How to Build a Demand Gen Engine in EMEA (and not go to jail)
US companies expanding into EMEA need to adapt their tactics to find success in a market with vary different regulations, as well as cultural norms. In this presentation, Tim Rath shows you how to adapt your demand gen strategy to be successful in DACH.
Maybe a quick question first. Who's tried going into market in EMEA from you?
Yeah, cool. And from those who put up their hands, who thought it would be
easier than it actually was in the end?
Yeah, no, cool.
So the reality is that executives often see the EMEA revenue opportunity as
really big. And honestly, they're not wrong.
Because if you're looking at this chart, and Andrew is actually sitting here,
that's also provided this with
pedal and profit well, what you can see here is the SaaS revenue growth by
region. And as you can see, Europe is actually leading the chart
with a more, three times more growth than actually here also in the US. So the
opportunity in EMEA is very, very big.
And maybe some of you don't know, but especially Daj is among the top five
economies in the world. So it's actually bigger than most people think.
So what usually happens is that companies do create a lot of internal buzz
around an EMEA initiative, right?
So that usually means, especially for American companies, very aggressive
growth goals.
And then also they introduce a bunch of proven tactics. Yeah, tactics usually
then look like this.
Copy and paste, US ad campaigns, change targeting to EMEA and let's go.
Maybe you can relate.
But what the fuck is EMEA anyway?
EMEA is actually almost one third of our whole global world.
And if you would guess how many different languages do we have in EMEA? Anybody
would like to take a guess?
44. Pretty good actually. So that's 58.
That we have. And I think most people would say that EMEA is one of the most
diverse melting pot of cultures.
So we have a lot of different cultures. And if we would now assume into EMEA,
the Daj region is
probably the one culture that also stands out and is so interesting to most
companies because the economy is just so big.
It is the biggest economy in EMEA. So for the sake of this presentation today,
I will be focusing on Daj because for most US and international companies,
this is the one region that everybody wants to crack.
So let's go back to the tactics again. We've looked at the copy paste play here
What happens next is usually that they create a company list of EMEA target
accounts,
copy paste, the outreach campaigns and go live.
I usually get emails sent with this subject line, quick question to him.
And the website I then look at is only in English.
Account executives usually sitting in the US, sometimes in the UK, that's
already a very advanced play.
And they only speak English, trying to sell to a German executive.
Who thinks that actually works? No one, cool. We're on the same page here on
that.
So we can all agree that cloning your proven US playbook for EMEA does not work
And another chart from Petal, thank you so much. Actually, not Petal, but Open
View.
But this is about pricing which Petal is also very deep into it. What you can
see here that,
and it's one reason why it doesn't really work because no one is actually or
almost no one,
half of the companies don't localize prices. But in Germany, we're not paying
with US dollars.
And there's a lot of other companies in the EMEA region that don't pay with US
dollars,
almost all of them. And this is just one example of the many that why it doesn
't work.
So now let's look into what's actually required to be successful in EMEA.
Like what does it actually take? And it does take a transformation in the three
EMEs. And I call them
mindset, market difference, and mechanics. And we're going to deep dive into
every single one of the
three. But before diving into mindset, I'd like to tell you a little bit about
me because I haven't
done so yet. So together with my dad actually four years ago, a little bit more
than four years ago,
I founded Yojaba, which is a revenue marketing agency in Dach. And I'm leading
a team of 50
stellar marketers. We work with over 60 B2B sales companies, mostly across
Europe, some US companies
going into Dach. And we're also the largest advertiser actually on LinkedIn in
Dach and I run
the podcast, which is very much focused on revenue marketing for B2B software
companies.
And why am I telling you this? We have a lot of data insights and experiences
because most
marketers are always dug into one account, their own company, and we see 60
accounts at the same
time. So we see trends that are happening very, very fast. And today my
presentation, I'd like to
share a lot of these. So let's dive into mindset. You have to transform your
mindset first.
An amir expansion is an evolution of your whole strategy. It's not a quick
tactic. If you treat
it like a quick tactic, it will not work. So how I'd like to think about it is
that in its original
market, we started building a series of bridges between its product and its
target market,
which means that for example, for a seed stage, you're building your ICP, your
building use cases,
and your MVP. And then in series A, you're trying to find product market fit,
you also achieve product
market fit, winning first customers, et cetera. And that's how you should think
about going into
market in a mere. So when entering Dach, start being and thinking like a
startup again.
