Flexing your brand for successful market entry
Taking a successful brand to a new market can feel like a no-brainer when demographic shifts and emerging trends open up new opportunities; especially when the home market growth opportunities become more hard to come by.
This guide outlines some key considerations for market expansion so that you can optimise your chances of success in the new market. More often than not, consumers can tell an import when they see one, and depending on the market, that’s not always welcome!
The competitive set is different, the codes are different, and consumer wants and needs are often different. You also need to be mindful of politics and your reliance on a regional or local team to support your brand, and avoid the sense of 'not invented here'.
It's important to have some flexibility in the brand guardrails to optimise success. It's important to demo your brand and talk to consumers in market, allowing them to try, touch, feel, taste your brand to get the proposition right. This can impact claims, pack design and structure.
Sure there might be an opportunity, but having real understanding of the market, and the gaps your brand might fill, rather than assuming success in market 1 = success in market 2 is the way to go. Often a Global proposition that’s adapted for the local market is more successful.
Let’s imagine that you work on a brand which has spotted the growth opportunities through the expansion of the middle classes in the Global South and their increased available income. You have a leading brand, that could be launched into the untapped market, and a strong brand name to depend on. Doing the following due diligence ahead of launch could make all of the difference.
Understand your target cohort’s beliefs and behaviours to identify the benefits your brand can deliver
Understanding the beliefs, behaviours and culture around your category are essential to getting the claims, benefits, communications and executional codes right.
Ask yourselves the following questions:
WHO is my target cohort?
WHY do they use this category?
WHAT are their current beliefs and behaviours?
HOW can my product improve/help/support them, and what is special about its ability to do so
For example, your product category may be used differently from how you see it used in the ‘home’ market. Laundry powder may be used for general house cleaning as well as the laundry; hair removal wax may be used to even skin tone. Knowing this, may change how your position your brand in market.
Research your proposition in-market with consumers, and tweak it on the basis of feedback, before final execution.
Understand the competitive intensity and be ready to respond
Many global brands suffer from the pricing strategies and speed of local players. Preempt that local players are ultimately inevitable and plan for aggressive price competition and speed of production and distribution.
Understand what your global competitors’ launch strategies might be, and how you can work to ensure an continued advantage. For example, is your competitor a large conglomerate that can afford to use low prices as a lever to ensure that retailers don’t list your product, as a way to secure listings? If so, plan your response.
Tailor how you execute in market
Consumers the world over often look to reduce the effort in their decision making (system 1 thinking). This means that they imply a lot from how the brand shows up in market. Think about language and claims, but also consider pack structure and materials.
Tailoring performance to be sensitive to market biases can increase in-market performance. We have known brands to be accidental winners in Asia because their logo is red, which conveys happiness and good-fortune. We have also seen people use anthropomorphism in packaging to attribute health benefits from long, slim pack structures.
Adapt to the local market retail environment
Understand the current retail conditions and also emerging players. For example, are consumers shifting away from Traditional Trade to Discounters? If so, given that discounters carry low SKU counts and fewer brands, what is your price-pack architecture solution? What new news and new formats can you offer to discounters?
What is the E-commerce environment? What role does Pureplay and Omnichannel play; how rapidly is quick commerce growing and; what is the outlook for D2C and Social Commerce? Each different ‘sub-channel’ fuels different strategies: for example Quick Commerce supports higher price points due to consumers being prepared to pay a premium for the convenience, and Pureplay and Omnichannel afford multi-pack strategies, with consumers buying in bulk.
Harness your team’s local expertise
Whether you have nationals from the launch market in your global team, or local representatives who will be supporting the brand on the ground, tap into their market knowledge and expertise, understand what works and what doesn’t work, and be sensitive to local market conditions.
Use the marketing P’s as a checklist
Ensure that every element of your brand that has flexibility is optimised for the market launch. Use the 6 P’s as a check.
Proposition - What benefit does your brand deliver?
Product- What is it about how the product that delivers these benefits?
Pack - How do the product structure, graphics, utility work to support the proposition?
Place - How does the retail environment influence the SKUs that you sell and the price-pack architecture?
Price - What is your pricing strategy and how is it tailored to the market?
Promotion - What media, claims and messaging will resonate most strongly in market?
Our team has on-the-ground experience in taking Global brands to new markets, whether that’s from Global North to South or vice versa, or simply from Global North to Global North.