Expanding your B2B business into new markets offers tremendous growth opportunities, but it requires far more than translating your website and replicating your existing playbook.
At Cognism, we’ve learned through direct experience that each international market demands its own tailored approach.
As Alice de Courcy, CMO at Cognism, reflects in her diary:
“I wish expanding internationally were as simple as applying the same strategies we use in existing markets to new regions. Unfortunately, that’s rarely the case. There are too many variables involved. Each expansion requires its own tailored business strategy.”
“Even then, you have to be prepared to adjust your approach as you discover what does and doesn’t work in a new market.”
Our expansions into DACH and France provided valuable lessons in adapting to different business cultures, regulatory environments, and buyer expectations.
This guide shares practical insights from our journey to help you navigate global marketing more effectively. 👇
Global marketing involves promoting and selling your products or services across multiple worldwide markets. It also involves maintaining a unified brand image while making some local market adaptations.
It requires understanding regional preferences in buyer behaviour, communication styles, and regulatory frameworks.
For B2B companies, this often means tailoring your:
Moving beyond your domestic market dramatically increases your potential customer base.
When Cognism expanded into European territories like DACH and France, we tapped into Europe’s largest economy (Germany) and France’s thriving tech scene.
This significantly expanded our addressable market.
Operating across multiple regions creates more stable, predictable revenue patterns. When one market experiences economic challenges, others can offset potential losses.
This diversification becomes particularly valuable during times of economic uncertainty.
Global experience gives you insights and capabilities that domestic-only competitors lack.
We found that our experience in European markets like DACH strengthened our marketing messages even in our home territory, as we could speak to cross-border challenges that our competitors couldn’t.
As your business grows internationally, you can achieve greater efficiencies in product development, marketing, and operations.
At Cognism, we’ve used core brand values and content assets across regions with smart localisation, improving our ROI on content investments.
International expansion exposes your company to diverse perspectives.
Our teams in DACH and France have brought valuable insights that have influenced our strategy and product development.
Before committing resources to a new region, invest time in understanding its unique characteristics:
When considering expansion into France, we ran small-scale tests with targeted ad spending to gauge interest before making significant investments.
We only committed to the move once we reached specific benchmarks for opportunities from this initial spend.
Look for organic signals of interest from your target region.
At Cognism, we noticed an increasing number of website visitors and inbound inquiries from German companies. This influenced our decision to pursue DACH expansion.
Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and value proposition will likely need adjustments for different markets:
In DACH, we discovered that our approach to email marketing data wasn’t viable due to stricter double opt-in requirements.
This meant we needed to focus primarily on our phone data and sales intelligence capabilities instead of email marketing tools.
Create market-specific buyer personas that account for regional differences in job titles, responsibilities, and buying behaviour.
There are several approaches to entering a new market, each with advantages depending on your business model and resources:
In our DACH expansion, we took a sales-led approach, hiring DACH SDRs before establishing our marketing presence.
For France, we flipped this strategy, focusing first on building brand awareness and organic demand through content and SEO. Then, once we’d gained some traction, we grew our French sales headcount.
The results were telling. As Alice said in her diary:
“We managed to get up and running in France in half the time it took us to get there in DACH.”
What was the benefit of this marketing-first approach?
It allowed us to validate demand and refine our messaging before investing in sales resources. This resulted in stronger pipeline generation from the start.
Start small with controlled experiments before making significant investments. This allows you to test assumptions and adapt your approach based on real market feedback.
Content powers your global marketing engine, but it needs to be tailored for each foreign market.
When expanding into France, we initially took our best-performing UK content and adapted it to the French market, adding insights from local experts to increase relevance.
As we established ourselves, we shifted to creating original French content addressing market-specific concerns.
Alice explained the importance of market-specific keyword research instead of simple translation:
“It wouldn’t make any sense translating content from English into French; the keywords are different in both regions. Instead, we assessed what keywords we did want to rank for and created brand new SEO content to rank for French keywords.”
This approach recognises that keyword volumes and search intent differ significantly across markets, making direct translation ineffective for SEO purposes.
