Attention Conservation Notice: The following post provides a strategy for leveraging market research and a role-based database build to reduce costs and jumpstart expansion into new territories.

Expanding into new territories is always a challenge because it involves a slow and painful ramp up investment. First, you have to understand the unique needs of buyers in foreign territory and then you also need to build a presence. You won’t know what works and what doesn’t until you’ve jumped in and tested a few techniques and this takes time. Will Google Adwords pull in buyers or do you need to rely more heavily on face-to-face events?

Another issue, in recent months, has been the economy. With the decline of the US dollar, lead generation and promotional campaigns cost more than ever before. I was recently quoted a staggering $145 per lead from a white paper syndication service in the UK. Who knows how much those same leads are today, just a few months later.

So, what’s a B2B Marketer on a budget to do? With both time and money at stake, we chose to invest in a little upfront research and role-based database building. By investigating the pain points and decision drivers of the UK market and building out a complete role-based database of all of our target companies in that country, we were able to quickly provide a list of prospects for our in-country inside sales professionals.

With this database in hand, we were able to experiment with Google Adwords and other promotional activities to find the right mix. What worked? Well, calling on the new database, and exhibiting at live events worked best in 2007. Google AdWords helped us secure a few introductions. And, direct mail and email marketing did not yield much.

What has worked best for you in Europe or Asia-Pac?