How to Expand into New Markets Efficiently?
4 minutes read
Are you planning to expand or take your business into new markets or new industries or new territories or new personas? You need to,
Do a lot of analysis,
Plan every detail
Prepare an action plan
And execute it properly
in order to efficiently capture a fair share of the market.
This blog sheds light on how to best take your business into the new and unknown markets.
Collect the market data and analyze it
It all starts with data. Just like the way a map guides you in a new place, market data guides you to navigate a new market. So, the first step is to get your field marketing team to conduct a field survey in the market that you want to enter.
In this survey, they should capture information about,
The needs, challenges, pain points of the buyers
Competitors’ influence in the market
Who are the key decision-makers? Are they individual users or CEOs and CFOs of a company
What are the policies, rules, and regulations in the market?
What are the purchase drivers– factors that would influence the buyers in that market to purchase your product?
Are there any budget priorities?
Once this data is collected, give it to your data analysis team and ask them to make an intuitive data report out of it. This report can then be shared with the sales, marketing, and product development teams so that they can get the market and buyer insights.
Engage key stakeholders and buyers on social media
Every market in an industry will have a few desirable customers that everyone wants to sell to. Or you might have identified a few potential customers during your field survey who seemed very interested in your product and are most likely to buy from you. Target these people first.
Get your marketing team to connect with these key buyers on social media and try to engage them with your brand. They can engage the buyers by sending content that would interest the buyers. This includes social media posts, email campaigns, text message promotions, newsletters, etc.
The goal for the marketing team here is to get these buyers to the first stage of the sales funnel where they,
Create awareness amongst the buyers about your product and brand
And get them interested in talking to a sales consultant
Pro-tip: The marketing team needs to create a report on these prospects which can then be passed on to the sales team to take further action
Prepare the reps to handle buyer personas
Once the marketing team brings in the field survey data and prospects’ data, it is now the duty of the sales team to take further action.
From the prospect’s list, assign a few prospects to each sales rep. Then train them on,
The persona of each prospect assigned to them
And how to efficiently sell to each one of them
This helps them to successfully sell in the new market
Focus on customer retention and loyalty
To successfully capture any market and establish your influence there, you should not only focus on acquiring the customers in that market but also focus on retaining them. You need to ensure that you serve them well and give them a good experience. To ensure this there needs to be seamless coordination and collaboration between sales, marketing, product development, and customer support departments.
Good coordination between all these 4 departments means that everyone in these departments are aware of each customer’s
Sales journey
Marketing content that they received from time to time
Marketing content that they have shown interest in
Product improvements or feature requests made by them
All the conversation they had with the customer support
This coordination helps to ensure that the customers receive the right information or service at the right time from you. And this, in turn, helps in significantly increasing their loyalty for you.
Expand your reach in the market
Once you have a loyal customer base, try to expand your reach in the market through continuous marketing and sales efforts. Encourage your existing customers to bring in referrals (incentivize those referrals). Also, encourage your sales reps to try to upsell or cross-sell to the existing customers.
Learn how to gather competitive intelligence from the field
How to Gather Competitive Intelligence from the Field
Learn how to collect customer insights on your brand and products
Collect Customer Insights on your Brand and Products
Learn about the 6 important buyer personas and how to train your team to sell to them
The 6 Buyer Personas and how to train your team to sell to them
Published on Mon Apr 26 2021