Penetrate and Radiate

Over the last few weeks we've been talking to a number of companies in Latvia that are interested in exporting to North America. These companies include metal fabrication, construction products, IT services and many other areas. For the most part they are well established firms trading in Europe and Scandinavia with a wide range of products and services to offer. And this ‘wide range’ is a problem. If they try to enter a new market with a broad offering they will fail - unless of course they’ve got a multi-million dollar marketing and branding budget.

Our advice to these Latvian companies, and in fact any company that wants to enter a new market, is that they need to penetrate and only then they radiate. This applies not only in entering new geographies, like our clients in Latvia, but also in entering new verticals.

Let me explain. 

When you enter a new market, you have to have strong differentiation in order to stand out from everybody else that's participating. Differentiating across a broad spectrum of products is almost impossible. Instead you need to determine which product or service offering is most likely to have success at gaining attention, creating credibility and closing those first deals. We call this market penetration.

Once you have penetration then it's easier to radiate. In other words, to build on that momentum and credibility to expand your product or service offerings into clients that know and trust you.

As you think about growing into new markets think also about how you are going to penetrate those markets, how are you going to have a razor-sharp market offering that's highly differentiated to win in those markets.

It is difficult to have the objectivity to determine which of your multiple products and services is the right one to focus on. Getting that surgical strike properly organized and then executed is critical to new market success.

If you want to gain objectivity to support your next market expansion. Let’s talk.

Andrew.