Market Development Strategy

For any business to grow, a business strategy is as important as the product itself. A good business strategy is the guide to every problem on the way. A russian-american mathematician and business manager, Igor Ansoff, classified these strategies into four major categories.

• Market penetration strategy
• Product development strategy
• Market development strategy
• Diversification strategy

Market development strategy is all about entering a new market with an existing line of products. Market development strategy is required when we need to sell our existing products to new clients. New market can be anything, a new geographical location or a new store to add on in the chain of the existing store. As the market is new, the risk factor increases to a certain extent.

Entering a new place requires a lot of research and here we do the same. Research is the base of market development strategy. Research is done to create an overview of the market requirements, analysis of the major competitors and customer requirements inclusive of their lifestyle and expenditure habits.

There are a few very common market development strategies. These strategies can be included while developing a plan:

Pricing
To increase your clientele, you should consider implementing competitive prices. Try to provide a price that beats your competition and a product that is better in functionality than other products in the market.

Distribution
To reach the targeted audience, you must discover new methods of product distribution. If you have a physical store in a market, you can try going online for business.

Sales
To generate new leads you can target a new geographical location or an audience that is in dire need of your product.

Branding
To make a product successful, you have to create a brilliant branding strategy. You can develop a new product considering the needs of your customers.

Promotion
To mark an effective presence in the market, continuous promotion of a product is as important. You can use banners, promotional coupons, sales, discounts, etc.

Development of customized product
To attract clients in a newer demographic location, you can alter the products after analysing the requirements of the people in that year.

Franchising
To lower the risk of entering a new market, franchising can be an intelligent decision. Giving a businessman the rights to expand the business under the trademark of your company. Here the person is required to pay an upfront amount to the franchisor.

A successful market development strategy should be well-informed and realistic. Planning the right marketing development strategy is a step process.

Identify the goal
Identify the goal that your business needs to complete next. This goal can be attracting new customers or creating a new market. For a clear strategy a clear goal is must. This goal is supposed to be time bound and specific. Once you identify the goal, we move on to the next step.

Research the market and clients :
To develop a market, the full analysis of the market is very important. Gathering information such as the size of the market, demography, social trends and growth is very important.
Once you collect the information about all of these, you need to profile your potential clients. The profile of clients, their buying trends and expenses is as important.

Profiling the competitors :
A complete SWOT analysis of the competitors is very important. This enables a company to access the strong points of their competitors and eliminate their weaknesses while developing the product or market.

Selecting the right strategy :
Develop a strategy that includes promotion, branding, development, sales alignment, attracting customers, generating ROI and other values.

Test the ideas :
If you have to implement a new strategy, test these ideas and develop an effective solution.

There are many companies who have developed a new market for their product and despite the risk factor, they have excelled in achieving the targeted ROI. A few of them are listed below:

Dollar Shave Club:

Dollar shave club grew immensely from a viral video to now a billionaire brand. When launching the product in different markets demographically, the company conducted a proper research and priced the product perfectly along with some brilliant promotional techniques.

Nike:

Nike has one of the strongest market development strategies in the business. Apart from the best products, Nike has set a strong foot in the shoe range, globally. When Nike entered the asian and african countries, it profiled the buyers and developed a fine range of products depending upon the demand by them. For example, if they targeted athletes, they produced shoes that actually attracted a lot of athletes from this class.