Let's move to market differences. And there's two major ones I'd like to focus
on today.
First one is legal and the second one is the cultural differences, both very,
very crucial
and they serve as your foundation of everything else that will follow. Quick
disclaimer, I'm not
a lawyer. So I'll just be sharing our experiences before you actually go into
the market. Please
also advise with your lawyer. So let's look at the most common ones, right? GD
PR, PCCD, you've
probably heard about them. The GDPR is the general data protection regulation.
It's a regulation that
protects the fundamental rights and freedom of people concerning the processing
of personal data
and the free movement of such data. In German, we call it the Darden-Schodz-K
oon for Oblong.
Yes, that work actually exists. And then there is the e-privacy directive,
which contains specific
rules for electronic marketing and sales outreach. And here on the bottom, I've
put for you to
get, give you an easy way to remember this. So the GDPR basically tells you how
you should
regulate and handle prospects data. And the PCCD is a law about how you can
actually reach
out to prospects, how to do outreach, what's legal and what's not. So back in
the days when
people were doing door-to-door sales, no one was really interested in knowing
what people would do
with that data because it just wasn't relevant, right? But today, we have so
many tracking tools
and people are becoming more concerned about what happens with it. So everybody
does have a right
to know how companies actually track their data. And at any time, they can also
refuse that their
data is being tracked. So I think the good thing now is salespeople don't have
to be afraid of
getting the door slammed in front of their faces. But they have different
challenges. And the challenge
is to be compliant with the law, with how to do outreach. So let's look at how
you can best do this.
And especially when entering DAG, we Germans, we really value transparency and
honesty. So when
doing these, don't try to trick people with smart plays into thinking something
's not tracked or
anything like that, they will find out. We're very granular about this. So here
's what you can do.
First, make it easy for the user to contact you about their data. What you can
do here is you can
create a form specifically for compliance issues, for example, in your photo.
You can provide an FAQ
to answer the most common questions also. And then what you can also do is you
can make it
easier for the user to decline, change, or optimize how you use their data. For
example,
in the cookie banner, I will talk about this in a little bit for a second. And
as I've said before,
please don't hide information in the small print. They will find out. And third
, make it easy for
the user to download their data. Create a one-click solution for users to
download their data and make
it make the link easy to find it not hidden in dark corners or anything like
that.
So here's how a cookie banner should look like when you go to market in Germany
. As you can see here,
users can then decide by themselves what they want to be tracked with and what
they don't want
to be tracked with. And a tag that I can recommend that most companies in
Germany use as user
centrics or cookie bot. Very easy and very fast implementation.
So let's move on. We've now understood the GDPR and what we should do. What
about the PCD? How
do we do outreach without going to jail? So first, again, as a quick reminder,
the PCD law states,
and you can only reach out to someone if you have consent.
Consent means that I, for example, downloaded some specific asset that I gave
my information
means I'm actually requesting that information. So I'm giving consent that you
can contact me.
The same is when I'm booking a demo. Obviously, you then have my consent to
contact me about that
demo that will follow. So think about all the ways where users give you consent
also when someone
registers for your webinar linked in, for example. That also works. But if
there's no consent,
you're legally not allowed to outreach them in Germany. I know it's tough. It's
a very different
world. But that's how it is. So especially emails are technically illegal.
However,
they're still tolerated culturally and most companies still do it knowing that
it's not legal.
So while talking about culture, let's dive into what are the actual cultural
differences.
One very important thing when selling to Germany executives is that you must
keep it formal,
especially in the German mittelchamp. The German mittelchamp actually makes up
of around 95%
of the whole cross-domestic product. So it's almost all of it. In enterprises
and small businesses,
there aren't so relevant in Germany. It's mostly the mittelchamp in Germany.
And what you must know here is that they really value a high level of
professionalism.
So keep it formal first, especially when you first enter a conversation with
them.
