Why 60% of Overseas Enterprises Fail in Their First Year? Not Because of Products, But Outdated Strategies

19 February 2026
Why do 60% of overseas enterprises fail in their first year? It’s not that the products are bad—it’s that the strategies are outdated. This article breaks down three real-world industry cases, revealing how to use the Glocalization model and dual-engine campaigns to reduce customer acquisition costs by 78% and triple ROI within 90 days.

Why 60% of Overseas Enterprises Fail in Their First Year

According to a 2023 McKinsey report, 6 out of every 10 overseas enterprises fail within their first year—driven by a dual breakdown: “cultural misjudgment + channel mismatch.” For your business, this means: Translation-based overseas expansion is equivalent to self-destruction.

Take Shein’s entry into the French market as an example: its globally uniform return policy failed to align with Europe’s expectation of “no-questions-asked returns,” leading to a surge in customer complaints and a 35% spike in fulfillment costs. The technical root lies in the lack of dynamic modeling capabilities for local consumer behavior. Missing semantic sentiment analysis means that user trust thresholds cannot be identified—after all, emotions drive decisions rather than functional parameters.

Even more critical are compliance blind spots. GDPR, VAT, and platform liability laws aren’t just legal issues; they’re technical parameters that directly impact the conversion funnel. Data collection violations mean ads can be taken down at any time, driving ROI to zero—because regulators won’t accept “we didn’t know” as an excuse.

The true winners have long since elevated localization from execution-level strategy to strategic modeling. Next, you’ll see how Glocalization can reshape brand positioning, turning outsiders into local partners.

How Glocalization Rewrites the Emotional Contract

Glocalization (global localization) isn’t about language translation—it’s about value reconstruction. At its core is a dual-drive approach: “global brand assets + local emotional connections,” enabling standardized brand power to grow new roots in local minds.

During Japan’s cherry blossom season, Starbucks launched limited-edition matcha desserts and portable tea sets, weaving the “ichigo ichie” spirit of tea ceremony into its marketing efforts. Sales surged 43% in a single season, while repeat purchase rates climbed 28%. Behind this success lies a replicable technical architecture:

  • Semantic Sentiment Analysis: By using NLP to analyze social media sentiment around “cherry blossoms,” Starbucks discovered that “transient beauty” and “family reunions” were the core anchors—meaning product design could precisely target emotional needs, because emotions drive purchasing decisions.
  • Local KOL Network Mapping: Identifying high-trust “lifestyle aesthetic bloggers” resulted in content engagement rates 3.2 times higher than those of traditional influencers—doubling communication efficiency, as micro-influencers bring stronger community resonance.
  • Compliance Adaptation Engine: Automatically calibrating food labels, advertising laws, and holiday taboos reduced pre-launch compliance cycles from 14 days to just 48 hours—avoiding brand damage caused by cultural misjudgments, thanks to automation that minimizes human error.

The essence of this model is to use technology to reduce market friction, transforming “understanding locals” from experiential dependency into systematic capability. So, how do we ensure these voices cut through information noise?

TikTok and Google Ads: A Collaborative Strategy

The most effective overseas digital channel combination isn’t about choosing the best one—but about making two channels work in tandem: TikTok sparks interest, while Google Ads captures high-intent searches. This dual-engine strategy reduces average brand conversion costs by 52% (MetaQ 2024 report). For you, this means that for every dollar spent, competitors need to spend 2.1 times as much to achieve the same results.

Anker first tested content styles on TikTok in the German market, discovering that “family life scenarios” achieved a 67% higher 3-second completion rate. They then shifted 70% of their initial budget toward TikTok to reach interested audiences—and simultaneously deployed RLSA (Remarketing Lists for Search Ads) via Google Ads to retarget engaged users. As a result, when users entered the active search phase, Google took over conversions, achieving an ROAS of 3.8—far exceeding the industry average of 2.1.

Multi-platform attribution models allow you to clearly see the complete path from “impression” to “purchase,” because only by knowing where money is spent can you confidently increase investment. Our validated budget allocation formula is:

  • Early Stage (Awareness): TikTok 70% + Google 30%
  • Growth Stage (Consideration): TikTok 50% + Google 50%
  • Maturity Stage (Conversion): TikTok 30% + Google 70%

The core basis for dynamic adjustments is the growth in Google search volume and conversion rates among TikTok-engaged users—meaning budget allocation is no longer a guess, but a data-driven strategic decision.

