Marketing is probably the most important part you need to get right in any Transatlantic growth strategy. And yet, any seminar on 'how to export to the US' or 'how to export to the UK' will probably ignore it completely and focus instead on the nitty-gritty of legal, tax and business administration. You know better - because you know how important getting the word out about your product has been to your brand's success so far.
How does a US ecommerce brand market to the UK? How does a UK brand market to the US? Do you need to employ a marketing agency to work specifically on your new market?
Launching in a new market is a lot like starting your business all over again. Except this time, you have the benefit of so many lessons learned and can do everything better. Go back to the beginning: how did you find your very first customers in your home market? That may well be friends and family of course, but how did you take the next step beyond them?
For my own UK-based ecommerce brand, thinking back to the beginning in our home market, we received a big boost in the early days from being mentioned in a product discovery column in the the Guardian's 'Weekend' magazine. It turned out that the Guardian's 'Weekend' readership was a great match for our product and the success helped us define our customer archetype in those early days.
When we launched in the US, identifying the niche publications that our audience was reading seemed like a good bet. That became a focus of my market research prior to launch: finding archetypal customers and asking them "what publications do you read?"
Your marketing strategy will have developed since those early days, and it may be that the methods you use to reach people now are very different from when you first started. The central tenets of your current marketing strategy should be applicable in your new export marketing, whether that's the US or UK.
In the years after my ecommerce brand began in the UK, we were able to scale using Facebook advertising. For the US launch, I created a separate Meta Ads campaign targeting a US audience with interests in the topics and publications that I'd identified in the market research phase. Once our pixel and ads account was more familiar with our US audience, I was able to target a broader audience and rely on Meta's algorithms to put our ads in front of the right customers.
Meta Ads for a new market did take a bit of trial and error. Some messaging that worked with our UK audience seemed less successful in the US, and some of our products were unexpectedly successful. Although it's great to research your market, I think the idea that everything can be planned and predicted beforehand is fanciful, which is why I say the most important thing is just to launch and start experimenting.
Another channel that worked for us as a slow-burner in the US, but with hindsight we could have pushed faster, was targeting brick-and-mortar retailers. We already knew that our product appealed to bookshops and museums given our UK experience, but were initially only focused on direct-to-customer in the US rather than wholesale.
Our product now sells in a number of history museums across the US, including the Library of Congress, many of whom discovered us 'accidentally' via our Facebook advertising which was targeting individual customers. We did do some wholesale outreach activity like emailing potential retailers in the early days, but could have been more focused on this, for example following up over Linkedin, visiting in-person to demo the product, and attending museum trade shows.
The main point I want you to take away here is that you probably already know, at a high level, what distribution channels will work for you in your new market, because they're the same ones that are already working for you in your home market. Your research should focus on the equivalent shops, influencers, publications, Youtube channels, trade shows and so on.
Nothing beats talking to customers in real life. Visit your new market, find them and ask them: what do you read? Who do you follow? Where do you hang out?
After our launch, some of our products turned out to be more popular in the US than the UK and we ran out of inventory on a regular basis. Meanwhile, some items that were popular in the UK turned out to be far less interesting for our US customers. This was especially difficult because it wasn't always obvious why one item was successful or not.
Frustrating though that was, that initial experience gave us important pointers on what future products we could launch for our new US audience. Over time, we were able to develop a US-specific product range. This included some items which were only available to our US customers, and that were created specifically to target relevant events in the US calendar.
One of your best ways of marketing as a direct-to-consumer brand is new product launches, and if these can be adapted to your new market, all the better.
There is of course some cultural nuance to consider when marketing to a new audience. I've covered some of the cultural differences between the US and UK in this article. By all means consider how that might affect your presentation and language.
That said, don't allow this to slow you down. The whole reason why exporting across the Atlantic should be a no-brainer for any direct-to-consumer brand is the many similarities between the markets, not the differences.
The British and Americans use all the same social media platforms, from Facebook to Instagram to Tiktok, and are certainly not immune to the charms of influencers. There is even more overlap between American and British social media content than in television and music - there’s a good chance that’s how you’ve already picked up some interest from customers across the Atlantic. Like almost everywhere else, Google is the most prominent search engine in both countries with some 90% of market share.
You'll learn more by talking to your audience and making mistakes. We spent a lot of time and effort on things like using American spellings in our marketing emails and seeing if we could manufacture in the US, only to have our customers there say how much they loved our British background and 'made in the UK'. It seems counterintuitive, but you may be better off leaning in to your British-ness or American-ness.
To recap: what are your most important distribution channels today? These are the ones you should start with in your new market. Talk to customers in your new market and find out what are the equivalent publications they like the read, websites they like to visit, people they like to follow and places they like to hang out.
Marketing can seem like a confusing task at times. It seems like every business advice article or success story or friend wants to tell you about this amazing new marketing method you should definitely try.
You can solve this overwhelm with focus. A two-part realisation I found extremely helpful many years ago was that a) there are only a limited number of possible distribution channels out there, and b) only 3-4 of these will ever work for your brand.
The book 'Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth' by Justin Mares and Gabriel Weinberg talks about the different 'Traction Channels'. You've heard of all of these: organic search (SEO), paid search ads, organic social media, offline ads, email marketing, direct marketing, news features, PR stunts etc. The point is that there are 'only' around 19 different channels in existence. What this means is that it's feasible for you to run small-scale experiments in all of those areas to determine which are most likely to work for your brand.
From there, however, comes the second part of the realisation, which is that only a few of those channels will ever work for your brand specifically. PR stunts might work brilliantly for Richard Branson, but be inappropriate for your luxury chocolate. Google search ads might have brought great success for your friend's product, but if your own product is not being searched for directly and is more of a 'discovery' product, then social media may be a better match for you.
Don't waste time trying to force a marketing method to work through better tactics or more budget, when it may never work for your brand specifically. You're better off doubling down on the few methods that do show initial promise. And do that with enthusiasm in your new market.
