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Tim Rath 24 min

Goldenhour 2024 – Tim Rath: How to Build a Modern Demand Engine in EMEA (and Not Go to Jail) (Workshop)


It’s not just demand creation that’s being reinvented, but even our ability to capture demand is evolving alongside changing buyer expectations, channels, and budgets. Tim Rath, Founder & Managing Director at Yoyaba, works with the leading marketing teams in Europe, and will share his learnings in this session on how to modernize your demand capture and conversion playbook.



0:00

Maybe a quick question first. Who's tried going into market in EMEA from you?

0:05

Yeah, cool. And from those who put up their hands, who thought it would be

0:15

easier than it actually was in the end?

0:17

Yeah, no, cool.

0:21

So the reality is that executives often see the EMEA revenue opportunity as

0:29

really big. And honestly, they're not wrong.

0:33

Because if you're looking at this chart, and Andrew is actually sitting here,

0:38

that's also provided this with

0:40

pedal and profit well, what you can see here is the SaaS revenue growth by

0:44

region. And as you can see, Europe is actually leading the chart

0:47

with a more, three times more growth than actually here also in the US. So the

0:53

opportunity in EMEA is very, very big.

0:56

And maybe some of you don't know, but especially Daj is among the top five

1:01

economies in the world. So it's actually bigger than most people think.

1:05

So what usually happens is that companies do create a lot of internal buzz

1:11

around an EMEA initiative, right?

1:13

So that usually means, especially for American companies, very aggressive

1:17

growth goals.

1:18

And then also they introduce a bunch of proven tactics. Yeah, tactics usually

1:24

then look like this.

1:26

Copy and paste, US ad campaigns, change targeting to EMEA and let's go.

1:30

Maybe you can relate.

1:35

But what the fuck is EMEA anyway?

1:38

EMEA is actually almost one third of our whole global world.

1:44

And if you would guess how many different languages do we have in EMEA? Anybody

1:52

would like to take a guess?

1:54

44. Pretty good actually. So that's 58.

1:59

That we have. And I think most people would say that EMEA is one of the most

2:05

diverse melting pot of cultures.

2:07

So we have a lot of different cultures. And if we would now assume into EMEA,

2:13

the Daj region is

2:14

probably the one culture that also stands out and is so interesting to most

2:19

companies because the economy is just so big.

2:21

It is the biggest economy in EMEA. So for the sake of this presentation today,

2:27

I will be focusing on Daj because for most US and international companies,

2:31

this is the one region that everybody wants to crack.

2:33

So let's go back to the tactics again. We've looked at the copy paste play here

2:41

What happens next is usually that they create a company list of EMEA target

2:46

accounts,

2:46

copy paste, the outreach campaigns and go live.

2:51

I usually get emails sent with this subject line, quick question to him.

2:54

And the website I then look at is only in English.

2:59

Account executives usually sitting in the US, sometimes in the UK, that's

3:05

already a very advanced play.

3:07

And they only speak English, trying to sell to a German executive.

3:19

Who thinks that actually works? No one, cool. We're on the same page here on

3:25

that.

3:25

So we can all agree that cloning your proven US playbook for EMEA does not work

3:30

And another chart from Petal, thank you so much. Actually, not Petal, but Open

3:37

View.

3:38

But this is about pricing which Petal is also very deep into it. What you can

3:45

see here that,

3:46

and it's one reason why it doesn't really work because no one is actually or

3:50

almost no one,

3:51

half of the companies don't localize prices. But in Germany, we're not paying

3:55

with US dollars.

3:57

And there's a lot of other companies in the EMEA region that don't pay with US

4:00

dollars,

4:01

almost all of them. And this is just one example of the many that why it doesn

4:06

't work.

4:07

So now let's look into what's actually required to be successful in EMEA.

4:13

Like what does it actually take? And it does take a transformation in the three

4:18

EMEs. And I call them

4:19

mindset, market difference, and mechanics. And we're going to deep dive into

4:25

every single one of the

4:26

three. But before diving into mindset, I'd like to tell you a little bit about

4:31

me because I haven't

4:31

done so yet. So together with my dad actually four years ago, a little bit more

4:36

than four years ago,

4:37

I founded Yojaba, which is a revenue marketing agency in Dach. And I'm leading

4:42

a team of 50

4:43

stellar marketers. We work with over 60 B2B sales companies, mostly across

4:50

Europe, some US companies

4:51

going into Dach. And we're also the largest advertiser actually on LinkedIn in

4:58

Dach and I run

4:59

the podcast, which is very much focused on revenue marketing for B2B software

5:04

companies.

