Launching in Poland and Italy: How We Helped a Beauty Brand Expand into New Markets

Lamel is a Ukrainian cosmetics brand that has been offering innovative formulas and setting trends in the beauty industry for over a decade. Known for its high-quality, vibrant, and affordable makeup, Lamel has earned a loyal following both locally and abroad.

Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the brand intensified its international expansion efforts, with a focus on Poland and Italy.

Although Lamel already had some experience operating outside of Ukraine, this period marked a renewed commitment to building brand awareness and connecting with new European audiences. The brand began promoting its products on the local versions of the MAKEUP platform. At the same time, we launched a comprehensive international advertising campaign to boost visibility and drive traffic to partner websites.

Here’s how we executed the campaign using media and performance tools, which worked without a branded landing page and generated over 5 million impressions across both countries.

Goals and Challenges

Strategic goals:

• Build brand awareness in new markets.
• Increase sales on partner e-commerce platforms.

Tactical goals:

• Maximize reach, video views, and clicks.

We executed the campaign around product launches and promotional periods. To support both awareness and traffic objectives, we proposed a split strategy using video and display ads.

Strategy and Tools

1. To build awareness, we used reach- and view-focused tools:

• YouTube Ads: TrueView In-Stream (15 sec) — for deeper storytelling about the product; Bumper Ads (6 sec) — to reinforce messaging and increase frequency.

• TikTok Ads: In-Feed Video format — to reach younger audiences and boost exposure.
• Programmatic placements via DV360: display banners on websites popular among our target audiences, social-demographic and behavioral targeting, and custom audiences based on competitors in Poland and Italy.

2. To drive traffic, we used click-oriented tools:

• Google Display Network banners — retargeting existing users and lookalike audiences.
• Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram) — targeting interest-based and lookalike segments.
• Google Search Ads — targeting branded, category, and competitor-related keywords.

Key point: Despite not having a dedicated branded website, we effectively utilized retailer landing pages — and still met our traffic objectives.

Campaign Execution

Before launch, we ensured proper setup:

• Excluded sites from IAB and MixDigital blacklists.
• Applied brand safety measures to avoid sensitive content.
• Set viewability thresholds in DV360 to 70% or higher.
• Prepared and approved structured search ad content.

Throughout the campaign, we continuously optimized:

• Placements: Removing low-performing or irrelevant sites.
• Creatives: Analyzing and refining based on performance.
• Keywords: Adding new high-performing terms and excluding ineffective ones.
• Weekly check-ins with the client enabled quick decision-making and hypothesis testing.

Results

Thanks to precise planning and agile execution, we met our media KPIs and exceeded traffic expectations — especially in search advertising, where CPCs were lower and clicks higher than projected.

Growth by query type:

• +40% in branded queries
• +98% in category queries
• +67% in competitor queries

Performance Metrics

Poland (Media Campaign):

• 2.5M impressions
• 762K reach
• Frequency: 3.2
• 3K clicks
• CTR: 0.12%

Poland (Traffic Campaign):

• 13K clicks
• CTR: 1.19%

Italy (Media Campaign):

• 2.6M impressions
• 913K reach
• Frequency: 2.9
• 3.6K clicks
• CTR: 0.14%

Italy (Traffic Campaign):

• 7K clicks
• CTR: 0.65%

We brought tens of thousands of relevant users to partner platforms, increased Lamel’s brand visibility, and proved that accurate targeting — even without a branded landing page — can drive strong results in international markets.