There’s no denying the enduring appeal and profit potential of markets in the developed world. However, in order to continue increasing revenues and building consumer bases, companies must look towards emerging markets. To successfully transition from domestic to international success in these markets, companies must take a carefully considered, well-researched approach. Here are seven tactics to help make that transition smoothly. 

You've done your initial market research and you've rubber-stamped your company business plan. All that's left is execution. Your superstar team turns your idea into a business, as you acquire new users, close your first few sales, and build great new features for your website. Revenue grows a bit, then stalls, then falls, but perhaps it's just a typical hiccup for a young company trying to get things going. A large tech company then makes a product similar to yours, but you reassure your employees by stressing the features that make your version unique. A few customers drop off. User counts decrease. Your crack squad of talented developers launches three new features, but by now, you're feeling desperate.

Colleges and universities present a unique marketing environment. Students are a large-scale, captive audience whose financial requirements have a generally uniform and narrow scope. Enticing them to enroll for credit cards is relatively easy for marketers. According to Sallie Mae, approximately half of all college students hold four or more credit cards.

Market research articles often focus on very specific customer types. "Suppose you're a restaurant serving mid-to-high-end Italian food," a post might begin, or else, "imagine you just built an iOS game for boys 7-12 years old." The reality, however, is that many of today's new businesses must serve multiple customer segments, and each customer segment requires new market research. Let's take a look at a few of the more common customer segment splits and discuss strategies for researching each separate market. 

Google Plus is a rapidly growing social network thanks to its giant online parent company.  According to Business Insider, there are 359 million active users on Google Plus, which is a 33% increase from June 2012. New users are entering the fray and Google Plus has forced its way into the discussion of social networks that corporations must add to their integrated marketing strategy.  The life of a social media brand manager is hectic and exciting.  The evolution of the well-known names (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) has raised the standard for which corporations enter the arena and at what volume their branded messaging is delivered to prospects and customers.  

In 2009, Kevin O'Connor (former DoubleClick CEO) was fed up. He would try to research the best college for his son, or the best ski resort for a family vacation, but all the information was disorganized, misleading, or sugar-coated by a marketing team. He wanted a place where he could indicate his specific preferences, review the facts, and make a smart, personalized decision. That summer, he and Scott Leonard set out to fix the problem, building out the basic structure for FindTheBest.com, and hiring a small team (including me) to help perform the proper market research.

Although marketing through social networks has grown tremendously over the last several years, classic SEO (search engine optimization) is still important. It's also fairly straightforward if you do the proper market research. Follow these SEO best practices and you'll see a nice boost in your organic (non-paid) traffic.

Imagine being a Redskin and getting your hands on the Dallas Cowboy playbook before the season begins; or being Target and getting the inside scoop on the marketing strategy of Walmart. In this day and age, understanding your competition, and particularly the marketing strategy your competition is pursuing, is far more critical than many companies realize.

You've scraped along as best you can on your own dime, and you’ve done the proper market research to prepare for your pitch. Now it’s time to deliver the presentation. The problem is that angel investors and venture capital firms (VCs) might watch 100 presentations before they pick one company to fund: you've got one shot to really impress them. At FindTheBest, we've received two successful rounds of funding, totaling around $17 million.

In the process, we've been turned down dozens of times as well. Here are five things we've learned about pitching investors, based on market research principles and feedback we've received from VCs.

1. Show you're solving a big problem

Social media and market research are natural dance partners. Just imagine how much data you've compiled on people's favorite relationship tip of the day or random nugget of baseless knowledge over time.  After all, social media provides advanced capabilities for segmentation. Once you eliminate the white noise, there is very rich data on consumer opinion and brand equity to extract and analyze.