This laser equipment company raked in a staggering 1 billion yuan in a year! How powerful is its overseas digital marketing?

Author: Xiao Chuang

Track Disassembly: Laser Equipment

The laser engraving machine market is fiercely competitive, with the internationalization of digital marketing just beginning. A dominant player, xTool, a laser equipment brand under Maker Works, has emerged as a leading player in the field.

While the entire industry was saturated with supply and domestic players were trying to break through by "trading price for volume," xTool, which started as a business website, made rapid progress in the laser cutting machine market through overseas digital marketing, raking in 1 billion yuan in international expansion in just one year!

How did xTool become an industry leader in such a short time? What is the logic behind its overseas digital marketing? This article contains 2400 words and is estimated to take 4 minutes to read. CTMON will take you into the international expansion of the laser cutting machine industry!

Master digital marketing overseas with innovation!

According to a report by Precedence Research, the global laser equipment market was worth approximately US$26.72 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow to US$24.02 billion in 2024.

China is the world's largest laser equipment market. It is estimated that from 2024 to 2029, the market size of China's laser industry will grow at a rate of about 20%, and the industry scale may exceed 750 billion yuan by 2029.

With a market worth hundreds of billions, a large number of players will inevitably flood in, and relying on standardized methods to quickly gain market share is no longer favored by the market. As competition intensifies and the disorderly competitive landscape makes it difficult for domestic sellers to operate, they are turning their attention to the overseas digital marketing market.

According to CTMON, the biggest advantage of domestically produced laser equipment lies in its price. A 3KW domestically produced laser cutting machine may cost less than 200,000 yuan, while European equipment of the same power can cost more than one million yuan.

Data shows that in 2023, the estimated sales of engraving machine tools on Amazon were approximately $53.22 million. The top two brands, Makeblock and xTool, are both brands under Maker Works, accounting for 66.93% of the sales!

Discover top brands that generate 1 billion RMB annually!

Image source: xTool   Facebook page

CTMON has learned that xTool was registered in October 2021 and has expanded into multiple product lines, including the D series, M series, P series, F series, and S series. It has capitalized on the consumer demand during the pandemic for creative creations at home and achieved sales of 1 billion yuan in just one year.

Although it has only been on the market for a short time, xTool's international expansion has already yielded fruitful results: the desktop multi-functional CO2 laser cutter xTool P2 received millions of US dollars in deposits in less than a month of pre-sales overseas, and on the day of its launch, sales exceeded 200 units in one hour. Its business website has an average monthly visit of about 1.3 million times, ranking among the top in the industry.

Image source: xTool   Facebook page

As a "latecomer," what has supported xTool's rapid growth overseas?

III. Overseas digital marketing helps create a closed-loop marketing system for business websites!

In a competitive domestic market and a lack of brand awareness in overseas markets, how can laser engraving tool brands achieve differentiated international expansion? xTool has an alternative solution.

01 Combining community building with tutorial publishing

By conducting an in-depth study of xTool's international social media marketing efforts, CTMON discovered that xTool has gained a leading position in winning consumer recognition by combining "building communities + releasing tutorials".

For emerging consumer sectors, customer demand is the initial spark, but to turn that spark into a prairie fire, a continuous process of creating consumer "mindset" is needed.

Building "enthusiast communities" to gather core users and cultivate niche interests into mainstream needs:

Currently, xTool has over 150,000 members across seven fan communities on its Facebook page. These members are distributed across dedicated communities for different xTool products, making the community more vertical and engaging.

Image source: xTool   Facebook page

Communicate the product's advantages to potential customers: high efficiency, ease of use, and support for a variety of creative scenarios.

xTool's creative short videos almost always use home scenes to showcase how easy, fun, and convenient it is to complete a laser engraving using the action of "throwing" the laser, along with a timer. This dispels potential customers' concerns about purchasing and using laser engraving machines.

Data shows that in the fourth quarter of 2023, nine of the top ten most popular posts on xTool were tutorial videos on how to use xTool products for DIY carving and other similar tasks.

02. One hand on conversion power (aggregation page), the other on precise traffic (content matrix)

Localization is a crucial issue that every new seller entering overseas markets cannot avoid. Language, cultural environment, basic common sense of different countries, differences in laws and regulations... any oversight in any of these aspects can lead to significant losses in the seller's international expansion process. It can be said that building a business website is always inseparable from localization.

Therefore, the first step for xtool in overseas digital marketing is to understand the local market and localize the website.

1. Language localization is fundamental.

Using machine translation to "get things online first" is a common problem for many companies' international expansion, even though machine translation technology has made great progress in accuracy and naturalness. However, machine translation is still limited by the expression of the original text and cannot achieve "fluent, clear, and elegant" translation very well.

Therefore, xTool's business website has achieved 100% localization in its language translation. Not only is the content matrix layout neat and uniform, but it also ensures consistency in singular and plural forms, tone of voice throughout the text, currency symbols, and place marks, all in accordance with the habits of local users.

2. Product localization is key.

Product localization can be divided into two parts: one is that the product must meet the needs of the target market. Even for the same product, the needs will be different in different countries.

xTool conducts user research to identify the needs and pain points of overseas users regarding laser engraving machines. They not only develop products tailored to local preferences but also localize product packaging design, as appearance is a key factor influencing consumer decisions.

By continuously improving landing page conversion rates and consistently supplying the precise traffic needed for landing pages, we create a powerful conversion engine (aggregation pages) and precise traffic (content matrix)! Currently, the xToolbusiness website has reached a level of over 1 million monthly visits.

From the perspective of traffic channels, brand and product names such as xtool, xtool s1, and xtool p2 have become popular keywords, with direct traffic accounting for the largest proportion (44.19%), followed by paid search and organic search.

Furthermore, CTMON observed that xTool's business website boasts a rich and engaging content matrix . From conceptualization to concrete implementation, whether through lengthy brand story introductions or detailed explanations of product performance, it conveys the brand philosophy and core values ​​to users in the manner of a sharer.

CTMON said

xTool's billion-dollar sales success stems from its "explosive order methodology": A business website's surge against the trend requires not only maintaining localization and operating from a global perspective, but also understanding user needs, flexibly utilizing various marketing methods, and adhering to data-driven, refined operational principles.

Looking overseas, the consumer market for laser cutting machines, a niche segment, still has room for growth, and we look forward to seeing more emerging forces join the overseas digital marketing arena in the future!

CTMON focuses on digital marketing for growing businesses both domestically and internationally, acquiring qualified inquiries and helping to improve sales conversion rates. We consistently apply Western thinking to business website SEO, continuously improving landing page conversion rates and providing landing pages with the precise traffic they need.

➢ Develop an SEO content strategy before building a business website.

➢   business website is a tool to support SEO content strategy.

➢   combines conversion power (aggregation page) with precise traffic (content matrix).

We help clients build effective online marketing lead generation channels, tracking the entire marketing lifecycle from inquiries to sales, ROI, and more. We have served over 300 growing companies and over 100 well-known companies in various industries.