5:05

And why am I telling you this? We have a lot of data insights and experiences

5:11

because most

5:11

marketers are always dug into one account, their own company, and we see 60

5:15

accounts at the same

5:17

time. So we see trends that are happening very, very fast. And today my

5:21

presentation, I'd like to

5:23

share a lot of these. So let's dive into mindset. You have to transform your

5:30

mindset first.

5:32

An amir expansion is an evolution of your whole strategy. It's not a quick

5:37

tactic. If you treat

5:39

it like a quick tactic, it will not work. So how I'd like to think about it is

5:45

that in its original

5:46

market, we started building a series of bridges between its product and its

5:50

target market,

5:51

which means that for example, for a seed stage, you're building your ICP, your

5:57

building use cases,

5:59

and your MVP. And then in series A, you're trying to find product market fit,

6:02

you also achieve product

6:04

market fit, winning first customers, et cetera. And that's how you should think

6:07

about going into

6:08

market in a mere. So when entering Dach, start being and thinking like a

6:14

startup again.

6:16

Let's move to market differences. And there's two major ones I'd like to focus

6:23

on today.

6:24

First one is legal and the second one is the cultural differences, both very,

6:29

very crucial

6:29

and they serve as your foundation of everything else that will follow. Quick

6:34

disclaimer, I'm not

6:36

a lawyer. So I'll just be sharing our experiences before you actually go into

6:41

the market. Please

6:42

also advise with your lawyer. So let's look at the most common ones, right? GD

6:48

PR, PCCD, you've

6:49

probably heard about them. The GDPR is the general data protection regulation.

6:54

It's a regulation that

6:55

protects the fundamental rights and freedom of people concerning the processing

7:00

of personal data

7:01

and the free movement of such data. In German, we call it the Darden-Schodz-K

7:06

oon for Oblong.

7:07

Yes, that work actually exists. And then there is the e-privacy directive,

7:13

which contains specific

7:14

rules for electronic marketing and sales outreach. And here on the bottom, I've

7:19

put for you to

7:20

get, give you an easy way to remember this. So the GDPR basically tells you how

7:27

you should

7:27

regulate and handle prospects data. And the PCCD is a law about how you can

7:34

actually reach

7:34

out to prospects, how to do outreach, what's legal and what's not. So back in

7:40

the days when

7:42

people were doing door-to-door sales, no one was really interested in knowing

7:46

what people would do

7:48

with that data because it just wasn't relevant, right? But today, we have so

7:52

many tracking tools

7:53

and people are becoming more concerned about what happens with it. So everybody

7:57

does have a right

7:59

to know how companies actually track their data. And at any time, they can also

8:04

refuse that their

8:05

data is being tracked. So I think the good thing now is salespeople don't have

8:13

to be afraid of

8:14

getting the door slammed in front of their faces. But they have different

8:18

challenges. And the challenge

8:19

is to be compliant with the law, with how to do outreach. So let's look at how

8:27

you can best do this.

8:31

And especially when entering DAG, we Germans, we really value transparency and

8:36

honesty. So when

8:38

doing these, don't try to trick people with smart plays into thinking something

8:43

's not tracked or

8:44

anything like that, they will find out. We're very granular about this. So here

8:49

's what you can do.

8:51

First, make it easy for the user to contact you about their data. What you can

8:55

do here is you can

8:56

create a form specifically for compliance issues, for example, in your photo.

9:01

You can provide an FAQ

9:02

to answer the most common questions also. And then what you can also do is you

9:06

can make it

9:07

easier for the user to decline, change, or optimize how you use their data. For

9:12

example,

9:12

in the cookie banner, I will talk about this in a little bit for a second. And

9:16

as I've said before,

9:18

please don't hide information in the small print. They will find out. And third

9:23

, make it easy for

9:24

the user to download their data. Create a one-click solution for users to

9:28

download their data and make

9:29

it make the link easy to find it not hidden in dark corners or anything like

9:33

that.

