Why A Market Assessment Is The Foundation of Revenue Growth Strategies
by Blackwood Impact Group
There are a real art and science to marketing a business. Marketing is vital to a company’s financial health as it helps you communicate your value to potential and existing customers. Because of the breadth of its impact and the wide variety of strategies that can be executed and channels for communication, small missteps anywhere in the process can be costly.
One of the ways to ensure your strategies and execution are always in sync with your revenue goals is to conduct a market assessment. This comprehensive analysis will help your team make the best marketing and organizational decisions in pursuit of your ultimate revenue goals.
What Is A Market Assessment?
First, taking a look at what a market assessment isn’t can help set up an understanding of what it is. A market assessment is not the same as a marketing assessment. In the latter, you are examining your tactics, strategies, and channels to determine if your activities are producing your desired results. Instead, a market assessment is a high-level overview of the landscape you want to do business in.
On a tactical level, a market assessment looks at the size of your company’s industry, how many potential customers there are, who the current market share leaders are, and much more. Based on this analysis, your company can make informed decisions about the products and services you plan to offer, how to differentiate yourself, and your plans for claiming market share.
A market assessment should be the foundation your go-to-market strategies and business operations are built on. You must know where you stand in the marketplace against your competitors before you devise your tactics. In Blackwood Impact Group’s experience, the most effective order is first to conduct a market assessment, then develop your strategies, and finally implement.
In our experience, we’ve seen businesses rush into offering their products and services without fully understanding what they were getting into. Later on, they’ve had to invest time and money to rebrand, revamp their offerings, and revise their messaging and communication tactics.
Companies that do not invest in conducting a marketing assessment or similar type of research put themselves at a disadvantage. Ideally, it should be done at the business’ founding. The market assessment will need to be revisited whenever market conditions significantly change or when the company wants to introduce new products and services or start pursuing new types of clients.
What Is Included In A Market Assessment?
Blackwood Impact Group works with small to enterprise-level companies to conduct market assessments. Here is just a sampling of the areas we evaluate for you so that you can take the information you learn and revolutionize your marketing strategies.
Market Trends and Conditions
We take a holistic approach to analyzing all the factors that influence your market conditions. We look at consumer/buyer trends. We identify and evaluate your key competitors. We look at your suppliers and strategic partners as well as every player who has a role in you delivering your products and services to your customers. Anywhere there can be an improvement made to contribute to increased revenue, we’ll find it and suggest it.
Market Size
We take a quantitative approach to assessing your market. We determine the overall size of your market, the number of potential customers in this market, and we evaluate their buying power so you can define your pricing structure, among other things.
We analyze your competition, what they offer, and, most importantly, what they don’t so you can fill in the gaps. We also research publicly available information to determine your competitor’s market share and evaluate how many of their customers you can reasonably expect to switch allegiance to your brand.
SWOT Analysis
We also conduct a traditional SWOT analysis, where we assess your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. We zero in on your companies’ competencies so you can make more strategic choices.
External Influences
There are many external factors that can positively or negatively influence how well a business will perform. We analyze the political climate and any legal concerns as it relates to your products and services and how you deliver them. We also take a look at economic, social, and technological factors that could influence how you do business. We also look at any external barriers to entry into your market.
Internal Resources
We analyze your resources including your marketing budget, your messaging, your branding, your staff, and more. We also examine your marketing channel mix. We even help you identify opportunities for strategic partnerships. We also take a look at your revenue and profit margin projections.
What Are The Benefits of A Market Assessment?
Earlier we noted that the ideal time to conduct a market assessment is at the company’s founding. But that isn’t to suggest that market assessments are only beneficial for startups. Established businesses can benefit from a market assessment at several critical junctions. Whenever a company wants to pivot the business, make a quantum jump in revenue, start pursuing a new industry or segment, introduce new products or services, or when there has been a significant spike or dip in sales, those are all great times to initiate a market assessment.
These are critical junctions in a business’ journey. A market assessment can help you determine if there is a need or strong desire for your new product or service ideas. It can also help you determine if your desired market can sustain the type of growth you’re looking to make.
A market assessment can and should inform how you organize your operations, sales, and (of course) marketing strategies. It will give you the data to make the best decisions in allocating your time, money, and people resources.
Planning and executing strategies without the proper information can lead to missed opportunities, poor ROI (return on investment) from initiatives, wasted resources, and a potentially damaged reputation. The good thing is that no matter how you may have started, right now is always a great time to conduct a market assessment. Whether it is your first or 20th assessment, Blackwood Impact Group’s team of specialists can give you the right information so that you can adjust your strategies accordingly for maximum revenues.
If you want to know where you stand in the current marketplace and identify ways to hit your revenue target faster, contact us today for a no-obligation consultation where you’ll learn more about how we can help you. We are at 770-502-6295 or info@blackwoodimpactgroup.com.