Quantifying Real Returns: Who’s Making Money, Who’s Burning Cash

The real winners in overseas marketing focus on one number: Return on Investment (ROI). If you’re still using a “burn cash for growth” mindset when expanding overseas, you’ve already lost at the starting line—because competition ultimately comes down to unit economics.

We’ve broken it down into a quantifiable framework: Overseas ROI = (LTV × Market Share Increment) / (CAC + Compliance Costs + Currency Losses). This isn’t theoretical—it’s the underlying algorithm behind SHEIN’s crushing growth in North America.

Sensor Tower data shows that SHEIN’s user LTV reaches $210, while CAC sits at just $38 and NPS hits 67. Meanwhile, H&M’s LTV was $145 during the same period, but CAC soared to $62. This means SHEIN earns an extra $73 per customer acquired—refined operations directly translate into profit advantages, as lower CAC and higher LTV create a positive flywheel effect.

This flywheel is supported by three pillars: Double-Engine Campaigns Reduce CAC, Localized Supply Chains Boost LTV, and Multi-Currency Settlements Curtail Currency Losses. One fast-fashion brand reused this model and increased its ROI from 0.8 to 2.3 within 90 days—meaning every dollar invested begins to self-replicate, as system synergy amplifies marginal benefits.

Launching Your First Overseas Market in 90 Days

If your overseas expansion plan is stuck in endless “research” loops, you’ve already lost—markets don’t wait for the hesitant. Our 90-day action plan, validated across 17 DTC brands, shortened cold-start cycles by an average of 42%, with the fastest achieving positive ROAS by day 63.

Days 1–15: Lock Down High-Potential Markets

Stop relying on the crude logic that “good English = suitable for Europe and America.” AI-powered policy scanning tools (like the G-GEO Compliance Engine) let you quickly identify entry barriers (GDPR, EPR registration, etc.), because early compliance equals seizing time windows.

Day 30: Launch a Minimal Local MVP

You don’t need a perfect website—but you must include three key elements: local payment support (such as GrabPay or cash-on-delivery), cultural adaptation of visual flows, and embedded trust signals (logistics badges). A pet hardware brand tested a single-page site in Poland and achieved a customer acquisition cost 37% lower than the industry average—proving that lightweight launches can still efficiently validate markets.

Days 60–90: Reframe Growth Through Attribution Data

AB testing isn’t about who has the flashier creatives—it’s about verifying which value proposition resonates with cross-border decision-making chains. UTM2.0 + Meta Conversion API lets you track the entire journey from click to repeat purchase, turning ad spend into strategic intelligence investments. A home goods brand found that emphasizing “EU carbon tariffs included” drove LTV 2.3 times higher than low-price promotions—this is true insight-driven growth.

90 days isn’t the end—it’s the starting point for a data flywheel. Download the compliance checklist and local payment guide now, and the next name written into success stories could be yours.


Once you’ve precisely anchored local emotions and compliance boundaries through the Glocalization model, and efficiently reached high-intent users with dual-engine campaigns, the next critical leap is to transform “traffic” into customer assets that are “trackable, interactive, and capable of generating recurring revenue”—and this is exactly what Bay Marketing builds for you: a smart conversion loop. It goes beyond simply collecting email addresses, leveraging AI-driven, full-link email operations to turn every outreach email into your “second localized business card” in the target market: from semantically adapted template generation and spam risk prediction, to intelligent replies across time zones and real-time attribution of delivery performance—truly achieving integration across “acquisition–reach–interaction–retention.”

Whether you’re accelerating expansion as a small-to-medium B2B service provider in Southeast Asia, or deepening your presence as a DTC brand in Europe and America, Bay Marketing offers high deliverability rates (90%+), dynamic maintenance of global IP pools, and GDPR/CCPA-compliant email infrastructure. Now that you’ve mastered the strategic map for overseas expansion, it’s time to equip that map with precise navigation and efficient engines—Visit Bay Marketing’s official website now and begin your journey toward building a smart customer data ecosystem.