International expansion

I was talking to a consumer brand that is considering expanding internationally as they believe that they are reaching marketing CAC/LTV saturation in the UK.

I have also been down this a number of times in businesses I have been involved in. It’s a classic case of expansion seeming easier than grinding it out in your home market.

Your home market has a number of benefits as you intricately understand the landscape, legal, consumer and language. Expansion usually involves losing an understanding of at least one of these. We were pulled by QVC into the German market at Diet Chef and we thought why not launch our business there.

Well there were certainly two of the above we didn’t understand and the language was the most obvious, the major obstacle was legal even when the UK was part of the single market!

Usually the marketing problem is around the ability to raise awareness and in this area I am and always be a big fan of TV to raise awareness at a fraction of the cost of other channels.

If you do expand geographically the big thing I would recommend is hire a local who has done it before and let them lead the market expansion (we didn’t !)