While new market expansion can be a complicated process, the effects of COVID-19 have only made it tougher for businesses. The ‘new normal’ has applied to businesses worldwide, causing market volatility, changing if not halting new market expansion plans, shifting product strategies, and beyond. However, many transformation plans resulting from COVID-19 drove tech spending in 2020, and more than a third of 2021 budget increases will be influenced by the pandemic. There are still twists and turns ahead in 2021, but recent technology trends create opportunities to help businesses and IT decision makers navigate this change – from migrating workloads to the cloud to addressing new security concerns to managing a hybrid work environment with employees working from home and/or in the office.
Expanding into a new market can be rewarding for your business, especially if you follow a concentrated process to identify, penetrate, and subsequently inhabit it. If you’re planning on a long-term leadership position, it’s important to consider all dimensions of the new market, including market volatility as a result of the ongoing pandemic.
We suggest the following steps to identify a new market and all the ensuing activity you must undertake that are critical in establishing your share in it.
- Market Identification: It’s important to first identify which market has the segment of population that’s likely to buy your product or if your product has the flexibility to be tailored to suit the needs of an existing community.
- Customer Persona: Creating a target persona is at the heart of marketing to increase the efficiency and efficacy of your marketing efforts. While defining your primary customer it must be kept in mind that the market is sufficiently large, accessible, and measurable. The size of the market should be large enough to ensure a sustained demand and reachable through your existing resources and channels.
- Market Research: Research your market through the customer and competitor profiles. Since you’re planning on catering to new customers in a new market who don’t know you, make sure you’ve done a thorough research on the audience: their preferences, interests, and buying habits. An in-depth understanding of market growth rates, forecasted demand, competitive analysis, spending capacity of the potential customers, and defining the strengths and weaknesses of the competition, are critical data and insights that need to be collected while doing the research.
- Competitive Analysis: Some say that knowing the competition is half the battle won. An interesting way to study the competition would be to try them out as potential customers, analyze the language and tone used in their messages on social media and newsletters, topics covered in their content plan, gaps in the marketplace, FAQs, live chat turnaround times, etc.
- Internal Capabilities Check: From the data and insights collected about the customers, competition, and market dynamics, it gets easier to prepare a battle plan keeping the internal resources in mind. The first of many questions one needs to ask is how much of your core competencies can be leveraged? Which resources are readily available within sales and marketing to help with the launch? How much of the new market overlaps with your existing one, and which insights can be weighed on? Fine tuning and aligning internal resources could help in controlling costs associated with it.
- The COVID-19 Factor: With the ‘new normal’ permeating through the entire financial ecosystem, a stringent check on the new market’s behavior through the pandemic could provide critical insights on how to reach out to the existing consumers and what message might best resonate with them. And whether the market is in its best shape to welcome a new offering. According to the American Marketing Association, customers are now prioritizing trusted relationships over low price, which essentially means, an organization’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives play a vital role in acquiring trust. It becomes more important to have a CSR portfolio ready before expanding into a new market.
Once all the critical information has been gathered, the plan of action involves determining the pertinent investment plans around it. If the market is too large and covers multiple geographies, expansion through a series of joint ventures, acquisitions, or partnerships may offer quicker access to the new market. However, for B2B businesses, smart investments in increasing your resources and marketing technology stack might prove exceptionally beneficial.
Here are a few quick tips to help reach new customers in a new market:
- Brand Perception: Attitude, beliefs, and emotions of the target market influences purchase decisions. While deciding on making an entry into a new market, businesses must determine how their company is positioned and whether it can be used as a marketing tactic. The key is to determine if your company is perceived as a cutting edge solutions provider and/or as a brand that is responsible and strong. Psychographic, behavioristic, demographic, and geographic criteria must be carefully considered in order to understand if a strong product-market fit can be established in the new market.
- Market Segmentation and Targeting: It’s easier to deal with a completely different and larger market by breaking it down into smaller segments based on specific characteristics and developing promotional strategies for each of them. Targeted promotional campaigns for each segment of the market, touching base with specific needs, and addressing individual pain points helps in capturing attention of the narrowly defined audience.
- Forming Collaborations: During market research, you could also identify businesses who sell products and services that complement yours. Collaborating with other businesses could create an opportunity for expansion into a new market by leveraging their existing loyal user base. Popular companies that are already in-market could be your best advocates, as they can help you gain exposure before planning an elaborate marketing campaign. Breaking into the field with this knowledge will be invaluable, especially if you’re able to identify and cultivate relationships with influencers that can quickly reach out to a larger audience.
- Account Based Marketing: With intelligent ABM campaigns it’s easier to capture the attention of in-market prospects by using trusted first-party and third-party B2B intent data to identify, expand, and prioritize your target account list. You can reach these in-market buyers with intelligence-driven marketing by generating brand awareness through display advertising or a full-funnel demand generation campaign with content designed to nurture them throughout their buying journey.
- Omnichannel Marketing: The ‘new normal’ has pushed consumers towards expanding their digital borders, which modestly means businesses have to be more proactive in their online marketing strategies while constantly reaching and/or connecting with customers digitally across many channels. Setting up artificial-intelligence driven technologies to prioritize customer queries, grievances, and gathering intent data could be a starting point.
Interested in learning more about marketing strategies to reach in-market businesses? Check out this latest ebook on the Past, Present and Future of B2B Marketing to gain a more in-depth understanding of which marketing strategies won in 2020 and which areas require improvement for 2021 planning.
SWZD’s full-service B2B research team, with its focus on the technology vertical, has helped hundreds of tech brands launch new products, segment their customers, understand their competition and tailor their marketing strategy. Contact us to discuss your research needs.