Open Markets

There are huge benefits in finding customers in unexpected places

A great way to drive new growth and build for long term success is by taking your existing product to new markets. At first glance, this point almost seems too obvious to mention, why wouldn't an organization offer its product in new markets? The distinction is that in opening new markets, a company should essentially take its existing product and find a new audience.   This is not about creating new products for new markets or dramatically changing your product or organization for new markets. Creating a new product or dramatically changing your existing product or organization can be expensive and cause you to lose focus on what is really important. Too often "bet the farm" efforts to enter new markets is the course that is actually taken. When instead the company should be thinking creatively about other uses for your product, essentially as it is, and introducing it to a new market. WD-40 is a great example of incorporating this thinking into their DNA.WD-40 started out as a way to prevent corrosion on nuclear missiles and now they have a campaign around the 2000 different uses of WD-40.
Being able to pull customers from different places dramatically reduces your risks.  When your primary market is affected you are able to continue on by the support you get from your additional markets.
You have a product, hopefully a great product, but you need to sell it.  If you are able to find those markets beyond the obvious, it is a huge win because you are not adding additional product costs just marketing costs.  Sometimes this happens naturally like Twitter in the Arab spring countries and sometimes this happens intentionally like Apple marketing to schools, either way it can be a huge boon because your reach is expanded dramatically.
It is too easy to look at your business and then say our market is made up of the following likely users, but this can be mistake.  Take the case of m-pesa whose mobile payment offering changed the face of the financial system, not in the United States or in Europe, not even in Japan, but in Kenya.
Another important aspect of opening new markets is that you are competing against existing products on different qualities which can bring an immediate competitive advantage.Consider the case of m-pesa , it was extremely hard for financial institutions to compete against their offering because they were offering the same results but competing on different qualities that the banks simply could not match.

Three Reasons

Reason 1: Diversification
Reason 2: Low cost market
Reason 3. Different competition, competing on different qualities