If growth within your market sector is dwindling and you feel like you have exhausted your pool of potential customers, perhaps it is time to look at expanding your horizons. To do this, you need to find and sell to a totally new set of buyers who currently know absolutely nothing about you. This can only be achieved through a rock solid marketing strategy that revolves around clever market research.
Here's how we would recommend undergoing research for new target markets.
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Never underestimate market research
Before any thorough research takes place, you must ensure that your marketing team (or outsourced marketing agency) fully understands the buyer persona they are targeting. Though it may be easy to get stuck associating your buyer persona in the market you have previously been targeting, try and imagine them as a new individual consumer. Brainstorm their problems in a variety of contexts. For example, if their issue is - ‘I need to generate more leads’, then the application of inbound marketing (as a service) can be applied within multiple sectors.
Once you have established a clear vision of your buyer persona, you need think about:
- Identifying the other markets that can make best use of your product
- Identifying the specific buyer persona you are targeting within this new market (e.g. the job role you will be targeting your marketing towards)
- Discovering what the biggest challenges are for these buyer personas
The process of identifying and discovering all of these elements will assist you greatly in developing a coherent and comprehensive marketing strategy based around the challenges of your newly specified buyer persona.
In addition to understanding your buyer persona in new markets, you should also be testing your current marketing messaging. Is it too targeted at one market? Is it alienating people from different sectors? Make sure you alter the text on both your website and content offerings to avoid pushing away prospects.
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Build awareness in your new market
As you are entering an entirely new market, you need to allocate a detailed budget towards developing awareness to ensure your brand is getting out there and being seen by your new personas.
There are many options for doing this – including online advertising, offline advertising, PR, SEO, social media, networking, sponsoring events, buying email lists, etc. However, for a guaranteed long-term establishment in your new market you need to organically develop and provide content that address your buyer persona problems in this new sector. This is done through a combination of content marketing and inbound marketing – letting your content guide readers to your site and then through optimising your website to convert them into customers.
To learn more about what options you have moving your marketing forward, we welcome you to let one of our marketing experts take a look at your current strategy and have them offer solutions to boost your lead generation.
Alternatively, if you have any questions about targeting new markets please feel free to get in touch with us by clicking here.