How To Identify Potential Opportunities in the B2B Market?

Sustainable growth is required for tech startups and because of that, it is critical to conduct market and customer research to identify B2B opportunities to grow business. The consistent growth in the adoption of SaaS is a signal for B2B sellers to regularly research markets for potential opportunities

Gartner has already established in a report that SaaS spending will go up from 100$ billion in 2020 to 140$ billion by the end of 2022.

Generally, the go-to-market strategy outlines a startup’s product-market fit, target market segment, demand generation, and distribution channels.

This research is the core foundation for identifying key opportunities in the B2B tech sector based on your business goals. Today, we will discuss 7 interesting strategies to identify potential market opportunities that your marketing team may be missing out on.

7 Ways To Find Key Opportunities in the B2B Market for Tech Startups

Finding new opportunities for your startup in the B2B market is a complex task. It involves both product marketing and sales teams who put together their collective analysis of the industry, competitors, customers, and market to identify potential business opportunities.

1 – Study Existing Industry Research & Publications

Researching through available secondary sources published by popular business intelligence providers like Gartner, Skift, and McKinsey & Company is ideal for startup marketing teams to understand the macro environment in which your business operates.

Secondary research can be highly beneficial for B2B startups as it allows them to identify seasonal trends, changing customer preferences, competitor USPs, laws & regulations, and other factors that can influence the product marketing strategy for new audiences.

Academic research papers, eBooks, industry reports & publications, and corporate reports are all great places to begin your research for new market opportunities.

Industry research and publications provide critical insights into the markets that competitors sell in, new technological innovations, and the dynamics that influence customer preferences.

An excellent example of industry research sources is Gartner, a leader in business & market intelligence. B2B marketers can browse through a valuable collection of industry reports, market analyses, trends, and business insights.

2 – Attend On & Offline Conferences

Startups, especially those in B2B tech, need to understand the importance of offline and online conferences. For startup owners, conferences can be excellent sources of meeting qualified leads who already have an essential need to fulfill and are ready to invest in your products.

Here are ways how attending online and offline conferences help identify new B2B market opportunities:

• It helps startups build a professional network
• Your team gains new skills and new use cases for products
• Identify industry trends

A great example of a hybrid B2B tech conference that brings together professionals from almost every business sector is MarTech. This amazing event is a series of conferences focused on B2B tech vendors and it annually analyzes the state of B2B marketing technology.

3 – Join Relevant Business Communities

Research has previously identified that B2B business communities are very rich sources of connecting with potential customers and like-minded individuals. Within communities startup, marketers can identify niche market audiences who trust & enjoy the content shared within these communities.

There are both paid communities like Discord and free but gated social media communities like LinkedIn Groups that startup marketers can choose to join. Communities offer B2B vendors an ideal place for social listening, consuming valuable content, and meeting potential customers.

LinkedIn Groups are probably the most popular preferred communities platform especially due to their content marketing reach and dynamic audience demographics. Recently, the platform even created a dedicated B2B marketing community called the LinkedIn Collective that provides professional B2B marketing teams with thought leadership and content resources.

4 – Perform Market Segmentation

Segmenting markets or audiences is historically a successful strategy to discover new opportunities in the B2B technology market. By identifying audiences that share similar characteristics to your ideal customer profiles, you can identify a niche segment of potential customers for your products.

B2B market segmentation is an excellent way to identify the firmographics and psychographics of different buyer personas. Firmographics including company age, revenue, employees, etc., and psychographics including company values, price considerations, functionality, security, etc. all contribute to identifying new market opportunities.

A great example of market segmentation to discover new audiences comes from The Royal Canadian Mint. The renowned Crown Corporation identified and analyzed high-value new and existing customers to eventually develop custom models to cross-sell & upsell through the customer lifecycle.

By turning to selected cryptocurrency markets and performing detailed segment analyses the Mint added 140,00 new customers in one campaign. The RCM also identified 15% more prospects interested in large-value crypto purchases, predicting significant growth in revenues.

The Mint identified 15% more prospects for major coin purchases and forecasted higher revenues for the coming year.

5 – Conduct a Purchase Situation Analysis

A purchase situation analysis is a process deployed to analyze internal & external factors that affect the market share of your startup. Purchase situations are commonly studied to determine how to discover market opportunities in tech by answering critical questions including:

• Why do customers buy our product
• With what urgency do they need our product
• What are the ideal payment methods
• What distribution channels do you offer to audiences
• Listen To Your Sales Team

Your sales teams directly interact with your potential customers and therefore have crucial insights about customer pain points and demands. Like secondary research, conducting primary research through first-hand sales team intelligence is an excellent way to identify new market opportunities. Sales team insights assist startups in innovating their existing products, discovering new markets for growth, and developing their brand across different markets.

