Finland is an exciting prospect for many e-commerce players planning to expand their business to the Nordic market. What the Finnish consumers lack in volumes they make up in consumer behavior. The stereotypical view of Finnish people being reserved and antisocial is quite accurate when it comes to our preferred shopping habits – we like to do our shopping from the comfort of our own homes where no salespeople will attack us with “can I help you” as soon as we enter the store.
If you are planning market expansion to Finland, you might have your doubts over our small population. Can we get enough volumes from Finland? Why would we take the chance?
If you are past this point you might also be wondering:
- How should I translate my website content? Should I find a suitable translation agency, use a translation service, or even take a chance with Google Translate? Or should I just stick with English texts?
Finnish consumers do understand English well but its never a good idea to leave your texts in English in the long run as Finnish consumers do prefer content in their native language and of course it affects your search engine visibility negatively. Using Google Translate is a certain recipe for disaster as Finnish is one of the most difficult languages in the world and we have seen too many cases where it has gone wrong especially if the original language has not been English. The same applies to automatic translation tools. We cannot really recommend anything else than human translations.
- Where can I find a call center in Finland that can give my customers quality service in their native language?
There are several companies that can provide you with similar services but besides Mixtra, its very difficult to find another that specializes in foreign companies, being able to work in all sorts of systems smoothly but the thing that really separates Mixtra from other call centers is our personnel´s skillset in the art of selling.
Many of our clients have a separate phone line just for orders and when taking in orders it’s only logical to do some additional sales. Our personnel are highly trained in upselling and gather a lot of praise with their sales statistics, often beating other countries in upsell rate comparison. Not to mention our super friendly customer service in both Finnish and Swedish, state of the art call-system with specified reports, ability to moderate social media accounts, operate a chat and efficiency in handling emails.
- How could my company get a physical location in Finland? I want to provide my customers smooth order return process. I also need some warehouse space for my products so that they can be shipped quickly to the customers.
Not a problem. We handle returns for many of our customers and as our office space also contains a large warehouse, we have plenty of space for your returns so that they can be sent back to your main warehouse in bulk. We also storage the whole product range of some of our clients and send their orders to the end consumers. This is very efficient for our clients that are from outside the European Union and would normally be restricted by free movement of goods from outside the EU.
- What digital marketing agency should I turn to in Finland? I want to find one that is easy to communicate with and has a real desire to see us growing in Finland
Have you ever been in a situation where you ask your digital marketing agency a question and it takes a week or two until you get an answer? We at Mixtra always respond to you usually on the same day and if the question is difficult, we will still reply to you straight away to let you know that we are working on it. There is no such thing as radio silence with us.
And why we want to see your company grow? Because we understand the fact that when we can grow our client’s business it has a huge effect for our future collaboration. If we manage to sell our other services to your company seeing you grow brings us more events to charge which is a win-win for both parties but even if it’s just our digital marketing services you are interested in, the mentality in digital marketing strategy remains the same – fast but profitable growth.
The cornerstone of our profitable growth strategy is effective measuring, active testing and allocating the ad spend where it actually brings results. Looking blindly at a certain level of return on ad spend will only get you so far, especially after all the changes in consumer privacy and measuring becoming more difficult all the time. Sometimes you need to be bold when spending on ads but not too bold – its all about the balance, making sure that the most cost-effective marketing channels like Newsletter and SEO are in place and the overall result stays profitable from month to month.
Our main area of expertise in the field of digital marketing consists of Google Ads, Facebook ads and Search Engine Optimization.
Google Ads is a challenging game in Finland. If your business is not on a mainstream field selling electronics, clothing etc. the search volumes are low, and you will face difficulties finding eligible keywords. Finnish words are also extremely long which causes problems with the character limits on the headlines. But working with us these things will not cause any problems as we will find the best keywords with enough search volumes no matter what field of business you are working in. And abbreviating words and expressions comes naturally to us not only because we are fluent in Finnish but also because we have spent so many hours scratching our heads thinking on how to rephrase typical marketing copy-texts that are much easier to use in other languages.
Facebook and Instagram advertising is much simpler in Finland. Our population is so small that you don’t really have to worry about targeting – keep the audiences broad and the algorithm will find your best audience. And even after all the IOS 14 changes taking place Facebook and Instagram are still the best channels besides Google Ads in prospecting and generating sales. But there are still mistakes to avoid that we see from time to time: using identical audiences in different campaigns causing audience overlapping, optimizing for link clicks instead landing page views in traffic campaigns, not tracking all the important events or optimizing campaigns on events like purchase when there are not enough purchases coming in. Just to name a few. No matter if you have winning formulas in other countries that you are looking to replicate in Finland and just need our help with the copy-texts or want us to take charge of the account completely, creating banners everything else we are happy to help.
In search engine optimization the most important thing is quality content. Some companies take the easy road buying backlinks and there is nothing wrong with that. We do not have a moral dilemma and can help you buy those links, but we don’t recommend doing so. We recommend creating quality content – category and blog texts rich with relevant keywords. Creating useful content that people will share to others online. And if don’t have those texts for us to translate no worries – we have a house full of copywriters that can create that content for you. And if your budget allows it – buying for backlinks can always be done in a better way in commercial cooperation with influencers that provide your site links that have authority. We are happy to help in finding your company the best influencers to highlight your products or services. And our vast network means that we can do so relatively fast.
Besides Google, Facebook, Instagram ads and SEO, our digital marketing services include Analytics, tracking and tag implementation, Bing Ads, LinkedIn ads, site checks and much more. We help both B2C and B2B businesses with their digital marketing endeavors so no matter what kind of business you have or what services you are interested in we can surely tailor a package that suits your individual needs.
- What payment and delivery methods should my store have in Finland? Are there any legalities I should know when operating in Finland?
We are happy to consult you with anything related to the Finnish market. We have vast experience of running webstores and companies in Finland so we have already solved those potential legal issues you might face, and we know all the winning formulas to make your webstore´s conversion rate as good as it can be.
By the way, if you wish to expand to all Nordic countries, we have can help you with all the mentioned services above also in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. If you are curious to hear more about our services and the Finnish/Nordic market, let’s get in touch!
Mixtra is one of the leading service providers in Finland for e-com companies from abroad with a long and profound experience in all areas of market entry, e-commerce, customer service & support and digital marketing.
Writer:
Aki Laitiainen
Mixtra Oy
Account Manager
