In today’s highly competitive business environment, global market expansion is top of mind to everyone. However, going into new international markets can be a risky and expensive undertaking. What can growing businesses do to achieve quick wins and avoid early pitfalls? This talk aims to discuss concepts, strategies and best practices for building an agile globalization “test-and-learn” program to rapidly gain deep insights and create substantial business value at startups and lean companies.

1. An Agile, Data-Driven Approach to
Global Market Expansion Experiments
Claire Tsai
Global Expansion, Cloudflare

2. 1. What is Cloudflare?
2. Cloudflare Global Expansion
Our Goal, Testing Methodology, Early Results and Learnings
// Agenda

3. // What is Cloudflare?
Cloudflare provides performance, security, reliability,
and insights to anything connected to the Internet.

5. 115
Data centers globally
Cloudflare’s Global Anycast Network
2x
Speeds up each
request by
10%Internet requests
everyday
5MM
Requests/second

6. // Making the Internet work
Historically, companies bought separate hardware boxes for performance,
security, and reliability. This meant a high level of investment in capital
expenses, maintenance, and upgrades for systems that couldn’t scale with
the needs of the modern Internet. Cloudflare does away with the need for
these boxes by providing these benefits as a service, delivered at the
network’s edge. All without sacrificing performance for security.

7. Cloud migration creates a new landscape

8. Cloudflare’s benefits

9. Using Cloudflare is flexible and easy
FAST
Enterprise customers
can be up-and-running
in a matter of minutes
FLEXIBLE
Keep your code
EASY
Keep your host
SMOOTH
No operational
interruptions
No downtime

10. // Cloudflare works with an ecosystem of
more than 5,000 partners

11. // Enterprise grade for every industry
Hosting Providers VAR/MSP/SI
Cloud Platform/
SaaS Providers

12. // Cloudflare serves 6 million customers
More than 12,000 websites, APIs, apps, and SaaS companies
sign up for Cloudflare every day.

13. // Enterprise grade for every industry
Global Financial Services Public Sector Technology eCommerce

14. // Cloudflare is on a global mission
With more than 70% of traffic coming from international domains,
there is nothing more important to us than delivering to our users
an exceptional native experience across all languages, cultures and
platforms.

15. Our Global Expansion Goals
• Drive brand visibility
• Grow market share
• Stay ahead of competition
• Comply with local regulations
• Increase revenue

16. Our Market Testing Approach
• Be agile
• Get quick wins (& fails)
• Build scalable and repeatable experiment
• Test and optimize one at a time
• Benchmark and expand

17. Key Considerations
• Avoid investing in the wrong markets
• Prevent brand damage by maintaining quality on a
small scale
• Build the case for further investment
• Avoid a black hole of localization spend

18. // Phased Experiments
Phase 1 / Day 1 Phase 2 / Day 7 Phase 3 / Day 14 Phase 4 / Day 30
Market Research Create Experience Execute Test Analyze and Expand

19. We do extensive research
• Competitive Analysis
• Behavioral Research
• Language Preference
• Keyword Discovery
• Style Guide Development
• Glossary Development Phase 4 / Day 30
Analyze and Expand
Phase 3 / Day 14
Execute Test
Phase 2 / Day 7
Create Experience
Phase 1 / Day 1
Market Research

20. We listen to our customers
• 9 out of 10 internet users say when given a
choice of languages, they always visit a
website in their own language
• 2 out of 3 users say they would only buy
software which has been localized in their
language
Phase 4 / Day 30
Analyze and Expand
Phase 3 / Day 14
Execute Test
Phase 2 / Day 7
Create Experience
Phase 1 / Day 1
Market Research

21. We learn from our peers
• Most global websites support an average of
6 languages; the leading global websites
support 30 languages or more
• 90% of the opportunities can be reached by
13 popular languages; after that, companies
come to a point of diminishing returns
Phase 4 / Day 30
Analyze and Expand
Phase 3 / Day 14
Execute Test
Phase 2 / Day 7
Create Experience
Phase 1 / Day 1
Market Research

22. How we identify and prioritize markets
Evaluation
Criteria
Weighting
Revenue 15%
GDP 15%
Metric X 15%
Metric Y 5%
Metric Z 20%
English Tolerance 10%
Web Traffic 20%
Total 100%
Market Language
Weighted
Score
Tier
United States English 27.59
Tier 1
(50.12%)
Market A 6.64
Market B 5.92
Market C 5.06
Market D 4.91
4.19
Tier 2
(30.82%)
4.02
3.64
3.32
3.29
3.24
3.18
3.07
2.88
2.71
2.65
Tier 3
(19.06%)
2.39
2.25
2.19
2.11
1.97
1.84
0.93
100 100%
Significant
International
Opportunity ! Phase 4 / Day 30
Analyze and Expand
Phase 3 / Day 14
Execute Test
Phase 2 / Day 7
Create Experience
Phase 1 / Day 1
Market Research

