15 markets, one team, 16% more revenue

Challenge

MySteel sells premium steel design products for gardens and outdoor living across 15 European markets. But despite its international presence, its marketing approach was largely the same everywhere: similar campaigns, comparable budgets, and a strong reliance on Google Performance Max.

• Too much focus on the lower funnel: Google Ads worked well in established markets like Germany and the Netherlands, where strong brand awareness and existing demand drove solid results. But newer markets lacked that foundation and bottom-funnel campaigns quickly hit their limits, leaving significant growth potential untapped.
• Not enough investment in demand generation: Without dedicated upper-funnel activity, MySteel had few ways to generate new demand, reach new audiences, or learn which approaches worked best. Ad creatives often ran unchanged for months. Recurring promotions had no dedicated campaign activation either, competing with always-on sales campaigns instead of getting their own spotlight.

Solution

• Market-specific strategies instead of one-size-fits-all: Together with smec, MySteel rethought its existing approach. Rather than treating every market the same, the team grouped markets based on their maturity and growth potential. Each country received a tailored strategy, with one clear goal: make paid media work for the realities of each market and drive profitable growth.
• A full-funnel approach, not just bottom-funnel performance: smec transformed a performance-led setup into a connected full-funnel strategy that did more than capture existing demand. It created new demand and nurtured it through every stage of the customer journey:
  1. Upper funnel: Meta, Pinterest, YouTub and programmatic campaigns built brand awareness and reached potential customers before they were actively looking to buy.
  2. Mid funnel: Meta campaigns optimized for landing page views and dynamic programmatic remarketing brought interested audiences to the website and kept MySteel top of mind.
  3. Lower funnel: Always-on Advantage+ Catalog Ads, dedicated promotional campaigns, Google Search, and Performance Max captured purchase intent and turned it into conversions.
• Smarter budget allocation and relevant creatives: Budgets and creative assets were tailored to each market, too. Core and growth markets benefited from a broader channel mix, while selected test markets initially focused on fewer channels. Creatives were produced centrally, then adapted with AI for local languages and campaign-specific formats. They were refreshed every six to eight weeks to keep campaigns relevant. Recurring promotions also received dedicated campaign activations.

Results

After nine months, the new approach delivered measurable growth: revenue increased by 16%, orders by 18% and incremental ROAS was 8.9x. Growth that paid for itself: every €250K in new ad spend brought in €2.22M in net revenue. And that money went to new ground. Pinterest, YouTube, and programmatic ads didn’t exist in this account before.

The strongest gains came from markets that had previously struggled to benefit from the growth seen in more established countries. Revenue in Denmark increased by 162%, in Poland by 129%, and in the Czech Republic by 114%. Established markets continued to grow, too, with Germany up 17% and the Netherlands up 15%.

The takeaway: growing internationally means understanding what makes each market different – and adapting your marketing strategy accordingly.

Fifteen markets, one shared success

In 9 months

+16%

Net revenue

In 9 months

8.9x

Incremental ROAS

In 9 months

+18%

Orders

Revenue gains by market category:

Main Markets

+17%

Germany

+14%

Netherlands

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Growth Potential

+14%

France

+37%

Spain

+25%

Ireland

+9%

Austria

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Test & Learn

+167%

Denmark

+119%

Poland

+118%

Czechia

+74%

Sweden

+61%

Portugal

+55%

Luxembourg

We were running the same playbook in every market and wondering why only two of them worked. Splitting our markets into tiers and finally building real upper-funnel investment let us keep growing our biggest markets while proving out the smaller ones — instead of choosing between the two.

Teun Sleegers General Director, MySteel