Be very task-focused. We Germans have the image of being highly efficient. And
that's how we
want our meetings to be. So it is really all about efficiency. Be prepared, be
structured,
guide them through the meeting, and don't talk about things that don't really
are relevant in
the meeting. Be reliable. We expect actually a very different level of
reliability compared to
US people. So I can give you an example. I've met a US executive, very big
software company
at Web Summit last year. We had the most amazing conversation for like half an
hour.
And he said, "Please, I've been looking for someone to help me with Go to
Market in Daff.
For ages, I couldn't find someone. Please use my email, send me email, we'll
book a call and we'll
talk about it." And I kept my word. I then sent an email. He never got back to
me ever. I was like,
"Okay, well, that's how it is, I guess." So we really value people being on
time. And also,
if you're doing what you say you're going to do. We also prefer Britain over
spoken communication,
which means especially when you're sending emails, have very professional
structured emails.
Just include every single detail that people want to have. And just, yeah, just
prove a high level
of professionalism here. And also then, what's important is if you meet someone
for the first time
or just starting building a connection, value or just first talk about business
. And only once
you've gotten to know someone and you've moved with your business first, only
then try to establish
also a private connection. Don't start with asking about their private lives in
the first call. It's
not what someone wants to do. All right. So we've understood what
transformation we need mindset-wise.
We've understood what market differences they are. Let's dive into the
mechanics. And I think this is
the most, most interesting one because obviously, especially the market
differences will lead to
different mechanics that we need to execute. So here's how you can go into
building your go-to
market plans at legal foundation. We've talked about this, define your SAP,
core cases, use cases,
KPIs and how to evaluate if you're successful. Localize your creative strategy,
warm up the
market, start selling, assess product market fit and scale. For today, because
it's the most relevant,
I will be focusing on these three in the following. Localizing your creative
strategy means you must
also start with fundamentals again when you go into a new market. Yeah, this is
really important
and this is what most companies actually miss. They think they've done their
fundamentals already for
their local market, for example, US, which means they don't have to do it again
and that's wrong.
This is actually the most crucial part. Do your research, consolidate, do
proper campaign
conception for that country and testing it right. Just as you would as a fresh
startup again.
Do your qualitative research again. Yeah, talk to your actual customers and
talk to people in that
market before you create your campaign. See if the messaging resonates and we
have a template for
doing customer research questions. As you can see here, you will be getting all
of this at the end.
So you don't need to take pictures also, by the way. I will give you the slides
. Also then use a
localized valuable position canvas as a working document. So all the info you
get from talking to
customers, from doing your research, put it here, have a separate one from the
one that you're using
in your local market for DAH for example and also constantly iterate this one.
Why is this important localizing your creative strategy? And I've brought with
you an example
here from Loxo, actually a US company in the recruiting space. Maybe some of
you know.
They had a great success with the Bigfoot reference as you can see here in the
US.
It worked amazingly. They generated a lot of pipeline with it and we looked at
the whole
campaign. We were like, what is Bigfoot? So it's not relevant at all in Germany
. So we killed this
matter for completely. And most of you know, only 5% are ready to buy at one
specific point of time
in the market. And obviously that also counts for DAH. It's not different there
And especially when you're going into DAH as a company that's not known in that
market,
you will probably not be top of mind when someone is ready to buy it. So you
must make an even
more larger effort to create demand before you actually capture that demand.
And that is really
essential. Don't go into an into a market and start out reaching people and
start stalling right
away. Focus on creating demand first, educating that market and then slowly
transitioning into
also adding demand capture campaigns. So what we've created here is a process
of five questions
that you can use that help you to know what content you should be creating
along the way
to actually get to then capture that demand. And we use these five key
questions, which is why
change? Why now? What's the solution? What's the process? Why you? Why change?
For example,
if you're a CMS platform, a headless CMS, you should be telling people why
change from using
WordPress to a more modern solution, for example, and why that makes sense also
in DAH.
So if you're actually answering all these five questions, then you're able to
educate people at
scale also in that new market, which means that you will be able to create real
demand.
So try to think of all the questions that your ICPs have from being completely
problem unaware
until where can I actually sign? Who thinks that if you'd be answering all
these questions from
being completely problem unaware to where can I sign? You'd be more successful
in that market.