23. We focus on Experience
• We don’t just translate new content and
publish new pages.
• We create a unique and engaging
experience for our target audience; an
experience tailored to their own language,
market and culture.
Phase 4 / Day 30
Analyze and Expand
Phase 3 / Day 14
Execute Test
Phase 2 / Day 7
Create Experience
Phase 1 / Day 1
Market Research

24. With Geo-targeted Customization
Phase 4 / Day 30
Analyze and Expand
Phase 3 / Day 14
Execute Test
Phase 2 / Day 7
Create Experience
Phase 1 / Day 1
Market Research

25. Set Budget, Timeline & Metrics
Phase 4 / Day 30
Analyze and Expand
Phase 3 / Day 14
Execute Test
Phase 2 / Day 7
Create Experience
Phase 1 / Day 1
Market Research
// Testing Template

26. Launch Test in Prioritized Markets
Phase 4 / Day 30
Analyze and Expand
Phase 3 / Day 14
Execute Test
Phase 2 / Day 7
Create Experience
Phase 1 / Day 1
Market Research
// Test Type: Campaign Landing Page // Metrics: CTR / CVR

27. Set up for Omni-Channel Search
Phase 4 / Day 30
Analyze and Expand
Phase 3 / Day 14
Execute Test
Phase 2 / Day 7
Create Experience
Phase 1 / Day 1
Market Research
1.
2.
3.
4.
// Test Type: Ad Copy // Metrics: CTR / CPC

28. Run Multiple Test Iterations
• Trans-creation
• Localization
• Translation
Phase 4 / Day 30
Analyze and Expand
Phase 3 / Day 14
Execute Test
Phase 2 / Day 7
Create Experience
Phase 1 / Day 1
Market Research

29. Analyze Results, Inform and Expand
• Test, analyze & optimize
• Select winning market, expand and pivot
• Define on-going localization strategy
• Develop market playbook
Phase 4 / Day 30
Analyze and Expand
Phase 3 / Day 14
Execute Test
Phase 2 / Day 7
Create Experience
Phase 1 / Day 1
Market Research

30. Acceleration Plan for Winning Mix
1. Test the
Market
2. Build
Presence, Get
Early Returns
3. Localize
Content in
Stages
4. Follow
Customer
Journey with
Full L10n
Weekly
Monthly
Ongoing
Phase 4 / Day 30
Analyze and Expand
Phase 3 / Day 14
Execute Test
Phase 2 / Day 7
Create Experience
Phase 1 / Day 1
Market Research
PPC
Display
Paid Social
Frontend Product
Local Support
Local Community
Full Web
SEO
Collateral
Video
Core Web

31. // Early Results?

32. Global Growth across ALL Metrics

33. Shaping our ‘17 Global Strategic Focus
UX
Content
Infrastructure
WHAT WHY HOW
• Customer Retention
• Customer Satisfaction
• Brand Integrity
• Ongoing UX optimization
• International NPS/CSAT
• Market playbook
• Customer Acquisition
• Customer Expansion
• Brand Awareness
• Expand breadth and depth of languages
• Drive traffic from new countries &
channels
• Style guide & glossary
• Time-to-Market
• Cost Effectiveness
• Scalability
• Centralize localization process
• Translation Management System (TMS)
• Templatization and code optimization

34. Furthering Cross-functional Collaboration
Demand
Generation
Campaigns
Email
SEO/SEM
Product Marketing
Product stories/messaging
Launch
Enable
Events
Company Thought Leadership
Lead Generation
Field Marketing Brand Awareness
Company stories
Brand Advertising
Content
Community / Developer
Social Media
External forums
Internal forum
Developer events
Marketing Ops
Email infra
Mktg auto tools
Reporting
Global Expansion
L10n programs
L10n infrastructure
Int’l market insight
Market entry & growth
Interactive
Design
Develop
Project Mgt

35. // Learnings

36. 1. Prioritization is Key
• Quality vs. quantity
• Global vs. local content
• Focus on “experience”

37. 2. Choose the Right Partner
• Quality vs. price
• Marketing vs. localization
• Expertise in target locale / domain
• Avoid vendor lock-in

38. 3. Document and Communicate Continuously
• Strategy and team education
• Every brand has a voice
• Style guide
• Glossary

39. 4. Dispel the “My Colleague Can Translate” Myth
• Multilingual staff are great resources for market
insight, but they are NOT professional translators

40. 5. Automate Inefficient Tasks Early
• Email is “yesterday”
• No more “copy-and-paste”

41. 6. We Have an Awesome Team!
Jess
Design
Yvonne
Design
?
?

42. // Questions?
Claire Tsai
Global Expansion, Cloudflare
claire@cloudflare.com | @clairetsai