Marketers work tirelessly to distinguish their brand in the market, nurture their customer base, and build customer loyalty. Even when a company achieves cult brand status, a marketer’s work is never done. In search of growth, brands may look to attract customers across new markets, product lines, lifestyles, niches, and more. What steps can marketers take to ensure a smooth market expansion? Which marketing strategies can be used to attract new customers without alienating a loyal customer base?
What is market expansion?
Market expansion is a growth strategy brands use to grow revenue by increasing the reach, availability, and/or appeal of a product, service, or brand in a new yet related market. It could involve expanding the brand overseas, launching a new product line, and/or using marketing to drive demand among new consumers, demographics, and geographic regions.
Market expansion is different from increasing market share or rebranding. Brands increase their market share by capturing a higher percentage of the market they have already been marketing the same products to. Market expansion aims to develop interest in the brand from new audiences and/or in a product line or vertical new to the brand. Unlike market expansion, a rebranding occurs when the brand’s marketing doesn’t appeal to their target market or when the current target market isn’t a good fit for the brand. A rebranding involves the complete overhaul of a brand’s marketing strategy and overall identity. However, a market expansion introduces the brand to new customers without changing the brand’s core identity.
Examples of market expansion
Market expansion can involve the launch of a new product line or vertical, but doesn’t necessarily have to. Here are some examples of how retail brands have expanded their markets.
Zara
Global retailer Zara launched a line of hair products in November 2023 known as Zara Hair in collaboration with celebrity hair stylist, Guido Palau. The Zara Hair launch campaign features Palau and model Kaia Gerber in a digital marketing campaign promoting the “Glitter in Gold” kit of gold-themed hair products. This isn’t the first time Zara launched a new product line under their brand name. The clothing retailer previously expanded into home goods and furnishings with Zara Home and makeup with Zara Beauty. While many of these products also appeal to Zara’s core audience, they are able to also drive new interest in the brand and cross promote between different verticals.
Coach
Coach recently became the “it brand” among Gen Z. The brand captured this market by embracing the resurgence of Y2K fashion and by enhancing their sustainability efforts. In order to combat waste, a widespread issue across the fashion industry, Coach launched Coachtopia, an eco-friendly fashion line made from recycled materials. Coach’s market expansion has paid off. Between January 2023 – June 2023, consumers under the age of 25 increased their spending on Coach by 10%. While Coach won over Gen Z, they maintained their customer base as the brand remains a favorite across generations.
GoPro
GoPro, a brand once synonymous with extreme sports and lifestyles, successfully expanded their market without changing the product or alienating their core customers. They did so by showing how their cameras could also be used to capture memories with children and pets and once in a lifetime vacations. Visitors to their e-commerce homepage can shop by activity to easily find the right cameras for families, travel, mountain biking, camping, power sports, and more. GoPro expanded their market by showing how parents and travelers can also use GoPro cameras to capture their favorite memories. However, they didn’t stop creating and sharing content around extreme sports.
5 market expansion strategies to attract new customers (while staying true to the brand)
Before deciding what niches or markets to expand into, brands must first perform extensive research on the new market and customers. Which categories or markets are underserved? Where would the brand add value? Who is the customer you want to reach? How are they different from the brand’s current customer base or target market? Who is the competition?
It’s paramount when entering new markets to identify a specific customer persona or personas, understand their motivations, and uncover pain points the brand expansion would solve.
Market expansion is an exciting milestone in a brand’s story. When a brand sets out to reach new markets and/or a different type of customer, marketing teams must use separate strategies from those used to increase market share. By telling great stories and diversifying the types of content, formats, customers, and use cases brands feature, they can make their products relevant to more customers.
1. Partner with complementary brands
Call it partnerships, co-branding, co-marketing, or joint ventures, an innovative and lucrative way brands appeal to new audiences is by collaborating with other established brands. These brand collaborations have grown in popularity because they provide companies with a creative and cost-effective way to reach new audiences and improve brand perception, loyalty, and recognition. Plus, 71% of consumers say they enjoy co-branding partnerships.
There are countless examples of brand partnerships across various industries, verticals, and price points. Some collaborations seem obvious like Taco Bell and Doritos or Joybird and Sherwin-Williams. Others are more out of the box like Balenciaga and Crocs. Washable rug brand Ruggable has collaborations with various brands and artists to appeal to different home designs and audiences. Beauty brands such as Charlotte Tilbury have also taken on bold brand collaborations.
The most successful collaborations are highly aligned and authentic. Brands must collaborate with companies that resonate with their audiences. The companies must also be aligned on what the collaboration will entail and what metrics define a “win.”
