Five Subtle Ways to Streamline Growth in New Markets

While traditional strategies like increasing sales and marketing spend are important for achieving growth in new markets, many companies pay only modest attention to other, more nuanced ways to accelerate growth. Based on our work with companies expanding into new or adjacent markets, following are a handful of critical growth factors that can help you make the most of new markets.

Double-check segmentation and targeting

The importance of targeting and segmentation is self-evident, but rigorous analysis and detailed targeting is especially critical in new markets, which are characterized by greater uncertainty and diverse participants. Segments tend to be many and include everyone from businesses to communities to local government stakeholders to recruits and an expanded employee base. Understanding and evaluating these different target audiences to the greatest extent possible (including through quantitative target scoring) is important to effectively prioritize targeting efforts and investments, and for crafting discrete, tailored offerings and messages for each.

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Establish a differentiated customer experience early

Emerging market sectors are often hypercompetitive, which means that organizations delivering a differentiated customer experience can gain an early advantage that may be difficult for competitors to overcome. As such, a detailed customer experience program, inclusive of integrated, authentic tactics to bring it to life, is especially important. It is also crucial to keep a pulse on your customer needs and wants, as they can be elusive and change quickly as the market matures. If you sense that their needs are evolving, it's essential to be ready to pivot your strategies accordingly.

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Lock in strategic partnerships and alliances as quickly as possible

Organizations entering nascent markets are inherently taking a risk. With less data and experience to inform decisions, the unknowns outweigh the knowns. Partnerships and alliances are useful in mitigating some of the risk, and potentially even investments, in new market entry. Because suppliers can be fragmented in new markets, customers are often hard-pressed to find the integrated, end-to-end solutions they seek. Partnerships and alliances can be useful in this regard and enable you to provide additional value beyond your core offerings. In addition, partnerships with top-tier players are finite. Initiating an alliance can open doors while, depending on the terms, potentially denying competitors early-market momentum.

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Systematize how you make the most of early adopters

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Establishing a loyal customer base in a new market is essential for long-term growth and, as such, the first several customers you acquire are foundational. You will be counting on them for testimonials and case studies, for referrals, and for the candid feedback you need to continuously improve. Many of our clients treat such customers as pseudo investors, offering them friendly contract terms to incentivize purchase and recognize shared risk. Particularly when an early adopter is well-known, authentically showcasing them advances their reputation along with your credibility. Establishing a well-defined, repeatable system for sharing these wins makes your marketing easier to scale while creating a more professional experience for these key stakeholders.

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Invest in research and pursue agile, data-driven decision making with speed

Reliable data can be scarce in new markets. As such, successful companies invest significantly in primary market research and data analytics to both inform their go-to-market strategy and to begin building the insights and data sets needed to be able to adjust their strategy and initiatives with agility. Adaptability is crucial to successful growth when entering new markets and initiating deep research and data analytics early helps promote flexibility and responsiveness.

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Conclusion

Maximizing progress in a new market requires more than traditional growth strategies. Through precise targeting and segmentation, a differentiated customer experience, a mutually beneficial partner ecosystem, efficiently leveraged early adopters, and rapid-fire data-driven insights that allow for agility, companies can realize significant growth in these challenging business environments.