We in the B2B marketing industry are fond of throwing around metaphors to describe how ferocious and contested it is to engage our target markets. But as executives in the IT services sector see their market as a battlefield of technical jargon and healthcare marketers see their arena as a merciless valley of risks, these metaphors are actually far from what their markets really are: as organisms.

Back in high school, our biology classes involved capturing an animal and dissecting it for the purpose of having a better look at its anatomical structure and its importance to the animal’s survival. Moral considerations aside (after all, we’re dealing with metaphors here), dissecting a frog enables us to understand not just the mechanisms that allow it to jump very long distances, but also its biological make up in relation to its surroundings. We can use such information in, say, creating artificial ecosystems that precisely mimic its natural home.

But where does marketing fit in all this? Just like the frogs we abduct, markets have examinable qualities that describe how it behaves in any given situation. Knowing these qualities is no helpful in terms of finding opportunities.

In this Business 2 Community article, David Cameron Gikandi offers a guide of 11 characteristics you could find in a market with high potentials.

#1 Size.

The bigger the market size, the better.

#2 Urgency.

The more urgently people need the products in that market, the better. For example, pet rocks have no urgency, but medication does.

#3 Speed to market.

The faster you can go from getting the initial idea to beginning to make sales, the better.

#4 High pricing potential.

The higher you can charge per product, the better.

#5 Low cost of acquiring new customers.

The easier and cheaper it is to get new customers, the better.

#6 Low cost and ease of delivering.

The cheaper and easier it is to deliver your product, the better.

#7 Uniqueness.

The more unique your product is (or how you deliver it, or how you package it), the better.

#8 Low upfront investment.

The fewer resources you need to test the market, build the business and get started, the better.

#9 Back-end and up-sell potential.

The more related products you can sell to your existing clients, the better. You don’t want to go into business whereby you can only sell one product one time to each customer and then that’s it. There is no growth potential there. You need to be able to repeatedly sell the same customer.

#10 Evergreen potential.

The easier it is to continue selling and selling once in business, the better. For example, a product that can be sold forever, like toilet paper or cooking oil, is better than one that is sold just once, like pet rocks.

#11 Addressability.

The easier it is to reach and communicate with your market, the better. For example, does your market congregate in “pools” like mailing lists or radio stations or places you can get access to?

By understanding this, we can create a lead generation strategy that will work.

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