9:34

So here's how a cookie banner should look like when you go to market in Germany

9:39

. As you can see here,

9:40

users can then decide by themselves what they want to be tracked with and what

9:46

they don't want

9:47

to be tracked with. And a tag that I can recommend that most companies in

9:52

Germany use as user

9:53

centrics or cookie bot. Very easy and very fast implementation.

9:58

So let's move on. We've now understood the GDPR and what we should do. What

10:04

about the PCD? How

10:06

do we do outreach without going to jail? So first, again, as a quick reminder,

10:11

the PCD law states,

10:13

and you can only reach out to someone if you have consent.

10:18

Consent means that I, for example, downloaded some specific asset that I gave

10:23

my information

10:24

means I'm actually requesting that information. So I'm giving consent that you

10:28

can contact me.

10:29

The same is when I'm booking a demo. Obviously, you then have my consent to

10:34

contact me about that

10:35

demo that will follow. So think about all the ways where users give you consent

10:41

also when someone

10:42

registers for your webinar linked in, for example. That also works. But if

10:45

there's no consent,

10:47

you're legally not allowed to outreach them in Germany. I know it's tough. It's

10:51

a very different

10:52

world. But that's how it is. So especially emails are technically illegal.

10:59

However,

11:00

they're still tolerated culturally and most companies still do it knowing that

11:06

it's not legal.

11:07

So while talking about culture, let's dive into what are the actual cultural

11:13

differences.

11:17

One very important thing when selling to Germany executives is that you must

11:21

keep it formal,

11:21

especially in the German mittelchamp. The German mittelchamp actually makes up

11:25

of around 95%

11:28

of the whole cross-domestic product. So it's almost all of it. In enterprises

11:34

and small businesses,

11:35

there aren't so relevant in Germany. It's mostly the mittelchamp in Germany.

11:39

And what you must know here is that they really value a high level of

11:44

professionalism.

11:45

So keep it formal first, especially when you first enter a conversation with

11:48

them.

11:49

Be very task-focused. We Germans have the image of being highly efficient. And

11:56

that's how we

11:56

want our meetings to be. So it is really all about efficiency. Be prepared, be

12:02

structured,

12:02

guide them through the meeting, and don't talk about things that don't really

12:07

are relevant in

12:08

the meeting. Be reliable. We expect actually a very different level of

12:14

reliability compared to

12:16

US people. So I can give you an example. I've met a US executive, very big

12:22

software company

12:23

at Web Summit last year. We had the most amazing conversation for like half an

12:27

hour.

12:28

And he said, "Please, I've been looking for someone to help me with Go to

12:31

Market in Daff.

12:32

For ages, I couldn't find someone. Please use my email, send me email, we'll

12:35

book a call and we'll

12:36

talk about it." And I kept my word. I then sent an email. He never got back to

12:43

me ever. I was like,

12:45

"Okay, well, that's how it is, I guess." So we really value people being on

12:52

time. And also,

12:53

if you're doing what you say you're going to do. We also prefer Britain over

12:58

spoken communication,

12:59

which means especially when you're sending emails, have very professional

13:03

structured emails.

13:05

Just include every single detail that people want to have. And just, yeah, just

13:12

prove a high level

13:13

of professionalism here. And also then, what's important is if you meet someone

13:16

for the first time

13:17

or just starting building a connection, value or just first talk about business

13:24

. And only once

13:25

you've gotten to know someone and you've moved with your business first, only

13:29

then try to establish

13:31

also a private connection. Don't start with asking about their private lives in

13:35

the first call. It's

13:36

not what someone wants to do. All right. So we've understood what

13:40

transformation we need mindset-wise.

13:43

We've understood what market differences they are. Let's dive into the

13:46

mechanics. And I think this is

13:48

the most, most interesting one because obviously, especially the market

13:53

differences will lead to

13:55

different mechanics that we need to execute. So here's how you can go into

13:59

building your go-to

14:01

market plans at legal foundation. We've talked about this, define your SAP,

14:04

core cases, use cases,

14:05

KPIs and how to evaluate if you're successful. Localize your creative strategy,

14:10

warm up the

14:10

market, start selling, assess product market fit and scale. For today, because

14:16

it's the most relevant,

14:17

I will be focusing on these three in the following. Localizing your creative

14:22

strategy means you must

14:24

also start with fundamentals again when you go into a new market. Yeah, this is

14:28

really important

14:29

and this is what most companies actually miss. They think they've done their

14:32

fundamentals already for

14:34

their local market, for example, US, which means they don't have to do it again

14:38

and that's wrong.

