You’re 20 years old. You’re invited to a party. You don’t know anyone except the person that invited you. A tough social scenario for even the most outgoing of people.
Or…
You’re 20 years old. You’re invited to a party put on by your group/team/social circle. You know a few people quite well and have plenty in common with others. You’re making friends, thriving and living your best life.
That’s how it feels entering a new international market cold, versus entering one you’ve warmed up. A warmed-up market where you have already created demand and awareness is going to be a productive one.
But the road to international expansion has many hazards. And trust us – we’ve made our share of mistakes.
In this blog, we’ll share tips and stories about our mistakes from our journey expanding into Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (DACH) and how we applied those lessons to our expansion into France.
So stick around to find out why:
Before we dive into a new region, we prioritise "warming up the market." This means creating brand awareness and generating demand before committing fully to placing sales teams. Warming up a market is a marketer’s game.
Here are a few tactics we’ve found success with:
All of these ensure that when we set up a sales presence in a country, our reps will have plenty of demand to convert into pipeline and revenue.
But there’s another benefit too.
This cautious, low-capital-intensive approach serves as a risk management strategy. It allows us to suss out the market’s dynamics and give us data about potential demand. Creating a website and SEO strategy is pretty cheap and easy to do, but provides us with great data about demand and product messaging.
With leading indicators flashing green, we can start to ramp up more capital-intensive activities like a full demand generation motion (events, SME partnerships) and sales.
But, what was it exactly that went wrong in DACH?
DACH was the first region we targeted for international expansion, and it went, well…okay.
We thought we could just copy our UK playbook and roll it out in DACH. Suffice to say, that didn’t happen. What worked perfectly in the UK was a little tricker in DACH.
From stricter regulations to entirely different buyer behaviour, we quickly learned that we’d made strategic errors and needed to regroup.
We now know we could have learned a lot of this country’s differences much faster (and much cheaper) if we had started with some marketing spend before fully entering the market.
Some of the mistakes we made early doors include…
We were also mid-way into our transition from lead gen to demand gen. That meant we stuck with what we knew and tried to establish a lead gen strategy, missing out on the better performance that demand gen offers.
But learning from failure is perhaps the #1 business mantra of the century so far, so that’s exactly what we did.
Here are the key lessons we learned from moving into DACH too quickly, without proper warm up marketing:
In the UK, cold emails with an opt-out option are common, but in DACH, stricter double opt-in requirements make this approach far less effective.
We had to quickly rethink our tactics and adjust to the local regulations.
While our UK strategies were built around both marketing and sales personas, we found that our product was much better suited for sales teams in DACH.
Our ICP in DACH was entirely different to in the UK. Without making this adjustment early on, we wasted valuable time targeting the wrong audience.
Our initial missteps highlighted the importance of understanding a market’s unique dynamics before diving in.
Skipping detailed research led us to pursue leads that weren’t a good fit for our product. It’s all about doing the background research, spending time checking that your product is going to land and reviewing and testing all the messaging and positioning for your campaigns.
You can’t just translate an eBook or campaign created for one region into another language and expect it to work. It might contain content that’s very specific to a region and assumes a lot of cultural context.
For example, one of our cold calling eBooks that was popular among our UK audience isn’t relatable in DACH - they don’t engage with it.
After reflecting on our experience in DACH, we took a different and more strategic approach when expanding into France.
Instead of jumping straight into building a sales team, we focused on pre-entry marketing to ensure a smoother entry. Here’s what we did differently in France:
Rather than jump in with building sales headcount as per DACH, we took a marketing-first approach to entering France.
We built brand awareness first by rolling out a localised SEO strategy.
We did our keyword research and translated some BOFU and SEO blogs to French. (These blogs were unlikely to fall foul of culture differences.)
We translated our website and marketing materials into French from the outset.
This allowed us to connect more authentically with the local audience and establish credibility early on.
By focusing on marketing first, we were able to gather key insights and data about the French market, ensuring that we had a solid understanding of the audience before placing a sales team.
Before we began hiring French sales staff in earnest, we made a few bilingual sales hires in the UK to handle early low levels of demand.
Liam explained this approach:
“Rather than thinking we need X number of AEs to close this amount of business, our thinking was more like, let’s generate that business first and build headcount when the existing sales structure reaches capacity.”
By the time we established a local sales presence, we had already built up a pipeline of organic inbound interest, validating that there was strong demand for our product.
This gave our sales team a huge advantage, as they were entering a market that was already primed for success.
By taking this more measured approach, we avoided many of the challenges we faced in DACH and ensured a much smoother, more efficient expansion into France.
One of the biggest differences between our initial efforts in DACH and our more conservative approach in France was how we managed our marketing budget.
