How Going Vertical can be beneficial for your business

Let’s start by answering the main question: what does “going Vertical” mean?

Verticalization implies a company’s strategy to specialize how it sells and markets by industry vertical or function. The main goal of verticalization is to create a competitive advantage in the eyes of your buyer.

Why go vertical?

The main benefits of going vertical include:

Higher Funnel Conversion and Win Rates. Companies that offer a compelling differentiation in the eyes of their buyer experience more leads converting to opportunities, and consequently more opportunities converting to new customers. Why is this the case? Because when you go vertical, you are using the language of the buyer, you are telling industry-related stories, you have features and functions that are specific to the industry. All of this translates to the buyer as a lower-risk proposition.

Bigger Deals. Vertical products can pack more value and demand a premium price point as a result. The reason is that vertical products have less risk in the eyes of the buyer. They are willing to pay 10-20% more for any opportunity to reduce project risk.

More Leads. This might be counter intuitive. “Doesn’t going vertical mean that you are carving off-market opportunity?” Not necessarily. Let’s work on the assumption that your company isn’t trying to add a million new deals a year and that you don’t have infinite cash to spend on sales & marketing. With these two assumptions in place, your market constraint is rarely the size of the addressable market, it’s often constrained by your product/market fit, and ability to get to the market. As long as your vertical has at least 5,000 companies you won’t have any issues blasting through your targets. In fact, if your target is greater than 10,000 companies, there is a good chance you aren’t vertical enough.

By going vertical, you’ll be able to find more leads because you can message directly to your Ideal Customer Profile and Buyer Persona. These buyers consume the same content, join the same associations, in fact they probably hang out together at the same events. This makes it infinitely easier to optimize your limited marketing resources.

Where do I start?

It’s easier than you think. In fact, you can go vertical in 60 days if you do the work with intent. Check out the deck above for more tips, and don’t be shy to ask us questions. This is the type of thing we help our customers with every day.