14:39

This is actually the most crucial part. Do your research, consolidate, do

14:44

proper campaign

14:45

conception for that country and testing it right. Just as you would as a fresh

14:50

startup again.

14:51

Do your qualitative research again. Yeah, talk to your actual customers and

14:57

talk to people in that

14:58

market before you create your campaign. See if the messaging resonates and we

15:04

have a template for

15:05

doing customer research questions. As you can see here, you will be getting all

15:09

of this at the end.

15:10

So you don't need to take pictures also, by the way. I will give you the slides

15:15

. Also then use a

15:16

localized valuable position canvas as a working document. So all the info you

15:21

get from talking to

15:22

customers, from doing your research, put it here, have a separate one from the

15:27

one that you're using

15:28

in your local market for DAH for example and also constantly iterate this one.

15:34

Why is this important localizing your creative strategy? And I've brought with

15:41

you an example

15:42

here from Loxo, actually a US company in the recruiting space. Maybe some of

15:45

you know.

15:46

They had a great success with the Bigfoot reference as you can see here in the

15:52

US.

15:54

It worked amazingly. They generated a lot of pipeline with it and we looked at

15:59

the whole

15:59

campaign. We were like, what is Bigfoot? So it's not relevant at all in Germany

16:04

. So we killed this

16:06

matter for completely. And most of you know, only 5% are ready to buy at one

16:15

specific point of time

16:16

in the market. And obviously that also counts for DAH. It's not different there

16:23

And especially when you're going into DAH as a company that's not known in that

16:27

market,

16:27

you will probably not be top of mind when someone is ready to buy it. So you

16:33

must make an even

16:34

more larger effort to create demand before you actually capture that demand.

16:39

And that is really

16:40

essential. Don't go into an into a market and start out reaching people and

16:43

start stalling right

16:44

away. Focus on creating demand first, educating that market and then slowly

16:50

transitioning into

16:51

also adding demand capture campaigns. So what we've created here is a process

16:59

of five questions

17:00

that you can use that help you to know what content you should be creating

17:04

along the way

17:05

to actually get to then capture that demand. And we use these five key

17:09

questions, which is why

17:10

change? Why now? What's the solution? What's the process? Why you? Why change?

17:14

For example,

17:15

if you're a CMS platform, a headless CMS, you should be telling people why

17:20

change from using

17:21

WordPress to a more modern solution, for example, and why that makes sense also

17:25

in DAH.

17:25

So if you're actually answering all these five questions, then you're able to

17:33

educate people at

17:34

scale also in that new market, which means that you will be able to create real

17:38

demand.

17:38

So try to think of all the questions that your ICPs have from being completely

17:43

problem unaware

17:44

until where can I actually sign? Who thinks that if you'd be answering all

17:49

these questions from

17:50

being completely problem unaware to where can I sign? You'd be more successful

17:54

in that market.

17:54

Yeah, cool. Next, I think it's important to not over-engineer your whole go-to-

18:04

market motion. You

18:04

don't need 10 different channels. You can start with the most fundamental ones.

18:08

So just localize

18:10

one landing page. That's enough where German people can find the information

18:14

and just use one

18:15

channel where you can actually reach your target audience. In most cases, it

18:18

will be linked in

18:19

or meta. And then you can warm up the market by building trusted scale through

18:25

actually

18:25

educational content. And with warming up, I mean that you should probably not

18:30

start selling

18:30

before you're into the market for like three months, roughly that time. It

18:36

depends on the context,

18:38

obviously, on what kind of solution. But usually I would recommend warm up the

18:42

market for three

18:43

months and then only go and book calls from the people you've been engaged with

18:49

So how can we now use these five guiding questions to create content? What we

18:57

like to do is to

18:58

create this three-step formula from extract to subtract to attract. And what we

19:05

do is we

19:06

take subject matter experts and maybe you will not have a German-speaking

19:09

subject matter expert

19:11

in your company. So in this case, what I would suggest you is that you look for

19:15

thought leaders

19:16

in Germany that have your audience that are in your category, can speak German

19:21

obviously,

19:22

and that will help you create that content. So you can just book them for an

19:26

interview, for example,

19:27

that you will record and they will answer the questions, especially for the why

19:32

change and why

19:33

now question, where they don't need specific product knowledge. Because they

19:37

will have much

19:38

higher trust in your brand, they will be known already within your target

19:41

audience. So use their

19:43

face and you can benefit from this a lot. And then you sit down for 60 minutes,

19:48

you ask them all

19:49

the questions from problem unaware to where can I sign and they answer them.

