Seeking New Market Success.
Is your business planning to expand into a new market?
Expanding into a new market can be very exciting yet daunting for many businesses. How can a business maximise an opportunity to drive growth in a new market? How does a business minimise any risk, challenge, or uncertainty when entering a new market?
Whether your business is planning to introduce an existing product into a new geographic region, launch a new product or target a new customer segment, fundamentally there are 3 key steps to planning a successful new market expansion.
Step 1: Do your homework – Research your new market.
Take the time to research your new market thoroughly as this intelligence will guide your decision to enter (or not) then underpin your strategic development and functional plan.
- Quantify the addressable market size, growth rate and forecast demand.
- Identify the macro trends and challenges. The PESTLE analysis is a good tool.
- Know the strengths and weaknesses of competitors in the new market.
- Understand your target customer’s needs, motivations, and pain points by using personas and customer journey maps.
If possible, the best way to perform market research is to sit down with industry groups, future customers and/or regulatory bodies.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Step 2: Look at your business – Assess your feasibility of entering the new market.
Recognise your internal motivations and capabilities as well as confirm the estimated benefits outweigh the estimated costs.
- Double check the new market expansion aligns with your business mission and strategy.
- Determine whether your business’ financial situation can cover the investment required (R&D, production, storage, commercial headcount, marketing etc).
- Determine whether your business has available people with the right capabilities and your processes and systems can be scaled-up for growth.
- For international expansion there will also be terms of trade (import regulations), financial (tax, exchange rates), language, cultural and societal considerations in a new market.
- Set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, Time-related) goals for your new market expansion.
- Develop your market entry strategy. Considerations may include establishing a partnership or distribution network, online marketing of a product and/or building an in-market commercial team.
- Create (and test) an action plan to lay out the steps to achieve your goals. Elements could include mapping the supply of product from manufacturing site to customer site, product training program, communications, marketing tactics, after sales support and servicing, to name a few.
It’s important to regularly revisit your market entry plan and adapt as market or business conditions change.
If your business is planning new market expansion get in touch with RLS as we can release your full potential and achieve growth.
Robert Koorenny on Unsplash
Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash
Author: Nicole Kelton, Associate, RLS. February 2022
Nicole Kelton is a strategic marketing and product management professional with a passion for growing applied science organisations on the international stage. She has over 10 years of practical global experience in strategic business planning and execution and product portfolio management. Nicole has held roles in North America, Europe and Australasia while working across the agritech, food safety, and diagnostic industries for organisations such as Datamars, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Luminex.