Shopify Guru Spent $100M on Ads: Where to Start in Europe
Chris Erthel is one of Europe's strongest Meta advertising specialists. He scaled Hello Body past $100 million in revenue, consulted for Uniqlo with a $330 million annual ad budget, and is now selling his company and launching a new brand.
In 2019, I flew to Barcelona to learn advertising from him, taking notes like a student. Seven years later, I invited him on my podcast and spent an hour and a half digging into one question: what should an entrepreneur do who makes $10-20 million at home but is starting from zero in Western markets?
Inside: which country to start with, how much money you actually need to enter, how many months it takes to know whether a brand is alive or dead, which metric matters more than ROAS, and why Black Friday is a bad idea.
00:00 Barcelona 2019
01:40 Where to start: Northern Europe, then Germany and France
03:01 One ad, two countries: amp it up for the US, tone it down for Germany
04:18 Why they don't use AI influencers
05:35 Shopify vs AI-built websites
07:16 The first 30 days of a new brand
08:18 Ad account structure: testing on ABO, scaling on CBO
09:33 The metric they're obsessed with
11:47 Entry budget: €1,000 a month
13:17 The three-month rule and six shut-down brands
15:50 Mass-market products vs narrow niches
16:51 Where to launch cosmetics, supplements, and apparel
19:40 What kills brands in Europe: returns, payments, language
20:32 Tools they actually use
25:24 How I built my own business management system in Telegram
29:50 Case study: a 74-year-old company, $50 million offline, pennies online
32:17 Price in the first second of the ad
34:46 Scaling on Sundays
38:19 Ethical advertising
40:37 Black Month instead of Black Friday
45:33 A breathing technique after tough calls
Shownotes:
AW Speech von Chris: https://www.chriserthel.com/speeches
Insta: / chris_erthel
Happiness Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5X1OKfU...
30% Off on Omnisend https://www.omnisend.com/chris-erthel/
Weavy: https://weave.figma.com/
LinkedIn: / chriserthel
#advertising #ecommerce #goingglobal #amazon #shopify #marketing