PPC abroad - what to watch out for when you want to go global with your e-shop

Nowadays, many e-shops are growing to the point where they do not know where to grow further in the local market. An e-shop can multiply in sales quite quickly, but the increases can quickly slow down if the e-shop is not thinking about the future. One of the ways to keep increasing sales and profit is expansion. But there are more reasons to send packages abroad, which you can read about in our older article HERE.

Considering that we have experience with expansion from many different categories of products, from tools to pick-ups, we would like to mention a few tips that are worth considering when expanding any e-shop.

1. PPC can get quite expensive - do you have a budget ready?

• to think that the campaigns will have the same performance and cost as in the local market is not adequate
• auctions can be many times higher, e.g. on the DE market
• your account or products probably have no history
• nobody in the country probably knows your brand, which always increases the cost per conversion

2. Do you have a thoroughly mapped competition?

• before entering a foreign market, it is necessary to check whether you have any competitive advantage in the given market for which customers are willing to pay
• if there is competition around every corner, then expansion may cost you more or may not even pay off
• on the contrary, you can hit a market where there is no competition, which gives you the right to set the price at your discretion

3. Do you have added shipping costs?

• each carrier has a different rate for the given market, do you know if you have enough margin even with some volatility?
• do not forget to subtract from the margin all the costs associated with selling the product - labor costs, customer service, PPC, SEO, web development, warehouse, etc.

4. Do you have a localized language?

• translating pages is one thing, but product descriptions, instructions and so on, that's another..
  PPC cannot work without perfectly crafted content

5. Do you know which products to sell abroad?

• there are not many e-shops that would really pay to translate and sell the range that they offer on the local market, which is why it is important to analyze the range according to margin and strategy

6. Don't forget the keywords

• without keyword analysis it will be difficult, we always recommend doing a title analysis, as literal translations often do not make sense, which means that Google will not show you anywhere

7. UX - user friendliness

• although it may seem that copying the website's visuals will be just as effective, sometimes this is not the case
• foreign market customers may have different shopping habits (bigger buttons, different purchase processes), which you need to uncover by carefully analyzing the competition and market leaders across segments

8. Evaluate!

• it is vital to measure and evaluate the foreign market very often because local campaigns and your "know-how" do not necessarily work abroad as you imagine
• Google Analytics should always be at hand to know how people behave in a given market, which can shed light on your weak points