Opportunities can be compared to free food samples at the mall. They may be rather tasty at times. Other times, they cause you a nasty stomach ache, but you’ll never know for sure unless you have a bite.
Before you do your best efforts at branding your products with strategic custom packaging, set the foundation of your future branding and promotions plans by looking at your market opportunities. This way you also know how to best present your products to consumers.
In a perfect world, your company offering is constant, developing on its own without being influenced by other forces, and being lucrative for ages.
In truth, firms are vulnerable to market swings. How and when your business expands is heavily dependent on how fast you find new market opportunities.
The answer should obviously be to investigate every conceivable option in order to survive light years ahead of the pack, right?
No, not really.
Where to start?
There may be a hundred different options to test out, much as on a restaurant menu. That isn’t to say that your stomach will appreciate you eating everything at once. What appears to be “Today’s Special” may actually be an allergen for your business.
A market opportunity evaluation can help you identify and capitalize on the correct market opportunity for your company. Let’s start with an explanation of what market opportunity means for your company and how to take advantage of it.
What does market opportunity mean?
The market opportunity is an estimate of your business’s future size and revenue. The method used in determining the viability of a business opportunity is called market opportunity analysis.
It is a critical component of any company’s strategy in which the market is examined to determine the expected revenues and profits from the company’s offerings before it is launched.
Difference Between Market Research and Market Opportunity Analysis
Do you recall the mall we mentioned earlier? Assume you’re responsible for setting up an ice cream stand. What steps would you take to complete the task?
The first step is to determine the counter’s placement. Is it going to be inside the mall or outside? After that, what tastes would you serve to your customers? Last but not least, how much would you charge for your products?
When conducting market research, these are the types of questions you’ll ask. To respond to these questions, you’ll need to use data that you currently have or obtain through market intelligence from multiple sources.
You’ve now established your ice cream stand and are looking for methods to expand your business. Perhaps you could raise the price of each flavor separately? Maybe you could come up with some fresh offers or combinations? Perhaps you could collaborate with another well-known company to create a new flavor? These are just a few instances of market prospects that might enable your company to soar to new heights.
Since there are so many similarities between market research and market opportunity analysis, it’s easy to get them mixed up. To put it another way, market research informs you about which market prospects are worth your consideration.
Markets may be fragile, especially when they fluctuate so regularly. Taking a chance on something new or ambitious for your company might seem daunting. However, exploring market possibilities does not have to be a high-risk endeavor. Market research may eliminate layers of uncertainty from the equation when done correctly.
When Is the Best Time to Begin Your Market Opportunity Assessment?
A market opportunity can never be planned no matter how badly we wish it could. You should, in theory, be assessing and evaluating market prospects on a frequent basis. However, needing to monitor every slight shift in the market is inconvenient in practice. It’s also not financially practical to shift a company’s main area to accommodate every potential possibility.
Creating a list of your business goals is one method to make the market opportunity evaluation process go more smoothly. Understanding what your company’s current needs are can help you scale down the kind of possibilities you should be searching for and the best method to evaluate them.
