This is the third article in our four-part series exploring Attack-A-Market and the ideas behind the new book, Attack-A-Market®: Define It. Attack It. Own It.™ In this installment, we look at what happens after you’ve identified the right market — and what it takes to turn that opportunity into a focused growth strategy. Read Part 1 |Part 2 | Part 4
There’s a moment in almost every growth initiative when everything seems to be coming together. The research has been done, leadership agrees there is a real opportunity and the company has a compelling reason to believe it can compete. After weeks or months of discussion, the organization has finally identified a market worth pursuing and there is genuine excitement about what could come next.
Then everyone goes back to work.
Sales still has a pipeline to manage and quarterly numbers to hit. Marketing already has campaigns on the calendar. Product and technical teams have their own priorities, while leadership quickly moves on to the next issue demanding attention. Unless there is a deliberate effort to turn the growth strategy into an organizational priority, the opportunity that generated so much enthusiasm can slowly become one more initiative competing for time and resources.
This is where Attack It., the second stage of the Attack-A-Market methodology, begins. Once a company has defined where it believes it can win, the challenge becomes aligning the organization around that opportunity and developing a strategy for pursuing it.
Before You Start Marketing, Understand How You’re Going to Compete
One of the easiest mistakes to make after identifying a promising market is to move too quickly into execution. The conversation shifts almost immediately to campaigns, prospect lists, trade shows, advertising, content and sales materials. Those things may eventually play an important role, but simply assembling a collection of tactics doesn’t mean a company has developed a strategy for winning the market.
There is still more to understand.
A company needs to know what matters most to customers in the market, what problems they are trying to solve and what alternatives they have today. It needs to understand where competitors are strong, where they may be vulnerable and why customers would consider changing what they already do. Just as importantly, the company has to determine what it can credibly bring to the market that others cannot.
For Walter Bonnett, co-author of the new marketing strategy book Attack-A-Market®: Define It. Attack It. Own It.™, this is where the work of attacking a market really begins.
“Once you’ve identified an opportunity, the temptation is to start doing things right away,” explained Bonnett. “But before you decide what the tactics are going to be, you need to understand how you’re going to compete and what it will take for customers in that market to see you as a credible choice.”
That understanding provides a foundation for everything that follows. Rather than entering a market with a product and hoping customers respond, the company begins building its sales and marketing efforts around a much clearer understanding of what those customers value and where the organization can make a meaningful difference.
A Growth Strategy Has to Extend Beyond Marketing
Attacking a market also requires more than a good marketing plan. If the opportunity is important enough to become a meaningful source of growth, it has to become something the broader organization understands and supports.
- Sales needs to know which customers are the best fit and why
- Marketing needs to understand the problems those customers are trying to solve so it can develop content and messaging that are genuinely useful
- Product and technical teams can contribute the expertise that makes the company credible
- Leadership has to provide enough focus and consistency to keep the initiative from becoming just another priority on a long list
When those groups are working independently, even a strong market opportunity can struggle to gain traction. Marketing may emphasize one customer challenge while sales hears something entirely different in the field. Technical experts may possess valuable knowledge that never reaches customers, or sales teams may pursue every potential account rather than concentrating on the companies that best fit the strategy.
None of this necessarily reflects a lack of effort. In fact, everyone may be working extremely hard. The problem is that hard work spread across different objectives rarely creates the same momentum as an organization concentrating its expertise and resources on a shared goal.
That alignment is one of the most important parts of Attack It. As sales conversations generate new customer insights, those insights should inform marketing. As marketing data reveals which issues are attracting interest, sales can use that information to improve its conversations. Technical teams can help both groups understand applications and customer challenges at a deeper level. With each interaction, the organization learns a little more about the market it has chosen to pursue.
Better Technology Can Make a Focused Strategy Even Stronger
The tools available to support this process have changed dramatically since DeanHouston Founder and Chairman Dale Dean first began developing the ideas that would eventually become Attack-A-Market.
Today, manufacturers can learn a tremendous amount about a market before a salesperson ever contacts a prospect.
- Search behavior can provide clues about the problems customers are researching
- Digital engagement can reveal which topics are generating interest
- Analytics can help organizations understand which messages and channels are producing results
AI is adding another layer of capability by helping teams accelerate research, recognize patterns and work through large amounts of information more efficiently.
“We have tools today that allow us to understand markets and customers at a level that wasn’t possible years ago,” said Dean. “The opportunity is to use that intelligence to make a focused strategy smarter, not to let every new technology pull the organization in another direction.”
That distinction is especially important at a time when companies are under constant pressure to adopt the newest platform, technology or marketing approach. More capability can easily lead to more activity, but activity only becomes valuable when it helps the organization understand its chosen market better, reach the right customers more effectively or strengthen its position against competitors.
The Strategy Should Get Better as You Go
No matter how much research is done beforehand, a company will never know everything about a market when it begins pursuing it. Some assumptions will prove correct and others will change as the organization spends more time talking with customers, competing for business and learning how the market actually operates.
That isn’t a failure of the strategy; it is how the strategy improves.
A question raised repeatedly during sales conversations may point to an issue the company hadn’t fully considered. A piece of content may unexpectedly generate interest around a particular application. Customer feedback may reveal an advantage the organization has been underestimating, while a lost opportunity can expose an area where a competitor is stronger than expected.
Companies that attack markets successfully learn from those signals and use them to become sharper over time. Their sales conversations become more informed, their marketing becomes more relevant and their teams develop a deeper understanding of the customers they are trying to serve. What began as a strategic hypothesis gradually becomes real market knowledge.
That knowledge is difficult to manufacture quickly, and it can become one of the most valuable outcomes of a focused growth strategy.
From Pursuing a Market to Becoming Part of It
The objective of Attack It. isn’t simply to generate a burst of leads or make a handful of sales in a new market. It is to establish enough presence, credibility and expertise that the company begins to earn a meaningful position there.
That takes time. It also requires a willingness to stay focused long enough for the organization’s knowledge and relationships to compound. As salespeople have more conversations, technical teams solve more problems and marketing creates more useful information, the company begins to understand the market in ways it couldn’t from the outside.
Eventually, customers begin to recognize the company’s name. Prospects come into conversations with some understanding of what the organization does. Customers begin looking to the company for answers rather than simply evaluating it as another potential supplier. The business is no longer trying to prove that it belongs in the market because it has begun to establish a reputation within it.
That is the progression at the heart of the Attack-A-Market methodology. Define It. establishes where the company should focus. Attack It. turns that decision into a coordinated strategy and gives the organization the opportunity to build real knowledge, credibility and momentum within the market.
Do that well and consistently, and the next stage begins to come into view: Own It.
Learn more about the Attack It. approach and the complete methodology in Attack-A-Market®: Define It. Attack It. Own It.™ and discover how a focused market strategy can become a platform for sustainable B2B growth.