These three words are so deep in their meaning if you are in any way involved with Product Management or Marketing.

While classic marketing talks about identifying a problem in the market and then coming out with a solution. In a lot of cases , especially when it comes to technology marketing, as new technology starts becoming available you work on building new use case scenarios and then going out to the market to sell it.

In these cases you have the ability to fine tune the product for specific markets, but inherently you don’t have the ability to create a brand new product after identifying a product. Start-ups do have the ability to identify niches in the market where problems are unsolved and create from scratch. For most of us who work on the quarter by quarter revenue targets we have to look for the segments which have a problem , that our solution can solve.

For these situations the Single Target Market is the most important item in my view. Its one step deeper than just segmentation which is taught. Here we are also looking at going further down the segmenting exercise with the usage involved.

As an example you may have a product which is a car stereo. Lets assume that it has the ability to connect with 8 speakers and therefore the segment becomes only those cars which have the ability to have 8 speakers. Now if you are getting in new with this product – you can go to the OEM who is making the car and ask them to incorporate it into their car. On the other hand you can take this same car stereo and sell it to the “after market” dealers as a replacement of faulty stereos.

The messaging you have to do to connect with the 2 different types of markets is different. Now lets go to target the “after market” niche further by looking to say a specific state like California to start with, versus looking at a state like Georgia. The accent of the message is totally different. So now you are targeting the auto shops which provide repair services for cars of the luxury kind in a state like Georgia.

Each time I try to do a Single Target Market analysis – I learn a little more about how you can get a finer market to target.

Why is this important – all your advertising, messaging, triggers, the logistics of reaching your market- everything becomes easier and more focussed, which leads us to success.

Till next time then…..

Carpe Diem!!!