How to Test 10 Tier-2 Markets Without a Localization Team

Many growth teams run into the same challenge when expanding into Tier-2 markets. Localization can be costly, time-consuming, and comes with cultural risks. The markets that are easiest to enter are often smaller and less competitive, but they usually don’t justify a full localization process on their own.

As a result, many publishers treat Tier-2 markets as an afterthought. Often, they simply translate their English creative for every market, which usually leads to poor results. Others focus on localizing for the top three markets and skip the rest.

There is another way. In this post, we’ll look at how growth-stage and portfolio publishers can assess the potential of Tier-2 markets without making a major upfront localization investment.

What “Tier-2” actually means for ASO

In this context, a Tier-2 market is one that looks interesting but hasn’t been validated yet. You don’t know if organic installs, monetization, or retention will make full localization worthwhile. Usually, these markets have some of the following traits:

• Lower CPM and acquisition cost than your core markets
• Underdeveloped category competition
• A language or cultural distance that prevents direct creative reuse
• Total addressable market large enough to matter, but not large enough to bet the year on

Classic Tier-2 examples for global publishers include Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, the Philippines, parts of Eastern Europe, and Tier-2 LATAM. The exact list depends on your starting geography.

The wrong way to test Tier-2 markets

The failure mode we see most often: “let’s translate the listing into the local language and see what happens.” This sounds reasonable. It almost never works.

The problem is that translation is the smallest part of effective localization. The bigger issues are:

1. Cultural visual signals. Screenshot layouts, character styles, and color choices that work in Western markets often don’t perform well in MENA, parts of Asia, or LATAM. This isn’t because they’re wrong, but because they don’t fit local visual expectations.
2. Genre framing. The meaning of “casual puzzle” in Japan is different from Brazil. “Mid-core RPG” in Korea is not the same as in the US.
3. Social proof works differently in each market. In the US, things like “5 stars” or press logos can help, but in some markets, users trust recommendations from friends or local creators more.
4. Pricing perception. A $4.99 in-app purchase can feel very different in markets where average wages are much lower. The result is a localized listing that technically reads correctly but converts at 30–50% of the rate of a culturally adapted listing.

The Custom Store Listings + automation approach

Google Play’s Custom Store Listings (CSL) let you create country-specific store pages without changing your app. This makes it easier to test Tier-2 markets with less risk. You can set up a CSL for each market, try different creative and messaging, and track results in Play Console.

The workflow that scales:

1. Decide which markets to test. Choose 10 based on total addressable market, cost per install, and how different they are from your main market. Don’t overthink it—the next steps will help you validate your choices.
2. Create CSL variants for each market. This step is usually the bottleneck. Making screenshot sets and copy for 10 different markets by hand can take several months.
3. Run a baseline test. Launch your CSL variants and make sure each gets similar traffic. Let the test run for 4 to 6 weeks to cover weekly patterns.
4. Compare conversion rates and other key metrics for each market. Some will perform well, others won’t. Both outcomes give you valuable information.
5. Focus your localization efforts on the markets that show real demand. Once you have the data, you can invest in deeper localization, local marketing, and paid acquisition with more confidence.

The main challenge in steps 2 and 3 is having enough design and operational resources. Automation can help solve this problem.

Pressplay automates CSL creation for multiple markets. It generates localized variants using your brand guidelines, deploys them through Google Play Console, and tracks performance for each market. What used to take six months can now be done in two weeks.

The cultural quality question

We often hear this concern, and it’s a fair one: “AI-generated creative that adapts to culture is still not as good as work done by humans.”

That’s true — for the markets you’ve already committed to. If Japan is a core market and a big part of your revenue, you shouldn’t rely on AI-generated screenshots for your Japanese store listing. It’s better to have a Japanese designer working with your team. The bar isn’t “best possible Japanese localization.” The bar is “good enough to detect whether real demand exists.” AI-generated, culturally aware variants clear that bar and give you the information you need to decide where to invest more deeply.

Our advice: use AI-generated localization to validate new markets, and switch to human-led localization once you commit.

A realistic 90-day plan

Here’s a simple plan we’ve seen work for growth-stage publishers:

Days 1–14: Prioritize and set up.

• Pick the 10 markets to test based on TAM, CPI, and creative distance.
• Define a baseline CSL framework (which assets vary by market and which stay constant).
• Set up tracking in Play Console and decide what success looks like for each market.

Days 15–30: Generate and deploy.

• Generate market-specific CSLs for all 10 markets.
• Deploy to live traffic via Custom Store Listings.
• Do a quick check to make sure the listings are technically correct. Look for broken text or visuals that don’t match your brand.

Days 31–75: Measure.

• Let the test run for 4 to 6 weeks in each market to collect enough data.
• Track conversion rate, install numbers, and a downstream metric such as day-one retention or first-session quality.
• Compare your results to your main market, adjusting for local differences.

Days 76–90: Decide.

• Find the 2 to 4 markets that performed best and invest in deeper localization for them.
• For markets that didn’t do well, either drop them or try a second test with new creative.
• For the middle markets, make your decision based on strategic fit, not just test results.

This approach lets you validate Tier-2 expansion much faster than building a localization team first. You spend less and learn more.

What this unlocks

The publishers we see doing this well move from “we’ll consider international expansion next year” to “we have data on 10 markets, and we’re committing to the 3 that proved out” inside a single quarter.

The value isn’t only the markets that win. The value is the markets you confidently say no to — the ones you would have otherwise spent 12 months building toward and quietly killed at the end. The cost of testing 10 markets correctly is much lower than the cost of building toward one market and finding out it doesn’t work.

If you’d like to discuss how this could work for your portfolio—like which markets to test, how to set up your CSL framework, or what success criteria fit your monetization model—book a working session with our team.

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