Market Strategy is key for the success of a company--a defensible position is critical for customers, investors, and partners to understand what the company does and what value it brings to which market. Technology provides the genesis of many new and exciting ideas, while market strategy creation is a complementary process that insures the technology is focused on a market, delivers a market need, and brings compelling customer value. Defining a defensible position articulates the market value and then a marketing strategy defines how to communicate the position to a company's target market.
The role of marketing is to define and defend a company position and also to shorten the sales cycle; in the market strategy role, we first focus on position definition. Getting to that position requires a structured and detailed process that examines the needs and drivers of the potential markets and the company's assets--and then prioritizes and validates. The market strategy is created with participation from all senior team members. The process brings together the team to insure that the intellectual resources of the company are captured and shared, and then distills the information to a position that ultimately focuses all company activity - from sales to engineering.