How CanExport Funding Fueled Our International Expansion
Growing a business internationally is an exciting challenge, but it requires serious investment in new markets. When we decided to expand our global reach, we knew we’d need a focused strategy to penetrate highly competitive regions like the EU. That is where the CanExport Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) program came in.
The CanExport SMEs program is a crucial resource for Canadian companies looking to export their products and services. To help other businesses navigate the process, I am sharing our full journey with CanExport. We’ll look at everything from the initial application to the execution of our campaigns and the final results.
We leveraged CanExport funding to generate significant new export sales and build a strong pipeline in Europe.
The CanExport Application Roadmap
Applying for government funding can feel daunting, but breaking the process down into manageable steps makes a huge difference. If you’re considering the program, here are the procedural steps and key considerations you need to know.
Eligibility Essentials
Before you invest time in the application, make sure your business actually qualifies. The baseline requirements are fairly straightforward:
- Be an incorporated legal entity, LLP, or cooperative established in Canada.
- Operate as a for-profit business.
- Have an active Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) business number.
- Employ between 3 and 500 full-time staff.
- Report annual revenue between $300,000 and $100 million CAD in the last complete tax year.
Remember that you must complete, invoice, and pay for all activities before you can submit a claim for reimbursement.
Crafting a Strong Application
A successful application requires a well-defined project focus. You need to describe the specific activities you want to fund. These activities will make up your “project”, and you must request between $10,000 and $50,000 CAD in funding.
It is also critical to demonstrate that your project has strong economic ties to Canada. Be transparent and disclose any pre-existing relationships (like consultants or service providers) relevant to the proposed work. As for timing, make sure to submit your application at least 60 business days before the start date of your very first activity.
Submitting a well-researched project plan at least 60 days in advance is the most critical step to securing your funding.
Application Mechanics
Once your plan is ready, the actual submission process happens online. You’ll need to register for an account on the portal and complete your profile.
You’ll also need to upload some core documents. This includes your Certificate of Incorporation and a copy of your company’s GST 34 return (or equivalent) for revenue verification. Once your profile is verified, you can submit the official CanExport SMEs Application through the portal.
Showcasing Our European CanExport Campaign
With our funding approved, we set out to maximize our campaign impact across Germany, Belgium, and the UK. We wanted to make sure we could report tangible results back to the government.
Campaign Overview and Budget
The CanExport program was structured to cover 50% of our ad spend up to $16,000 CAD. This gave us a total budget target of $32,000 to deploy for our 2023 claim period.
Our initial strategy was to steadily increase our daily Google Ads spend. We started with a lower daily budget of $15 and gradually scaled up to $100 per day, eventually aiming for our target of $300 per day.
We ended up making a major strategic shift during the campaign rebuild phase. Instead of sticking strictly to general GRC and compliance content, we started targeting specific framework search queries like NIS2 and DORA. We also rolled out a GDPR update to capture highly relevant local intent.
Execution and Performance Metrics
We spread our budget across Google Ads and third-party analyst websites. Specifically, we allocated the majority of our budget to Google Ads and a substantial portion to platforms like Capterra, SoftwareAdvice, and GetApp.
The performance metrics were incredibly encouraging. We generated dozens of high-quality leads, with the majority coming directly from Google Ads which the campaigns achieved an 8.65% click-through rate (CTR) and a 1.29% conversion rate. Even better, nearly 50% of our ads were winning top placement above organic results.
We also invested a small budget into new content collateral, creating three new downloadable checklists and ten newly designed landing pages. This effort alone resulted in 35% MQL rates.
Targeting region-specific compliance frameworks like NIS2 and DORA was the key driver for our 8.65% CTRs.
Challenges and Lessons Learned
It wasn’t all smooth sailing. Funding approval arrived late in November, which significantly reduced our execution time. The European ad space was also highly competitive, requiring frequent bid adjustments and continuous optimization.
We ran into some hurdles with lead tracking and quality. For example, questions arose regarding lead attribution when certain contacts didn’t exist in our Dynamics CRM. Tracking accurate ROI proved difficult until those pipeline gaps were addressed.
Finally, the reporting process itself is quite complex. Preparing the final report required detailed accounting and answering specific questions about intellectual property (IP). Direct sales efforts proved far more effective than our initial plan to seek out partnerships.
Fast Forward to 2024: The Mexico Campaign
Following our success in Europe during 2023, we applied for and executed a completely separate CanExport project targeting the Mexican market in 2024. This subsequent effort served as a testing ground for expanding our Latin American presence.
The goal for this new campaign was to leverage our learnings from Europe to efficiently capture direct engagement in a new territory. While the total pipeline volume didn’t match our localized European efforts from the previous year, it provided critical lessons in lead quality and regional tracking.
Specifically, expanding into Mexico revealed unexpected bugs in how the leads were routing into our Dynamics CRM from our localized Spanish assets. We also faced hurdles with overall lead quality in this new region, eventually forcing us to process refunds for a handful of poorly qualified prospects. Ultimately, the 2024 Mexico campaign highlighted just how essential it is to have iron-clad CRM attribution before turning on ad spend in brand-new international territories.
Final Takeaways for Future Applicants
CanExport was a massive net positive for our team. It provided the financial leverage we needed to execute a robust international strategy and generate real sales pipeline.
If you’re a Canadian SME considering the program, my biggest piece of advice is to plan your lead tracking and reporting infrastructure extremely early. You should also budget for unexpected issues with lead quality in new regions. Establish a crystal clear project plan, align your marketing messaging with local regulations, and stay nimble with your ad spend.
The CanExport SMEs program provides crucial funding for Canadian businesses expanding internationally. We used this funding to scale our B2B SaaS campaigns in Europe, targeting specific frameworks like NIS2 and DORA. By investing in Google Ads and third-party analyst sites, we generated dozens of leads, an 8.65% CTR, and thousands in direct export sales. Despite challenges with late funding and complex reporting, the program was a massive success that fueled our global pipeline.
