Market Development and Commercialization
Learn the essential marketing concepts and practical commercialization strategies to bring your new venture to market.
Delivery
Online
Duration
12 Weeks
Commitment
8-10 Hours per Week
Instructor Rating
3.7 / 4
Marketing innovative products and services occurs in an ever-changing environment, and requires rapid decision making with incomplete information. These innovations are introduced at increasingly frequent intervals, and there are high mortality rates for products and services, and the businesses themselves.
Our course provides a practical, how-to guide for navigating these marketing challenges to bring innovative new products and services to market. With learning modules on product strategy, go-to-market strategies, and growth strategies, you will build your skills in understanding and applying the latest marketing strategies and tactics. We’ll explore how to develop an informed marketing plan that aligns with customer needs based on real market research.
Learn the latest strategies for customer discovery, interviews and focus groups, product design, product development, content marketing, social media marketing, and marketing campaign management. The course will provide a balance between conceptual discussions based on readings of concepts and practices, and applied, hands-on analysis with real projects.
What You'll Learn
- Learn the fundamentals of product strategy with attention to product vision, user journey mapping, business modeling, SMART objectives, customer profiling, customers jobs, customer pains, customer gains, competition, and differentiators.
- Understand go to market strategies with an exploration of buyer journey, pricing, channel strategy, positioning, branding, and product-market fit.
- Develop insights on growth strategies as we explore inbound vs outbound marketing, types of media, pull marketing, push marketing, social media marketing, social media channels and content, budgeting, timing, content calendars, customer activation, landing pages, customer retention, email campaigns, and minimum viable products (MVPs).
Who Will Benefit
- Aspiring entrepreneurs working to identify a viable new business idea from which to develop their own company.
- Active entrepreneurs seeing to validate and enhance their existing business idea and accelerate their company’s success.
- Corporate professionals interested in understanding how business and technology shape the creation of new products and services by established companies.
- Educators, consultants, and organizational leads desiring to improve their capacity to teach, advise, or empower their constituencies to succeed in startup entrepreneurship or corporate innovation.
Course Topics
Module 1: Introduction to Market Development and Commercialization
This module includes a welcome to the course, an orientation to our teaching approach and faculty, and an introduction to the marketing challenges for new ventures.
Module 2: Customer Development and the Chasm
Revisiting the Customer Development Process. Highlights from the Customer Development Manifesto. What Startup Market Do You Fit In? How Market Types Affect Marketing Strategy.
Module 3: Crossing the Chasm to Mainstream Customers
The Basics of Crossing the Chasm. What Customer Problem Are You Solving? Segmenting the Market.
Module 4: Creating a Product Marketing Foundation
Linking Products to Buyers. Defining the “Whole” Product. Customer Value: Tying Benefits to Features. Pricing Your Solution.
Module 5: Communicating Product Value to Customers
What’s Your Brand? Positioning Your Startup and Product. Eight Rules to Build a Strong Market Position. Corporate Positioning.
Module 6: Promoting Your Product and Startup
Influencing Customers with Market Messengers. Adopting Traditional PR Approaches. Developing a PR Plan. Bootstrapping Your PR Efforts.
Module 7: The Basics of Creating Customer Demand
Understanding the Customer’s Buying Journey. Driving Customer Awareness and Interest. The Buyer Persona. Creating a Buyer Persona.
Module 8: Acquiring Customers with Content Marketing
Connecting with Story Telling. Building a Credible Story. Content Marketing and Storytelling. Delivering Content.
Module 9: Creating Customer Demand with Inbound Marketing Tools
Key Elements of Your Digital Marketing Strategy. The Basics of Lead Capture. The Basics of Search Engine Optimization. The Basics of Paid Search.
Module 10: Creating Customer Demand with Outbound Marketing Tools
The Drivers of Marketing Automation. What is Marketing Automation. Email Campaigns. Nurturing Prospects to Become Customers with Lead Scoring.
Module 11: Extending Your Sales Reach
Developing a Sales Strategy. Understanding How the Channel Food Chain Works. Building a Distribution Plan to Scale. Developing Distribution Pricing.
Learning Experience
Asynchronous Lectures
Coaching and Mentoring
Live Office Hours
Peer Interactions and Networking
Project-Based Learning
Real-World Assignments
Faculty
Lola Koiki
Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute
University of Maryland
Lola Koiki is a senior product manager at Capital One with responsibility for leading the development, launch, and commercialization of Emerging Payments, which encompasses U.S. Real-Time Payments, Payment Infrastructure Modernization, and Payments Innovation. She is currently leading Capital One’s effort to join the first new payments clearing system in the United States in over 40 years, while developing an enterprise-wide consistent strategy for faster payment capabilities across the company.
In addition to her work at Capital One, she is a partner at PoyntFour, a Product Management and Delivery Consultancy based in the DC area, with a focus on pre-seed to series startups and mid-size government agencies looking to build high efficiency teams. She is also a Lecturer with the University of Maryland’s Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute. In her time at University of Maryland, she has taught over 500 undergraduate students, many of which have gone on to launch new ventures or work in start-ups.
She is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, with a Masters in Information Systems Management. She holds a BS in Marketing and Supply Chain Management from the University of Maryland.
She currently lives in Washington DC and volunteers with organizations in the area, such as The Neighborhood Well, a non-profit focused on helping the unstably housed in the DC Area, and Acts1038, a non-profit focused on education and career development for immigrants to the United States.
Take a Peek at Market Development and Commercialization
Our no-cost pre-application is the first step to the formal application, and allows our admissions team to give you a preliminary assessment of the strength of your application.
