Your Complete Guide to New Market Assessment

Expanding your business in the international market can change its life forever. But at the stage of market assessment, if miscalculations are made, there can be some severe irreversible damage.

Whether it is the business development manager or marketing head, everyone must calculate the future market’s business potential according to the demands for their product and the competition in the target market.

This market assessment needs to be done before making the final decision of your business’ international expansion. No doubt, there is always going to be some risk involved, but if you comprehensively research your opportunities, the bonuses can be worth all the efforts in the world.

Here we are going through the entire process of new market assessment to ease the trouble for you.

The Step-By-Step Guide to Market Assessment

You can carry out your new market assessment in a step-by-step process taking everything into consideration, from regional competitors to cultural roadblocks to customer behaviors. Before you start looking into a new potential foreign market for your brand, you need to understand where your business stands in your domestic market. You can do so by asking yourself:

• Does my product/service satisfy strong customer demand in the local market?
• How can I learn from it to enter a different market with different consumer behaviors?

If currently there is no growth in your present region, foreign expansion elsewhere might not be a perfect idea, as the lack of growth might be an indication that your offerings do not resonate with your consumer needs.

Before proceeding with the further market assessment, it would be best if you spend some time honing your product/service, understanding your consumers, and refining your marketing message.

1. Select a country for evaluation

Just because you are not active in a region doesn’t mean you are ready to expand your business there. Therefore, the market evaluation will protect you against a silly decision like this.

It is crucial that you conduct a country-by-country market opportunity assessment as a part of your detailed and calculated approach.

Your diligent and strategic research will help you to pick one target country for your international business expansion.

2. Analyze your in-house data for consumer behaviors

You can begin by analyzing your internal data to identify if it can influence your business’ expansion in a new market.

• Is there a significant boost in your leads from a specific market, although you haven’t invested a lot there?
• Are there low sales or high sales in some regions?
• Do you see a high average purchase price in a specific market?

Your sales and business development can help you in obtaining these valuable insights. You can also use a platform for more details.

The majority of these platforms track the distribution of traffic by location, which means you can see where the most traffic is originating from, what actions your audience is taking after arriving, and the conversion extent.

For instance, if there is enormous traffic generating from one region with excellent engagement and conversions, this may be an indication of an utterly accessible target market for your business expansion. Likewise, less traffic and low conversion rates from another region might indicate that you need to localize your product/service and site as well if you are considering it for expansion.

3. Conduct research on your competitors’ top markets

This can provide you with some valuable insights. Research your competitors’ top markets and find out the areas where they are operating successfully. This again can be done using online platforms.

You will be able to figure out your chances of growth in that market once you know where they are getting their most number of visitors, high conversions, and low bounce rates.

4. Evaluate your potential market size and competition

This goes without saying that you would want to enter a market that has the most opportunities for your business. Therefore, you need to estimate your market size and competition. You can do so by using some tools like Google Market Finder.

In this way, you will be able to find out the market demand and also research your potential customer base in your target market.

5. Consider the language barriers and localization expenses.

A new market like China might appear fascinating to you at first, but the language can be a significant challenge to you there.

Therefore, when you plan on expanding away from the English speaking world, apart from consumer behavior and economic growth, you may want to ensure English proficiency there.

6. Assess the business difficulties in your new market

You would not want to do business in a market with too many hindrances. It is one thing to have an excellent product or service and totally another thing to find consumers who are willing or able to pay for it.

Evaluating the local business sales and growth will help you get an idea of the business difficulties there.

7. Benchmark your performance against the competition

By the time you reach this step, you will already have some introductory market evaluation. However, now you need to have a brief understanding of the competition and measure your performance against it to figure out your marketing opportunities.

This can be done in three easy steps:

• Measure your site’s performance against your competitors’ in the domestic region – This will let you know whether you are stable in your local area or not. Because in case you are not, you need to focus on growth there before you take your business in the international market.
• Study your domestic competitors’ performance in your new potential target market – You are going to be in the same position as theirs, so it is better to know all the strategies they used when they first entered the market and what measures they took to implement it. There is always something to learn from others’ experiences. Maybe you wouldn’t have to start from scratch once you are aware of the strengths and weaknesses of your new market.
• Compare your local competitors’ traffic dynamics with the local players in your new market – You can find out the scope of growth and how to compete in your new market once you are able to compare the traffic volumes in the different regions.

8. Prepare your strategy

Once you have gathered all the information with the above steps, you are all set to prepare your master plan. Undoubtedly, entering a new market requires a lot of research, but it all goes in vain without a plan.

Use the insights you have gained to identify your potential consumers, growth scope in the market, and the competition.

9. Move on with your plan

It all comes down to the execution. Combining all this data and analysis must have been exhausting, especially if you were doing it on your own. There are many tools available online that can assist you in preparing and implementing your plan.

Following the points mentioned above, one by one, you will be able to create a beneficial strategy for your new foreign expansion.

This was all about the new market assessment. We hope this information is helpful to you. Let us know your experiences of marketing researching and evaluation in the comments below!