19:53

And that will give you

19:55

a lot of different content that focuses on creating demand by really providing

20:00

value through education.

20:04

And this is how it can look like in practice. So what we've done here for HRS

20:08

is you can see the

20:10

five guiding questions and they have literally answered the most asked

20:14

questions by the customers

20:16

answered in a normal video. And then it's accompanied by a specific image ads

20:21

to add more formats to

20:23

make the whole story more round. And in the case for Loxo, where we've helped

20:31

go to market in Dach

20:32

for that US company, we created new creatives, but also on top of that we use

20:37

the creatives that

20:37

work in the US to see if they also work in the German speaking market. And we

20:43

adapted all of it

20:45

to the local culture, as you can see here, it's all in German. And it worked

20:49

really, really well.

20:51

So maybe some of you know Sam Kühle. And actually this is the message I got

20:55

from him today. They

20:57

only with their own approach of copy pasting their US campaigns in Dach, they

21:02

generated in 30 days

21:04

one high-intent fundraiser. After we've localized everything, we've now

21:10

generated 14 high-intent

21:12

fundraisers in 15 days. So that's the difference you can make if you really

21:19

take this approach and

21:20

do it step by step and not over rush things. To return, it's a 14 times growth

21:25

rate and only half

21:26

the time. I mean, we don't need to discuss if that makes, if that's worth it.

21:30

So

21:31

here's some additional place that work really well. I would suggest you that

21:37

you reach out to

21:38

German thought leaders. And that's quite a few actually on LinkedIn for example

21:41

. And you pay them

21:42

to write organic posts about your product, about your category that you can

21:46

then use and push with

21:48

your ads. Because maybe you've heard about the new thought leader ads that

21:52

allow you to push posts

21:54

not only from your own employees, but also from people that are not working in

21:57

your company.

21:58

So you can use that to your advantage when you go into market in Dach, for

22:02

example.

22:03

Reach out to thought leaders, pay them to mention your product in their post

22:07

and push it in your

22:09

campaign. Because again, here they will have much higher trust than you will

22:13

have in that market.

22:15

What's also working really well is hosting a webinar, for example, or any other

22:22

digital event

22:23

with a B2B sales provider in Dach that's already bigger in that market and

22:29

shares the same audience

22:30

and as you, but it's not a direct competitor obviously, then they wouldn't do

22:33

it. But if you

22:34

have a product that's complementing each other for the same audience, that's a

22:38

great way to start

22:40

building trust in Germany. Because you will be focusing on providing value only

22:45

. And you will be

22:46

put next to a company that's already successful in the market already has that

22:50

trust. And if you

22:51

combine that with inviting, for example, German thought leaders into the web

22:56

inar, you will have

22:56

everything at once and that works really well. So again, being associated with

23:02

familiar faces

23:03

and brands will trust like 10 times faster. So remember, trust is the most

23:08

important currency

23:09

in Germany. We highly, highly value it. That's why we have so many e-source,

23:16

for example, and all

23:17

these kinds of awards that companies have in Germany that prove that they're

23:22

trustworthy

23:23

and are compliant to different laws and regulations. So especially when you're

23:28

in US vendor,

23:29

Germans typically are more skeptical if you actually comply to the rules. So

23:33

you must make

23:34

an additional effort to be transparent and have clear communication of how you

23:38

handle data, for

23:39

example. So you must double down here. And I want to finish my speech with one

23:47

final question.

23:48

If people in EMEA would see what you see, know what you know, feel the passion

23:55

that you feel,

23:57

believe what you believe. Would it be easier to sell in EMEA? Thank you so much

24:05

And if you'd like to have all the slides and also that customer research

24:16

template,

24:17

pull out your phone and scan this QR code and then I will send it to you in

24:23

your inbox.