2. Tap into the secondhand market
The secondhand market has exploded. According to Statista, the value of the secondhand market is projected to rise rapidly in the coming years, reaching a value of $351 billion by 2027. Much of this growth is fueled by inflation, environmental concerns, and Gen Z and Millennials being more open to buying secondhand items. As popular resale apps like Depop and Poshmark make gently used luxury items more accessible at a fraction of the retail price, reclaiming the secondhand market has become a key luxury brand marketing strategy.
Resale tech platform Trove enables brands like Canada Goose, Lululemon, and REI to reclaim and resell items secondhand. It has raised $150 million in funding since its inception. Reselling items secondhand helps promote the brand to new customers. Not only does it show the brand’s commitment to sustainability, it also displays just how durable and high quality the brand’s products are. This can inspire more customers to buy new items from the brand. Many customers who buy secondhand are new-to-brand customers. Much of them go on to become primary customers buying items first hand.
3. Support a cause or social good
Brands can appeal to socially conscious customers and build goodwill across their current customer base by aligning themselves with a cause. One popular initiative across industries is sustainability. Over 4,000 of the world’s largest brands have already set targets to reduce or completely offset their carbon emissions to achieve a goal known as “net zero.”
Today’s customers don’t want just a marketing gimmick or one “feel good” marketing campaign that touches on a cause. They want to see genuine change in how companies operate in order to have a more positive impact on the world. Brands that authentically get behind a cause and incorporate it into their business will win over new customers. Cause marketing technology platforms such as ShoppingGives empower brands to become more socially conscious by embedding fully optimized and compliant charitable giving strategies throughout the digital shopping journey. In an effort to eliminate waste from the skincare industry, KraveBeauty boosted customer engagement and raised over $100,000 for Women’s Earth Alliance.
4. Add new channels
Digital marketing helps brands reach a wider audience in more personal ways than traditional methods. The biggest challenge, however, is the sheer volume of digital channels available and content needed to be active on them. If a brand’s goal is to engage with a younger audience, they can build a TikTok strategy. To reach the over 20 million US-based seniors active on Facebook, a brand can enhance their Facebook presence. To expand the brand to more women and/or people interested in design or DIY, Pinterest is a great option. These are just a handful of examples of ways to expand to new channels or optimize current channels to reach new audiences.
Marketing teams need Generative AI to create AI-generated images, copy, video, and more quickly and at scale to enable more digital channels. Many social media platforms like TikTok require users to disclose AI-generated content. While most Generative AI text generation solutions for marketing create conversational, on-brand copy quickly and at scale, there is no guarantee that the messaging will achieve the campaign goals (i.e. sales, bookings, sign ups, etc.)
Unlike other Generative AI solutions for text generation that pull data from the internet as a whole and don’t take conversions into account, the Persado Motivation AI knowledge base is built on over a decade of performance data from Fortune 500 campaigns. So marketers can achieve both efficiency and effectiveness using the highest-performing AI-generated messaging across digital channels. As Generative AI language models get smaller and more fit-for-purpose, marketers should look for knowledge bases that best fit their needs and overall goals.
Think beyond social media channels
Expanding to new channels goes beyond adding new social media channels. Podcasts, influencers, blogs, and newsletters represent additional digital marketing alternatives. Brands can directly sell and market to new audiences through new distribution channels. For example, brands can sell on Amazon or other marketplaces. They could also sell wholesale to other retailers or partner with booking websites such as Booking.com or HotelTonight. Brands should also consider having a brick and mortar presence and tapping into the experience economy. These strategies not only drive sales, but also expose the brand to new audiences.
5. Use high-performing language
People connect with one another through words. The same is true for brands and their customers. The language brands use across their digital marketing campaigns as they expand their markets determines if customers feel inspired to take action or not. Persado Motivation AI delivers the highest-performing digital marketing messaging across channels and industries. Brands using Persado experience significant revenue growth while maintaining a consistent brand voice across channels.
When speaking to new or existing audiences brands use Essential Motivation to instantly generate messaging that increases campaign performance and revenue. E-commerce brands also use Dynamic Motivation to turn more browsers into buyers by serving the highest-performing messaging in the online cart and across the website and email. While the AI-generated messaging delivered by Motivation AI helps brands increase conversions whether or not they are embarking on a market expansion, it can be incredibly impactful when unlocking the potential of a new market.
Market expansion allows brands to be creative. It also keeps the brand fresh and innovative. When it’s done right, a market expansion can “wow” current customers too. There isn’t the perfect time to embark on a market expansion. However, brands should make sure they have enough market share of their core customers in order to invest money and resources in reaching new audiences.
Request a risk-free trial today of Motivation AI, the enterprise solution CB Insights named the leaders in GenAI text content generation.
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