Economic and geopolitical concerns have sidelined international expansion in recent years and stifled international growth for many businesses. Fortunately, 2024 presents a brighter outlook, with two-fifths of marketers forecasting increased budgets and a surging appetite for trading abroad.
To understand how the last few years have reshaped the global landscape — and what this means for future international growth — Think with Google has interviewed five business leaders from across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
These experts offer key insights to propel your expansion strategy forward, from tapping into geo-diversification and decoding the "Hermit Consumer" to leveraging AI for global success.
Global marketplace: Prioritise geo-diversification to achieve success
Successful international growth starts with defining clear business goals and deciphering the global trends that align to those objectives to uncover new pockets of opportunity. This is even more relevant today, as we’re seeing seismic shifts in the regions companies are expanding to, with emerging markets like Mexico and India reaping the benefits.
At Google, we use an International Growth Framework to help brands find global success. One of its core pillars is geo-diversification. This is the act of mitigating risk and building resilience through creating a global footprint spread across different markets — and finding new opportunities, or pulling back from certain regions, to achieve efficiency.
Everyone with global footprints is already at an advantage. We know that strong global brands recovered 9 times faster after the financial crash in 2008. And by adding just one extra market to their export basket, companies can protect themselves from the effects of uncertainty, especially around trade policy.
Take these strategic steps today to build a successful international growth strategy rooted in geo diversification:
- Define success: What are your precise international expansion goals? Increased revenue? Diversify risk? Drive profitability? Clearly articulate these objectives to provide a strategic compass.
- Decide where to play: Markets are not uniformly receptive. Prioritise regions or countries based on thorough analysis. Consider market size, potential competition, ease of entry, and alignment with your product or service offering.
- Have a localised go-to-market strategy: Standardisation often fails globally. Develop tailored, market-specific strategies informed by cultural nuances, language, consumer preferences, and local regulations.
Trendsetter: Tap into new behaviours, like the Hermit Consumer
As companies harness data to measure and optimise their activities, they’re often guilty of applying a “one and done” mentality that can ruin their best efforts. The reality is that the world frequently changes in ways we don’t expect — so businesses need to constantly monitor customer trends for international growth.
At The Economist, one of the most intriguing developments we are seeing is the continued rise of the “Hermit Consumer”. Many economic trends have returned to pre-pandemic levels, but certain consumer behaviours have not — notably spending on out-of-home activities. People are nesting more, bringing goods and services to their doorstep.
The degree to which “Hermits” have taken hold differs by product and by country and sometimes these trends are hidden without a deeper look. For example, restaurant table bookings are a fifth below the norm at a major American chain — but sales are soaring in the sector, as a flow of delivery people collect orders to bring to people’s homes.
This means you need to constantly run the numbers to see how consumers use your product — it’s never one and done. You also need to look at the ground truth of performance, not just the top-line.
And if you don’t have a “Hermit Consumer” product yet, create one. After all, more people around the world attend Stanford University via its online course material than in classrooms.
Local heroes: Merge a global brand campaign with a city-level strategy
To grow internationally, it’s important to not just reach people with a global or national campaign, but also connect with them on a more nuanced regional level — and even a city one. By tapping into local culture you can stand out from the competition and win consideration.
For us that means truly understanding where, when, and how people consume food. We reflect this in our advertising by including local landmarks, changing colloquialisms, and even featuring local transport. We’re also seeing a real appetite from consumers for supporting local restaurants — a trend that has only strengthened since the pandemic — which aligns well with our goal of including “local heroes” in our campaigns alongside national brands.
Finally, we work with our in-market marketing teams to understand more nuanced differences in local cuisines. For example, we know fries should always be shown alongside mayonnaise in the Netherlands. And in Spain, paella has regional interpretations as people use local ingredients in the dish. Having these local insights mean we can capture them accurately in our creatives for each region and connect with audiences on a more personal level.
AI has allowed us to keep the power of our global brand while resonating with customers locally. We’ve created an automated production process with our agency that helps us build thousands of assets at scale that work on both a local and national level — while still looking the same.
And that brand consistency is hugely important to gain awareness and preference when expanding internationally. One of our ads might be more informative and another more entertaining, but they all, inherently, feel like Just Eat Takeaway.
A vision to behold: Use AI to boost consideration and generate demand
Successful international growth requires businesses to have a deep understanding of the local consumer and their purchase journey first, before combining this knowledge with the right tools to power their marketing effectively. After all, drivers of purchase decisions for the same product in two different countries can be very different.
We are a vision care and eyewear company representing a range of global brands, such as Ray-Ban and Oakley. AI has helped us bring global campaigns for these brands into local markets, tailoring our media activations to the specific content of a country or region.
It helps both with localisation of content and by selecting the right media channels for the audience. This last part is crucial as the consumer journey has become incredibly complex. We need the power of AI to combine different formats, placements, and content to communicate with potential customers at different stages of the funnel.
We used Demand Gen for a back-to-school campaign for Ray-Ban to generate demand that would convert to future growth. The AI-powered tool enabled us to reach 19 million unique users and we saw a positive brand lift after the campaign, including a 5.4% increase in our key metric of consideration.
AI can empower marketers and drive tangible results like boosting consideration for brands that already have brand awareness. But it can only do this if a company is willing to embrace it, share data, and break silos between different departments.
Coming to America: Grow in the U.S. with a personalised, state-by-state strategy
At Mango, one of Europe’s leading fashion brands, we are strengthening our presence in the United States with an ambitious expansion plan.
U.S. expansion is very different to growing a business in Spain or Ireland — as it’s like reaching 50 countries at the same time. Start by activating your performance marketing campaigns in just a few states that have the potential for strong profitability, such as New York, California, Texas, and Florida as they’re the most densely populated.
For us, personalisation and localisation have been central to our U.S. expansion plans. We use Keyword Planner to monitor searches for colours and patterns, but also adapt regionally. For example, we’re working on using temperature and climatology data to show the most relevant products on our website in different states based on local weather conditions.
Language is another important consideration as there is a lot of diversity in the U.S., with 45 million people speaking Spanish at home. I recommend testing the multi-language option on your website — we’ve included Spanish on ours — and using generative AI to create relevant local content for ads and improve local product descriptions.
Finally, look at logistics as the U.S. is such a vast country. We currently have a warehouse on the east coast and are working on opening one on the west coast too to meet customers’ delivery expectations.
And whether you’re expanding to another market in Europe or to the U.S. the strategic foundations remain the same. To ensure success, everyone in the company needs to be aligned and work towards the same growth objectives.
The experts featured in this article were speakers at Think Global. The event series about winning international growth strategies is continuing online throughout 2024 and you can now sign up for upcoming events.
