market entry strategy
A market entry strategy is a plan to bring a new product or service to market. One of the most important market entry considerations for a startup or small business is sales cycle. When you have a limited amount of time, money and resources understanding the sales cycle is key to success. The faster you can learn your sales cycle and the shorter the time from contact to close, the greater the probability of success.
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.
Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
Sun Tzu
HOW DO YOU DETERMINE YOUR MARKET ENTRY STRATEGY
A market entry strategy is a combination of art and science. Our experience has shown that an effective way to start acquiring new customers is a combination of primary and secondary research. Research will help identify your target customer. A value chain analysis and stakeholder map will help identify a path to market. When you know your target customer and path to market you are ready to start conducting marketing experiments.
Marketing experiments are intended to generate leads and validate your value proposition. Leads generated by the experiments should help build an inbound sales pipeline. Marketing experiments and a functional inbound sales pipeline allow you to learn and continuously improving.
QUESTIONS TO HELP DETERMINE HOW TO ENTER A MARKET?
- Who is your target customer?
- How much are your new customers willing to pay for your product or service?
- What are the best and most cost effective customer acquisition channels?
- How do we build and implement systems to optimize customer acquisition?
WHAT ARE THE OUTCOMES OF A MARKET ENTRY STRATEGY?
- Identify your target customer
- Validate product price points
- Determine a path to market
- Conduct several marketing experiments
- Generate leads
- Start to build a sales pipeline