Expanding business to new markets: a story of how not to do

As the co-founder and CEO of the CRM system, I'd like to share our journey of expanding into the Turkish market. This wasn't just a business move; it was an adventure. Here's our story of failure.

🔹General Information
Project Duration: February - November, 2018 (9 months)
Total Investment: $5,000
Total Revenue: $0

🔹Our Approach: Defining the Tasks

• To analyze Turkey's economic indicators for tariff calculation
• To conduct a comprehensive CRM system analysis for Turkey, evaluating more than 10 competing systems
• To handle technical matters: domain purchase and server setup
• To integrate with SMS providers.
• To establish connections with SIP providers (Voice Telecom)
• To forge partnerships with courier services
• To integrate online payment merchants
• To incorporate analytics systems
• To provide training to Turkish managers on our services
• To set up multiple contact channels for customer inquiries
• To translate video instructions, FAQ, and interface
• To manage social media marketing (SMM)

🔹Project Launch
We took a systematic approach, documenting every step of the way.

🔵 Approach 1: Facebook

Shared posts about our CRM system on Turkish Facebook pages.
Focused on posts about starting a business in Turkey, particularly in online sales, while showcasing our CRM system.
Demonstrated how we automated a cosmetics e-commerce store, highlighting our business automation solutions.
Emphasized the efficiency of call center setup and how we could help in this regard.
Challenges:
Encountered difficulty in targeting a broad audience under categories like "Online Sales" and "Entrepreneurship."

🔵 Approach 2: Google Adwords

Strategically set up keywords and negative keywords, creating three ad groups with nine ads.
Expanded to 69 ads by creating five new groups, emphasizing CRM, call center setup, CPA engine, system automation, and robotics.
Challenges:
Language barrier.
Initially faced low-quality mobile landing pages, which were later improved.

🔵 Approach 3: Partner Search in Turkey

Identified potential partners, including courier services, telephone providers, SMS providers, and CPA networks.
Offered referral rewards to all partners.

🔵 Approach 4: SMM

Engaged actively on thematic forums, maintaining activity within our threads.
Participated in thematic Facebook groups, posting comments and articles.
Actively contributed to various Turkish websites.
Conducted email campaigns using contact details provided by SIP providers.

🔵 Approach 5: Business Trainers

Identified approximately 15 business trainers actively discussing starting a business on social media and forums.
Presented them with commercial offers, providing 100% on the first payment and 20% on subsequent payments for their affiliates.
Utilized phone calls when emails received no response.

🔵 Approach 6: Software Localization Companies

Identified software localization companies but declined their services as they only offered interface translation and ad setup. We already had translations and ad campaigns in place. Additionally, we lacked an internationalization file for translation.

🔵 Approach 7: Business Bloggers

Located around five business bloggers who maintain websites dedicated to starting a business.
Sent them commercial offers via email, offering a 100% referral program on the first payment.
Inquired about the possibility of posting an article about our system on their websites.

🔵 Approach 8: Advertising Separate Services in Our CRM (Robo Services or Call Center platform)

Experimented with promoting CRM robot services by creating a Turkish page with translated text, voice message examples, and Google Adwords ads.

🔴 Problems Encountered:
Despite our hard work, language barriers became a recurring issue. While we had translators, our local manager in Turkey assured us that everything was accurately translated. Unfortunately, we were not be able to review correspondence between the local manager and clients, or to craft commercial offers to bloggers. Our hands were tied, and communication was challenging, hampered by doubts about our local manager's competence.

Regarding our local manager, she was solely motivated by her fixed salary and lacked the incentive to actively acquire clients for us (we didn't create KPI for her).

🔴 Conclusions:

• In business, understanding your customers is paramount. Before expanding into new markets, ensure you are able for effective communication, even in text form, at least that you are able to read and understand what does your customer want. Alternatively, consider hiring capable local managers.

• Outline at least 10-15 strategies for promoting your product in a new country and thoroughly study your competitors' market presence.

• Above all, invest in professional content translation.