6 – Listen To Your Sales Team

Your sales teams directly interact with your potential customers and therefore have crucial insights about customer pain points and demands. Like secondary research, conducting primary research through first-hand sales team intelligence is an excellent way to identify new market opportunities. Sales team insights assist startups in innovating their existing products, discovering new markets for growth, and developing their brand across different markets.

7 – Competitor Analysis

In-depth direct & indirect competitor analyses are significant in understanding who else is offering similar products to your potential audiences. Competitor analysis identifies successful branding techniques, product positioning, and the growth strategies of your competition.

Analyzing the direct & indirect competition allows you to understand different value propositions and how competitors engage audiences. This research assists startups to identify areas of competitive advantage that their brand has over the competition. Professionals identify five core steps to conduct a competitor analysis:

• Identify your direct and indirect competitors
• Identify competitor USPs
• Analyze the digital presence of your competitors
• Identify competitor strengths and weaknesses
• Interview and survey competitors’ customers’

5 Actionable Methods To Validate B2B Market Opportunities for Early Stage Tech Startups

The market validation process is designed to perform detailed research that identifies critical insights about pain points, ideal customer profiles, industry experts, competitors, etc. Validating market opportunities determines if your product has the potential to solve customer pain points.

The ideal strategy for validation is to conduct surveys and interviews within your new markets that have been identified. Some of the most common market validation methods include:

• SEO Research
• Audience Interviews & Surveys
• Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
• Pilot Test of Minimum viable product
• A/B Testing

Market validation demands B2B startups to listen and ask questions to understand the dynamics of the new market opportunity. Here is a simplified market validation strategy that professionals recommend:

1 – Define the problem you are solving, the product concept, and the value proposition

The first step is to create goals around solving a problem or fulfilling customers’ needs. Startups must answer important questions including how will our product solve this problem, where & how does this pain point occur, and how often it happens?

You should first identify and then relate your value proposition with audience pain points, and let the customer drive the product marketing plan.

2 – Conduct discovery to test your concept and make adjustments

To conduct discovery means to use one or more of the above-mentioned methods and begin testing your goals with real customers through online research, interviews, focus groups, meetings, testing minimum viable products, and A/B testing with different buyer personas.

3 – Define your MVP and determine if prospects will buy

Clearly analyze and define your minimum viable product to determine if customers will find value in it and if it is an attractive offering that has marketing potential.

4 – Develop your go-to-market strategy

The go-to-market strategy is the core action plan that defines how you will reach your target audiences (marketing) and how you will achieve competitive advantage (market share growth). The go-to-market strategy is a framework that guides B2B startups to launch their product, understand their ideal customer profiles, and how to market the product to potential customers.

5 – Conduct financial analysis and vet against other initiatives

The final step evaluates the financial viability and possible challenges of entering a new market. Startups must carefully analyze the competitive environment, ROI & breakeven analysis, and other financial aspects of the new opportunity like human resources and marketing costs.

How Can Chasm Help You to Identify & Validate Your B2B Market Opportunities?

Chasm assists startups with personalized market opportunity research that help build sustainable go-to-market strategies. Our expertise and knowledge identify optimal strategies to determine the size of market opportunities, discover the right distribution channels, and create appealing value propositions for different markets.

Chasm’s proficient data analysis and product marketing consultants help your brand identify the ideal marketing action plans that help your startup connect with the right audiences.

As a dedicated product marketing consulting agency, we develop winning action plans that identify potential markets, and different buyer personas, enhance demand generation, enact sales enablement plans, and improve your go-to-market plans. Our consultants engage with your team to understand your industry dynamics and build customized go-to-market strategies for optimal ROI growth.

Conclusion

The radical growth in SaaS product adoption is an excellent opportunity for tech startups to develop more meaningful products through in-depth market research. While identifying new B2B market opportunities is simpler, the real test is to validate the opportunity and mobilize the right resources to properly seize this market opportunity.

Connect with our team today to learn how we can help your startup can identify and validate the right B2B market opportunity. Chasm consultants can identify viable go-to-market strategies, sales enablement solutions, demand generation techniques, and revenue optimization plans that help you grow your B2B business.

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