5 Watch Outs Before Going International With Facebook Ads

Going international is a great way to scale your business with Facebook ads.

There’s less competition in other markets compared to the US and enough demand if done right.

We did that with one of our clients (case study) and saw tremendous success including increasing order volume by 62%.

But, there’s a number of watch outs to consider before you launch internationally.

The top 5 watch outs before going international with Facebook ads:

1. Data compliance based on region

2. Selling in localized currency

3. Selling in localized language

4. Making international shipping capabilities and costs clear

5. Transparency around duties and taxes

Until you’ve laid the groundwork for each of these, it doesn’t make sense to go international.

Thankfully, each of these challenges has an appropriate solution.

Data compliance: Make sure your website is compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to sell in European Union countries. Without this, you could be fined 1% of global revenue. There are apps and plugins that can help.

Selling in localized currency: 92% of shoppers prefer to make purchases on sites that price in their local currency and 33% are likely to abandon a purchase if pricing is in U.S. dollars only.

Shopify now allows you to have certain regions see and checkout in their own currency. Apps can also help expand to currencies beyond the regions Shopify supports. (Unfortunately, this is an either/or choice, you can’t have both an app and the Shopify feature on).

Selling in localized language: People prefer to buy in their own language. If you don’t have localized sites you can use apps like Weglot to help auto-translate your existing site. W/o translations, you can still target English speaking countries and English speakers globally.

Additionally, a tool like Weglot can help you sell domestically as well. You can start reaching the 6.7M Hispanic dominant audience/16M Spanish speakers on Facebook this way.

Making international shipping capabilities and costs clear: You’d be surprised how many international visitors will reach out asking “do you ship to X country?” Make sure it’s clear in the header that you ship globally. There are even apps that allow you to dynamically say “We ship to X country.”

Transparency around duties and taxes: This is probably the consideration most advertisers don’t consider when selling outside the US. Duties can be either DDU (Delivered Duty Unpaid) or DDP (Delivered Duty Paid).

DDU means the customer doesn’t pay any duties until the product has reached their country. They don’t pay the duties, they don’t get the product and it can be sent back to you. DDU will give you a better conversion rate upfront, but more irate customers later (and more refunds).

DDP means the customer pays the duties when they buy the product. DDP will give you lower conversion rates, but most customers will keep the products because they’ve already paid for the full product.

You can use an app like Zonos to help ensure customers know upfront what the duties will be and set up DDU or DDP payments. Every product has different duties associated with it by country, so an app like this provides transparency for your customers.

Another thing to consider when choosing markets with duties is what’s called the de minimis value. This is the price point where a consumer can buy without incurring duties. Each country is different in their threshold.

Here’s a good resource to know the de minimis value for each country.

For example, Australia is a great market to test high value items because people can spend as much as 1000 AUD without incurring duties!

Conclusion

The opportunity outside the US is massive, but until you think through these foundational considerations, it might not make sense to start advertising internationally with your business.