Create a content taxonomy that maps your core topics across regions. Identify which themes require heavy localisation versus those that can be more directly adapted.
While you can begin global expansion with your existing sales and marketing teams, building local expertise is crucial for long-term success:
In DACH, we initially hired a senior leader from a large corporation but found them too removed from day-to-day operations for an early-stage market entry.
When expanding to France, we took a different approach, starting with a content and SEO specialist who could build our visibility and establish our presence before adding sales roles.
Initially, use contractors or agencies to test approaches before committing to full-time hires.
This is especially relevant when recruiting for skills like regional SEO or PR.
Different regions often prefer different sales and marketing channels.
In DACH, we discovered that cold calling is accepted in Germany and Switzerland (with presumed consent), while cold emails require explicit double opt-in.
We also found that the professional network XING is widely used alongside LinkedIn, requiring us to establish a presence on both social media platforms.
In France, traditional channels like cold calling proved more effective than newer communication methods like WhatsApp, which were often viewed as too personal for business practices.
Create a channel matrix for each region. It should map communication preferences by buyer stage, helping your team choose the right engagement approach for your international audiences.
To evaluate effectiveness across markets, establish clear metrics and tracking systems.
We created country-specific dashboards in our CRM and marketing platforms to track performance by region.
This allowed us to set appropriate benchmarks for each market based on maturity and investment levels, rather than directly comparing new markets to established ones.
In her diary, Alice emphasised how critical data is to marketing success:
“I cannot explain how important I view data and reporting. As a CMO, it’s the thing that gives me a map of what I need to do to succeed.”
Establish realistic performance benchmarks for new markets; base them on market maturity rather than expecting similar results to your home market.
Understanding and adhering to local regulations is non-negotiable when expanding globally.
In DACH, we quickly learned that stating “we are GDPR compliant” wasn’t sufficient.
We had to create detailed documentation explaining exactly how we acquired and processed data to satisfy local regulatory expectations.
Build relationships with local legal experts; they can guide you on regulatory nuances specific to your industry and each new target audience.
What works in one culture may be ineffective or even offensive in another. Business communication styles vary dramatically across regions.
In DACH, we discovered that the casual, friendly approach common in American B2B sales calls was often perceived as unprofessional or presumptuous.
Buyers expected formality, especially in initial interactions.
Your core value proposition may not resonate equally across all markets due to different priorities, problems, and competitive landscapes.
In DACH, we found that our email data offering wasn’t viable due to strict double opt-in requirements.
We had to pivot to emphasise our phone data and sales intelligence capabilities instead.
Being unknown in a new market makes customer acquisition more difficult and expensive.
When entering France, we realised our limited brand recognition required a different approach.
We partnered with local experts and invested in building our organic presence before deploying sales resources.
The way businesses make purchasing decisions varies significantly across regions, affecting everything from sales cycles to stakeholder involvement.
In DACH, we discovered that decision-making was more hierarchical, with multiple stakeholders involved in approvals.
Sales cycles were longer, and convincing companies to try new B2B technology required more evidence and validation than in other markets.
Managing operations across multiple time zones and regions creates communication gaps and coordination difficulties.
We discovered that European markets, particularly France and Germany, have distinct working hour norms and holiday schedules that differ dramatically from the UK.
August is virtually a dead month for business in both regions, with most employees taking extended summer holidays. This created challenges in maintaining consistent sales and marketing momentum.
Your existing customer profile may not translate directly to new international markets, requiring a fundamental rethinking of your target customer segments and value proposition.
In the US and UK, our primary targets were sales and marketing professionals. However, in DACH, we found that:
Our expansion into the DACH region revealed important insights about adapting to new markets:
After implementing these changes, our DACH operation transformed from struggling to thriving:
Learning from our DACH experience, we took a different approach when expanding into France:
This strategy proved highly effective:
In her CMO Diary, Alice shared five top tips for successful global marketing:
Global expansion is challenging but rewarding when approached with the right strategy and mindset. By learning from Alice’s successes and mistakes, you can create a global marketing approach that drives sustainable growth.
Want more unique insights into B2B marketing strategy? Then read Alice de Courcy’s Diary of a First-Time CMO 👇