Yeah, cool. Next, I think it's important to not over-engineer your whole go-to-
market motion. You
don't need 10 different channels. You can start with the most fundamental ones.
So just localize
one landing page. That's enough where German people can find the information
and just use one
channel where you can actually reach your target audience. In most cases, it
will be linked in
or meta. And then you can warm up the market by building trusted scale through
actually
educational content. And with warming up, I mean that you should probably not
start selling
before you're into the market for like three months, roughly that time. It
depends on the context,
obviously, on what kind of solution. But usually I would recommend warm up the
market for three
months and then only go and book calls from the people you've been engaged with
So how can we now use these five guiding questions to create content? What we
like to do is to
create this three-step formula from extract to subtract to attract. And what we
do is we
take subject matter experts and maybe you will not have a German-speaking
subject matter expert
in your company. So in this case, what I would suggest you is that you look for
thought leaders
in Germany that have your audience that are in your category, can speak German
obviously,
and that will help you create that content. So you can just book them for an
interview, for example,
that you will record and they will answer the questions, especially for the why
change and why
now question, where they don't need specific product knowledge. Because they
will have much
higher trust in your brand, they will be known already within your target
audience. So use their
face and you can benefit from this a lot. And then you sit down for 60 minutes,
you ask them all
the questions from problem unaware to where can I sign and they answer them.
And that will give you
a lot of different content that focuses on creating demand by really providing
value through education.
And this is how it can look like in practice. So what we've done here for HRS
is you can see the
five guiding questions and they have literally answered the most asked
questions by the customers
answered in a normal video. And then it's accompanied by a specific image ads
to add more formats to
make the whole story more round. And in the case for Loxo, where we've helped
go to market in Dach
for that US company, we created new creatives, but also on top of that we use
the creatives that
work in the US to see if they also work in the German speaking market. And we
adapted all of it
to the local culture, as you can see here, it's all in German. And it worked
really, really well.
So maybe some of you know Sam Kühle. And actually this is the message I got
from him today. They
only with their own approach of copy pasting their US campaigns in Dach, they
generated in 30 days
one high-intent fundraiser. After we've localized everything, we've now
generated 14 high-intent
fundraisers in 15 days. So that's the difference you can make if you really
take this approach and
do it step by step and not over rush things. To return, it's a 14 times growth
rate and only half
the time. I mean, we don't need to discuss if that makes, if that's worth it.
So
here's some additional place that work really well. I would suggest you that
you reach out to
German thought leaders. And that's quite a few actually on LinkedIn for example
. And you pay them
to write organic posts about your product, about your category that you can
then use and push with
your ads. Because maybe you've heard about the new thought leader ads that
allow you to push posts
not only from your own employees, but also from people that are not working in
your company.
So you can use that to your advantage when you go into market in Dach, for
example.
Reach out to thought leaders, pay them to mention your product in their post
and push it in your
campaign. Because again, here they will have much higher trust than you will
have in that market.
What's also working really well is hosting a webinar, for example, or any other
digital event
with a B2B sales provider in Dach that's already bigger in that market and
shares the same audience
and as you, but it's not a direct competitor obviously, then they wouldn't do
it. But if you
have a product that's complementing each other for the same audience, that's a
great way to start
building trust in Germany. Because you will be focusing on providing value only
. And you will be
put next to a company that's already successful in the market already has that
trust. And if you
combine that with inviting, for example, German thought leaders into the web
inar, you will have
everything at once and that works really well. So again, being associated with
familiar faces
and brands will trust like 10 times faster. So remember, trust is the most
important currency
in Germany. We highly, highly value it. That's why we have so many e-source,
for example, and all
these kinds of awards that companies have in Germany that prove that they're
trustworthy
and are compliant to different laws and regulations. So especially when you're
in US vendor,
Germans typically are more skeptical if you actually comply to the rules. So
you must make
an additional effort to be transparent and have clear communication of how you
handle data, for
example. So you must double down here. And I want to finish my speech with one
final question.
If people in EMEA would see what you see, know what you know, feel the passion
that you feel,
believe what you believe. Would it be easier to sell in EMEA? Thank you so much
And if you'd like to have all the slides and also that customer research
template,
pull out your phone and scan this QR code and then I will send it to you in
your inbox.