The trick to ShopBack’s successful market expansions? Localize.

If you’re always on the hunt for discounts and promotions, you would be familiar with ShopBack. Founded by six enterprising individuals in Singapore, their cashback rewards system was well-received in the home market when it first launched in 2014. Following this success, ShopBack grew to be Southeast Asia’s largest and fastest growing online loyalty platform, expanding into six different markets in just three years.

To find out more about their exponential growth, we caught up with ShopBack’s Head of Market Expansion, Josephine Chow, to bring you market expansion tips and a sneak peek of her talk at Tech in Asia Singapore 2017!

In just 3 years, ShopBack has expanded into 6 different markets. What’s the secret behind this success?

“This may seem cliche but the greatest secret that makes it all possible really lies in the great team behind ShopBack. Think about it – expansion plans, marketing ideas, company’s roadmaps and so on are just words on a paper. If you don’t translate them into actions, they shall forever remain locked as just, well, plans.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not comparing the importance of plans and actions. I do believe that you should always measure twice before you cut. But one of ShopBack’s core values, “Killer Team Execution”, really resonates very well with the entire team. While being part of the expansion team may sound quite fancy, we’re usually armed with very limited resources and have to find ways (from wherever we are) to get sh*t done regardless if it’s for legal or tech or anything really.”

Which SEA market do you think is the most challenging to enter and why?

“That’s a tough one. SEA is a very fragmented market and the only one-size-fits-all formula that we can apply here is our Cashback model. Each country has its own cultural nuances and different levels of consumer maturity.

If I were to pick, I’d say that language barrier poses quite a challenge at the point of market entry. For countries like Indonesia and Thailand where locals who are eloquent in English may come few and far between, miscommunication due to language capabilities is aplenty. The fastest way to resolve this is really to hire locally.”

What’s your all-time favourite marketing campaign and why?

“For the sake of recency, it’s gotta be United Airlines’ 4D (Drag-Dr-David-Dao) offline campaign and their bold “Sorry not sorry” approach. They did get all the press they wanted. So yes, I’m only half kidding ”

What is one advice you would give startups who want to market their product overseas?

“Localize. Localize. Localize.”

And lastly, what can we look forward to during your talk at Tech in Asia Singapore 2017?

“I’ll be sharing ShopBack’s journey into our six markets as well as some key learnings that will hopefully be useful for anyone planning for market expansion too. Hope to see you there!”

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From now till April 28, you can grab your tickets to attend her session at 10 percent off when you use this code ‘tiasg10’.

Get ready to equip yourself with the essential knowledge and actionable tips at Josephine’s keynote session at Tech in Asia Singapore 2017’s Marketing Stage, titled “How to Spread Your Message: The Nuts and Bolts of Marketing in Southeast Asia”.

This post The trick to ShopBack’s successful market expansions? Localize. appeared first on Tech in Asia.

from Tech in Asia https://www.techinasia.com/trick-shopback-market-expansions-localize
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