a waste of resources. By building scalable marketing processes in your familiar domestic market, you can effectively implement them in any market, even with a tight schedule. A tactical marketing plan, a marketing and sales funnel, and a roadmap for execution are valuable tools for defining a scalable marketing process.
This doesn’t mean, however, that all markets will perform well using the same channel and tactic combinations. For example, your target audience may use entirely different platforms in other markets. However, by defining the cross-channel testing logic in the tactical plan, you only need to identify the most suitable channels and tactics for the specific target audience at each phase of the marketing funnel when entering a new market.
How to choose target markets?
Choosing the right target market is crucial because no amount of marketing will help if there simply isn’t demand for your product or service. Selecting a target market should be treated as a strategic decision, not one made lightly. It’s often not practical (or necessary) for a growing company to invest tens of thousands in surveys and consultants. Instead, potential can be tested more agilely, for example, with a marketing test.
A structured marketing test helps you determine the interest of a target audience and identify the most effective messages across different markets and audiences. Compared to traditional market research, it provides far more cost-efficient results and, in addition to market insights, may even generate leads or an interested audience from the target market.
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Don’t forget strategy
No marketing effort, including international growth marketing, should be done without a clear strategy and business goals. Therefore, your strategy must be solid, and marketing must follow it closely, even when expanding internationally. Strategies can vary significantly between new target markets. For instance, while you may be the only player in your industry domestically, competition could be much fiercer in other markets, or a well-established industry at home may be entirely unknown elsewhere.
One of the most important aspects is aligning sales and marketing strategies and ensuring their practical implementation. It’s doomed to fail if either of these isn’t functioning well. Ensure your sales process is capable of closing the deals before expecting leads from your marketing efforts.
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Tactical choices
Your tactical decisions should be based on the plan, not guesses. For example, if a tactical decision for the initial touchpoint of your marketing funnel is “targeted social media marketing,” it’s wise to conduct small-scale audience testing across different platforms. While you can likely use familiar platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn in many markets, other markets might require considering alternatives like XING in Germany or WeChat in China.
Your tactical plan must be diverse enough to cover all customer lifecycle stages but simple enough for efficient implementation in new markets. Alongside the tactical plan, you should also have a roadmap for execution, which outlines the chronological stages for putting the marketing activities into action. Agile execution and learning by doing are often more valuable than a meticulously planned, complex tactical marketing strategy with an “all-in” launch.
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Understand your target audience and the first touchpoint
Remember that targeting factors, languages, and other variables may differ significantly even if you use the same channel and audience profile as in your domestic market. You can’t just copy the successful audience from one market to another. It’s crucial to test the most appropriate targeting methods for each new market. Start broad and narrow it down based on what you learn.
Beyond just reaching your target audience, it’s important to figure out what messaging and arguments resonate most in that specific market. Do your target customers respond better to benefits or features? This can heavily influence the development of your business strategy in that market. However, make sure to plan your tests carefully, and don’t draw conclusions without statistical significance to avoid making misleading decisions.
Tactical tip: In a new market, you will naturally start from zero when it comes to awareness. A proven tactic in many cases is to use video marketing, as moving images tend to capture attention more effectively than static ads. Videos also provide a shortcut to better targeting, as many platforms allow you to create retargeting or lookalike audiences based on those who watched your video to the end, indicating initial interest.
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Learn about the market through data
Which marketing channels work best in the market? What content resonates? Does English work well, or do you need to advertise in the native language? Is the market more desktop- or mobile-driven, or should you focus on app ads on Android or iOS? You can make educated guesses, but the best way is to test these variables in relation to your business.
Some insights can be directly scaled between markets, but it’s wise to include key factors in your tactical plan for market-specific testing. A few extra rounds of testing to confirm something is much better than wasting an entire market and the investments made due to a wrong assumption.
Sales and marketing process alignment
As noted earlier in the strategic planning section, both marketing and sales need to be aligned for the desired outcomes. It’s crucial to clearly define roles and responsibilities between these two functions, especially if using external partners. Sales and marketing must sit at the same table and have an ongoing dialogue about target audience accuracy, lead quality, and performance. This way, challenges can be addressed as soon as they arise, and adjustments can be made swiftly.
Predefine the customer journey, including marketing and sales touchpoints. What counts as a lead, and when does sales take over? How does this process reflect in your marketing activities and systems? Defining a lead may seem trivial, but it’s crucial – for some, a lead might only be an inbound request for a quote, while for others, it could mean anyone who downloads a guide or brochure. There can be significant differences internationally, so it’s better to play it safe.
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From testing to continuous learning
When the market test concludes, and its business potential is confirmed, how do you “stay” in the market? You’ll need to consider how to continue marketing activities after the initial intensive launch. By leveraging lessons from the test and previous markets, you can likely make ongoing efforts more cost-effective using automation, behavior-based audiences, and machine learning.
A knowledgeable marketing partner or team should consider not only the costs of the initial market test but also how to sustain efforts as part of continuous activity. This gives company management a clear overall picture and helps evaluate the test results in terms of profitability once the ongoing marketing resource needs are known.
Take lessons to the next market
The core of scalability is in structured processes that can be adapted based on what’s learned. If the same results repeat across several markets, you may be able to skip the testing phase or replace it with a more relevant focus. For example, if a particular product or service feature consistently draws interest across markets, it makes sense to emphasize that from the start in new markets.
Be careful not to make too many unverified assumptions, but also be ready to implement the conclusions you’ve drawn. Decisions based on credible data with statistical significance will lead to sound business decisions.