“I’m going to be presenting at Goldenhour, what would be interesting to US marketing leaders?” asked Tim Rath, Founder of YOYABA, the leading revenue marketing agency in DACH, during one of our regular catch-ups.
Little did we know at the time, but this simple question might just have unlocked the next growth levers for both Tim (expanding into the US) + I (tapping into countries we previously struggled to penetrate).
First, some quick numbers
As of writing this, we’re 24 days into this experiment and we’ve already seen the following results:
20x more handraisers (demo requests + sign ups) than the previous period
7x more pipeline than the previous period
2 closed won deals from this cohort
Background
At Loxo, our platform provides recruiters with everything they need to be successful in one place. We are an international company, but unsurprisingly, the majority of our growth has been in the US (which is where we’re based). The US is a great market for us, but certain international markets have an even higher density of our ICP that we've been wanting to dig deeper into. Germany is one of these.
We had historically been targeting Germany, along with a handful of other European countries, with our ads that were also running in the US, but weren’t getting the same results in those countries that we were in the US.
So when Tim asked me that question about a topic that could be interesting to US marketing leaders, I thought to myself that if this is a problem I’m looking to solve, I bet others in similar positions might be as well. And so began the conversation that I’m quite optimistic will positively impact the growth trajectories for both Tim + Loxo.
The problem
One of the reasons I love catching up with Tim is because he’s sharp as a tack and doesn’t pull punches when it comes to talking what does and doesn’t work in marketing.
I explained to Tim that there were a handful of European countries that we were working on expanding into, but that the UK and Ireland were the only ones we were seeing meaningful growth in. So we got into what we were doing (running our US ads to these other countries, but with their own “EMEA” budget) and Tim stopped me after that, trying to hold back a laugh as he said,
“It’s almost common practice that US companies clone their US playbooks for EMEA and for DACH. And it doesn’t work.”
Intuitively, we know this. But as most companies do at some point or another, we like to play ignorant to obvious truths. This truth being that we know if English isn’t the native language for a specific country, that only showing ads in English lessens the impact due to:
Not everyone in other countries speak or are fluent in English
Even if they do speak English, seeing it in their non-native language indicates that this isn’t being localized to them
The experiment
With this, Tim and I decided to help each other out in a win/win way. We would work with Tim’s company to put this hypothesis to the test. What happens if a company that excels in the US wants to expand successfully into other countries, specifically DACH?
One big thing to note: we weren’t starting from scratch here. We already have strong product/market fit, have a dialed-in ICP, and know which messaging lands best with our prospects. Using this, Tim’s team was able to build off of these foundational items to then do what they do best.
Localize the creative strategy
The first + most obvious thing they would do is translate the copy from English to German. But instead of simply handing over our best-performing ads in the US and translating each of those simply because they were the top-performers in the US, they applied the context of their culture.
We have had big success with our recent “Bigfoot” campaign in the US, so a handful of the ads that we shared with them had Bigfoot in them or references to that mythical creature.
In Germany, Bigfoot isn’t really a thing. And the team wasn’t scared to tell us that, so even though it did well in the US, it’s not relevant in Germany, so we took their recommendation and pulled it from the potential ads.
Follow through on the experience
It’s not enough to write the ads in German. What happens if they click on it? Are they sent to a landing page in English? (talk about a broken experience…)
So we worked with them to build out a localized landing page that matched the campaign. Written in German, speaking to the German buyer, addressing the common thoughts/questions/concerns that a German buyer would have.
This wasn’t a crazy complex landing page either, but was something that allowed the prospect’s journey to continue in a way that flowed well.
Constrained execution
Lastly, to understand if this campaign would make a statistically significant impact to our efforts, we needed to put guardrails around it. Here are the criteria we did this with:
No other additive growth efforts or variables tossed into the mix for the DACH region
This would allow us to have as clean as possible a way to compare period over period results. Execution across BDRs, AEs, and all other GTM touchpoints remained as they were in the period prior.
Start with one channel
We decided to only run this campaign on LinkedIn, mainly for the ability to cleanly target the exact ICP we wanted within the DACH region
Defined timeframe
This would give us a clean way to look at the control group (previous period) relative to the experiment group (test period)
The results
As shared initially, we’re 24 days into this experiment and we’ve already seen the following results:
10x more impressions than the previous period
20x more handraisers (demo requests + sign ups) than the previous period
7x more pipeline than the previous period
2 closed won deals from this cohort
One result I didn’t mention in the intro, but you see above, is the number of impressions served. This is a function of spend and CPMs, so you’ll be able to infer from the above that we spent more during the experiment period than control period.
But what you’ll also be able to infer is that the spend was clearly not the only variable that led to the increase. We 10x’d impressions, but 20x’d our handraisers. If it was a linear relationship, we only would' have 10x’d our handraisers as well.
The second thing to call out is that we’re only 24 days into the experiment. If you remember the expectation timeline I shared a few weeks ago, we usually don’t see meaningful impact to handraisers, let alone pipeline and revenue, until at least 1-2 quarters later.
The fact that handraisers, pipeline, AND revenue are already starting to be impacted means we’ve hit on something big here by seeing significant changes to those already. So before you say, “Sam, you’ve 10x’d your impressions, but only 7x’d your pipeline. I thought you said you don’t care about leads, just pipeline and revenue,” you have to remember that opportunities take time to mature. Sales cycles don’t start as soon as an impression is served. Prospects are in existing contracts or aren’t ready to move yet. That’s why a cohorted view to an experiment like this is critical.
And that’s why the last bullet I shared, “2 closed won deals from this cohort,” is so important. We’re 24 days into the experiment and have already had two deals from this cohort close. For those of you familiar with common B2B SaaS sales cycle lengths, you’ll know that it’s rare to have one that’s less than 30 days, most commonly sitting somewhere between 90-365 days. So the fact that we have two deals that have already closed within this cohort are positive indicators that we’re onto something and that this number will only continue to grow as the experiment group opportunities have time to mature with their normal sales cycle lengths.
The takeaway
Simply cloning your US playbook and targeting countries you want to tap into doesn’t work. Localization at both the language + cultural levels are key.
One LinkedIn post I bookmarked this week
Every dual-motion go-to-market (GTM) company has asked at some point or another, “what’s the best way to position our CTAs?”
Do we show both?
Do we only show one?
Do we have it vary by page?
Will this positively/negatively hurt our pipeline?
So when Peep Laja shared this post I was very intrigued to see the result they shared regarding the number of demos dropping when they turned off the “PLG” CTA.
Lots of follow on questions here that will likely lead to how the experiment was structured and further experimentation to validate other aspects of this problem, this post + comment thread are worth the read.
One podcast episode Netflix series I enjoyed binged this week
I’m human.
I wasn’t feeling podcasts this week.
By the time the workday wrapped + got our little one down to bed, I was spent. When I notice this happen, I give myself some extra space to relax. And for me, that usually means finding a good TV series or movie to watch.
Enter: The Gentlemen
A spin-off of the 2019 movie that goes by the same name featuring Charlie Hunnam, Matthew McConaughey, Colin Farrell, and others, the reason this show caught my attention was not so much that it was a spin-off of that movie, but because it’s written + directed by one of my all-time favorites - Guy Ritchie.
Known for his witty, irreverent, and dark-humored movies, (Sherlock Holmes, Snatch, RocknRolla, and upcoming movie The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare) this show didn’t disappoint.
See you next Saturday,
Sam