Importance of Nailing your Market Strategy

Nailing your market strategy is a crucial step for your business and comes with many benefits if done right. The money and time you pour into sales and marketing could have improved results if you have an opportunity to step back and make sure that the stuff you say to your buyers is the stuff they care about. You may also see better results if you are focusing energy on market segments that make sense for your business.

Some software companies -hopefully, you, maybe your competitors- have this nailed. Either these companies instinctively know their market inside and out and can translate that message telepathically to all members of the sales and marketing team; or more likely they have a small army of product, marketing, and sales professionals that invest the time to get it right.

If think you need to improve on your market strategy, and you don’t have said army at your disposal, and telepathy isn’t one of your many skills, here is a short-hand version of a framework that we would recommend.  Any software company can get this work done in 40-50 hours.  That time investment can significantly improve your marketing and sales metrics like the top of the funnel, funnel conversion, and win rates.

A rapid approach to nailing your market strategy

We love using Pragmatic Marketing Framework, and you can use their framework in its full glory, or take a few shortcuts.  At a minimum, these are the documents we’d recommend you invest time in. No slide decks, it’s best to channel your F. Scott Fitzgerald and write in a full narrative:

Market Problems

Define the problems your market is facing. These could be problems that are silent or problems that are stated. Identify the urgency of the problems and determine if these are problems that your market is willing to throw money at to fix.

Market Definition

What defines the market you want to help?  With market definition, think in terms of segmentation.  Segmentation can be defined in a number of different ways; company size, location, function, industry. You’ll want to obtain some market sizing information if you can. For this, I like to use InsideView but there are other data sources like Zoominfo, DNB, etc. The market size information is pretty theoretical stuff. So from that data, you’ll want to try and figure out other key information:

• What is the current adoption rate in this industry?
• Are there technology proxies that you can reference (Ex. have other technologies penetrated the same market?)
• How many companies are in the market for a solution like yours in any given year? This could be driven by replacement rate or using theoretical conversion data. Sirius Decisions has a framework for figuring this out.

Competitive Landscape

Identify who your competitors are and figure out:

• What makes them strong,
• What is their kryptonite,
• How do they price,
• What is their market share,
• How are they funded
• How long have they been in business, etc

Distinctive Competencies

How are you going to compete in your market? What makes your offering distinctive from the alternatives. Don’t forget, your biggest threat in any market is no decision. Inertia is a powerful force. How do your competencies challenge the ‘do nothing option?

Buyer Personas

Define who the potential buyers are. Include:

• Their title, demographic, education, experience, attitude towards technology.
• What they are responsible for?
• How are they measured?
• What is in the way of their success?
• Their role in buying your product?
• Why haven’t they bought your product?
• Where do they get their information?

A few tips for this process:

• Buyer Personas are not User Personas. The people could overlap, but the information you are defining or seeking to define is different and has a different purpose.
• Have more than one buyer persona per role. Create by segment, create by receptiveness to technology.
• Name the persona. Example:  “Sarah the CFO”. Even better, name them after your existing customers.
• Interview customers, interview lost deals. Ask lots of questions.

Positioning

Once you have your market problems, definition, distinctive competencies, and buyer personas; it’s time to write a positioning document. For me, this is an important document, one that is central and allows everyone in the organization to copy and paste. Here is how I like to structure my positioning documents:

• In 30 words or less, write a positioning statement.
• In 100 words, describe what your product actually does as though your neighbor would understand without getting bored listening.
• Which customers do you serve?
• List Problem-Oriented Features (bullet list)
• Credibility Statements that are defendable

Writing a positioning document is absolutely the hardest part of this process.  It requires a fresh mind, clear from any other thought.  It’s a bit of a style thing but here are some tips:

• Pick your tonality. Do you want to be formal or fresh, or somewhere in between? You should parrot how your buyers communicate.
• Write in plain language. Try to avoid acronyms, think of your audience as your neighbor who has no idea what you do.
• Avoid the use of adjectives
• Use the blablameter. It helps you detect BS
• Don’t make claims like “World’s first” or “industry-leading” if they are not defendable by a third-party source. Try starting from a place of humility.

Your goal with this positioning statement is for your marketing team or sales reps to want to go to the document and use it for email copy, RFP responses, presentations, proposals, etc. Otherwise, they’ll just invent their own language and the result will be substandard, time-consuming, and inconsistent.

Summary

If you want to improve your top-of-funnel marketing results, funnel conversion, and win rates; it might be worth the time to relook at your market strategy. If you would like templates or a little feedback, don’t hesitate to contact us.