In DACH, we took our product to market immediately, hired regional leaders and found our product-market fit was horrible. From there, we were playing catch-up, and our spend efficiency was poor.
In France, we focused on efficiency from the word go.
Liam said:
“We started small with our marketing spend and scaled gradually. We allowed the market to guide our investment and scaled our spending based on results.”
By testing different campaigns, messaging and channels, we could see what worked best and invest in those areas. This not only reduced our overall risk but also allowed us to be more strategic about where we allocated resources.
Our key indicator was high-intent demo requests. We used this to gauge the effectiveness of our pre-entry marketing efforts.
Once we understood what was driving demand, we increased our investment in the channels that were performing best.
This approach ensured that we maintained a healthy cost-per-lead (CPL) and maximised the return on our marketing spend.
Feedback from local teams has also been invaluable. By working closely with regional leaders, we’re able to get on-the-ground insights into what’s resonating with our audience and what needs to be improved.
This collaboration between our central marketing team and our regional teams ensures that we’re always optimising our approach.
This strategy allowed us to achieve significant pipeline growth in France within just a few months. In fact, we generated 3.5x the pipeline in France in the first four months of launching.
By the time we began hiring local sales reps, we had already built up a steady stream of leads and inbound requests.
Liam added:
“We hit 135% of our pipeline target and 120% of revenue in the first half of 2024 for both DACH and France combined.”
We found an unexpected, intangible benefit from building slowly and starting sales as the final element: morale.
Setting sales teams to work in a territory where we have already created demand instantly creates a completely different feeling.
Liam explained the team’s dynamic:
“If you’re a new sales rep and there’s a) a ton of demand and b) people know your product and c) you’ve got inbound coming in, you’re going to be a lot more motivated than going into a region where no one knows who you are and everything is pinned on you being able to deliver.”
“So in France, there was a completely different feeling, not just revenue-wise, which was much better, but within the team, too.”
The ultimate goal for us was to establish a self-sustaining, independent demand generation engine in our new territories.
And to achieve that, we needed to build a localised media machine that could meet our needs for demand-generating content.
You can sometimes draw inspiration and content from your home region, but you should consider what assets you can build specifically for that region and for the channels through which you’re going to market in that region.
Rather than relying solely on translated materials from the UK, we invest in building content for each region.
In France, we launched a podcast and live webinar series in French, featuring French SMEs and sales influencers. You can’t rely on French and German speakers to turn up in numbers to an English-language webinar.
They want their own live events in their language with industry figures that they know and follow. That’s how you get people engaging with your brand and building a community.
We have a strong strategy around live events in the UK and use them as a lynchpin for other bits of content marketing.
It really depends on getting a good SME on those live events and producing other assets like podcasts or written SME pieces. It facilitates the build-up of trust that a demand generation motion requires. And this strategy translates really well to other markets, there’s a universality to it.
While we could run things from afar initially, the goal was always to set up a French office.
In France, we now employ two full-time marketing staff—a demand gen manager and an SEO and content manager—based in Paris. We run a full paid ads programme, whose budget has tripled since launch. We also have a team of three account executives and a team of SDRs.
The whole operation has scaled and we have a content engine that runs independently in France between the podcast, live shows and campaigns we’ve created.
Liam described the demand generation engine:
“It has become its own beast that runs separately but remains connected to the UK. It’s not like we’re feeding it content constantly from the core region, we’re allowing it to diversify and satisfy the needs of that market.”
Throughout our expansions into new regions, one of the most important lessons we’ve learned is the need to remain flexible. No two markets are exactly the same, and what works in one region may not work in another.
That’s why we approach each new region with a mindset of testing and adaptation.
For example, in DACH, we quickly realised that cold calling wasn’t as effective as it was in the UK. In France, we discovered that our success with SEO far outpaced our paid ads, which was the opposite of what we had experienced in other regions.
Liam said:
“We never assume that a strategy that worked elsewhere will work again.”
Instead, we take the time to understand each region’s unique dynamics and adjust our approach accordingly.
By adopting this flexible approach, we ensure that we’re not just replicating old strategies but creating customised solutions that fit each market’s needs.
At Cognism, our journey into European markets has been one of learning, adapting, and refining our strategies. We’ve seen firsthand the importance of laying the groundwork through pre-entry marketing. By creating demand, building brand awareness, and partnering with local experts, we’ve entered new regions with greater confidence and efficiency.
Our experience in DACH taught us the dangers of moving too fast, while our success in France showed the power of a more deliberate, marketing-first approach.
For any business looking to grow into new regions, the message is clear: don’t rush the process. Take the time to warm up the market, test your strategies, and build demand before placing boots on the ground.
The result? A smoother, more successful expansion journey with fewer bumps along the way.