Identifying and entering new markets is key to business growth and something that should always be on the strategic agenda of your company. I love the challenge of market development – the analysis of all the market segment options, addressing the barriers to entry, creating the competitive proposition and sneaking up behind the competition to mug them in their own backyard!!
It was the legend Igor Ansoff that gave us the four strategy model for business growth – market penetration / market development / product development / diversification. Watch this space to see how, over time, his model has been entirely misrepresented and reconfigured to suit the arguments of others! There’s a very interesting piece of work going on by my Levitt Group colleague Laurie Young that will expose a series of misrepresented strategic marketing models when he publishes his next book – can’t wait!