Who’s not your customer

differentiation, ideal customer, Marketing, Positioning, Product Management, segmentation, single target market

This statement is as or even more important than identifying who’s your ideal customer.

Reason being when we are trying to identify the single target market , where this ideal customer exists, we always get emotional. It happens all the time with me as well, I always think that maybe with just a small tweak, I would also have a larger ICP market.

That’s where the problem starts, we do the first tweak, then the second and soon we have a large target market to focus on. Your brain feels comfortable with this because it sees a larger number so a higher possibility of success. The brain works on the mechanism that even a small portion of a large pie is better. However the chance of not being able to any portion of the large pie is a very strong reality.

To avoid this situation seducing you to look at larger numbers, its always a good idea to identify who would be a bad customer for you. This helps eliminate the add-on numbers to your ICP.

Its always always a good idea to look at a very small section of the market, learn from it, dominate it before expanding into others.

Till next time then…..eliminate all the people who would not be good customers.

Carpe Diem!!!

Crowded market or creating a new Market

differentiation, Marketing, Positioning, Product Management, segmentation

Trying to create a new market is very “sexy”. All the marketing books and case studies will talk about the heroics of creating a new market where nothing existed and how those companies took abnormal profits.

What doesn’t get spoken in these case studies is the number of companies who fell by the wayside in trying to create a new market.

I have had my share of misadventures in trying to create a new market where there was none.

I have found that its always better to check a market where there are existing players and then find a niche in that market. If there are other players already, it means there’s money for that product or service . It means people accept that kind of a product or service.

If people already accept a certain kind of product then its easier to upgrade them to a more powerful version or more expensive version or sometimes to a simpler version. The basic concept of your product or service is known, so you only have to convince on the nuances that you offer.

Here you can be first with the nuance that you are bringing to the table and occupy that position in the minds of the customer.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

B2B Buyer’s and the ecosystem

B2B, Marketing, Marketing Ecosystem, Positioning, Product Management, segmentation

I have written earlier about the “infrastructure” that needs to be in place before you can place a new technology solution in the customer environment. This infrastructure also akin to the ecosystem which exists in nature which helps everyone survive and grow better

If that be the case, then who would the customer contact for a new technology that she’s hearing about.

If you have niched your market well, then you would know most of the market participants.

If you have niche your market well then you might be able to anticipate the questions that will come in the mind of your prospect.

If you can anticipate these you may also then be able to anticipate who would be the existing vendor/partner that the customer may want to talk to. Can you think of building a partnership with this company to get a quicker entry into the ecosystem.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Single Target Market – again

differentiation, differentiation, Marketing, Positioning, Product Management, segmentation

I can’t stop myself from seeing the magic of focusing on only one small segment of the market.

Today I was working on one offering after my team had yesterday isolated 3 possible segments based on data. Based on data I was to work on identifying the right niche for this product.

I have mentioned multiple times earlier and would like to recommend the podcast at Morecheeselesswhiskers.com. By far its one place where you will see how Dean Jackson goes about analyzing single target markets.

Coming back to my experience today. I first eliminated 2 of the markets because there was nothing to create a common strategy.

Then I came to what we club – as BFSI – Banking, Finance, Securities and Insurance. As I stated thinking about the geographic differences that can come into these customers. So I decided to stick to just North India.

As I started to think of the conversation going on in the minds of my audience I realized that I was thinking of the marketing heads, the CTO, the CIO. All 3 would have different things which keep them up at night.

While these differences not enough , I realized that even the marketing head of an insurance company would have different concerns than the marketing head of a securities company.

So now we had brought down our single target market to just the marketing head ds of insurance companies in North India. However I still have a nagging feeling that I may need to splice this further. But we will leave that for another day.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!