Kamal Noori
Choosing Your Next Market (Don't Guess It)
Most brands pick their next country the same way: a spike in traffic from somewhere, a founder who likes the place, or “Germany is big, let’s do Germany.”
That’s not a decision. That’s a vibe. And a vibe will happily send you into a market with great demand and margins that vanish at customs.
Market selection is a ranking problem. You score candidates on a few dimensions, you do the boring math, and the answer usually surprises you. Once you’ve confirmed you’re actually ready to expand (the readiness test), this is the first real decision.
The dimensions that decide it
Score 4 to 6 candidate countries on each. Don’t average them blindly, some are veto factors.
Demand. Is there proven appetite for your category? Use Google Keyword Planner with the country set as location to read real search volume for your core terms. Check Google Trends for direction. If you already ship internationally, your own analytics tell you where unsolicited orders come from, that’s demand that found you without a cent of spend.
Margin after the real costs. This is the veto factor everyone skips. Take your product to that market and subtract everything: cross-border shipping, import duties, VAT, payment processing in local currency, higher return rates, currency risk. A product with 60% margin at home can land at 20% abroad once a customs duty and a longer shipping lane eat it. If the post-landed margin can’t fund acquisition, the demand doesn’t matter.
Competition and price ceiling. Who’s already there? Search your terms in-country. If three established local brands own the auction and the shelf, your CAC will be brutal and your prices capped. A slightly smaller market with weaker competition often beats a giant one that’s already carved up.
Payment habits. Conversion dies if you don’t offer how people pay. Germans want invoice and SEPA. The Dutch want iDEAL. Plenty of markets run on cash-on-delivery or BNPL. If your checkout only takes cards, you’ll lose half the cart in markets where cards aren’t the default. Check whether your platform and processor support local methods before you commit.
Language and operational difficulty. A market sharing your language or a language you can support is far cheaper to enter, support, and write ads for. A market that needs full localization, native support, and translated legal pages is a bigger bet. Not a no, just a higher cost to weigh.
Do the boring math
Build a simple scoring sheet. Rows are candidate countries. Columns are the dimensions above, scored 1 to 5. Weight margin and demand highest, because they’re the engine. Treat margin-after-duties as a hard floor: any market that can’t clear breakeven CAC is out, no matter how it scores elsewhere.
The winner is rarely the biggest market. It’s the one with proven demand, margin that survives landed costs, beatable competition, payment methods you can support, and a language you can handle. Often that’s a neighbor, not a flag you find exciting.
The psychology: don’t fall in love with a flag
The trap is loving the potential of a huge market. “It’s 80 million people” feels like opportunity. But you don’t sell to 80 million people. You sell to the slice with demand, who can pay how you accept payment, at a price that clears your landed margin, in an auction you can afford. That slice might be smaller than a “smaller” market next door.
Pick the country the spreadsheet picks, not the one the daydream picks.
What to do next
- Score 4 to 6 candidates on the dimensions above. Margin-after-duties is the veto.
- Validate demand with Keyword Planner set to that country, plus your own export orders.
- Confirm payment methods are supported before you commit a euro.
- Pick one. Then go make it feel native, which is a different job than translation: Translation Is Not Localization.
Choose with the math. The vibe can come along for the ride, but it doesn’t get a vote.