selecting a niche

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!!!

Competition is good – Part II

competition, differentiation, Marketing, Positioning, Product Management, segmentation, value proposition

Yesterday I spoke about why competition is good for you.

Today we will look at what you need to be aware of in your competition.

In the technology space if you’re competing with a big player, you need to first of all be aware that they have a large customer base and they an ecosystem already in place. This could be the software developers, the reseller partners etc.

Due to this you get to know what is the surrounding “infrastructure ” that needs to fall in place, to make your product/service successful.

However going head-on into competition is never a good idea.

Each competitor would also have multiple areas of the market that they neglect because they’re not big enough for them to invest in.

Look at some of those and create segments and value proposition for dominating those before you decide to get into something else. Always get into the niche with an agenda to Dominate.

From a customer perspective also, since customers prefer to avoid taking risks, don’t try to initially target the same type of customers who have made your competitors successful because they will use you to get discounts from the leaders.

Competition is a very good learning experience and gets you prepared to Not do the same mistakes which the competitors have made.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

B2B Messaging – getting the message delivered

differentiation, Marketing, messaging, Positioning, Product Management, Sales, segmentation

We do a lot of testing continuously on the messaging that we send and we have observed that more that 90% of the times the messaging does not get a response the first time.

We have to continuously keep making changes and do iterations to figure out “what’s working”

If you however analyze the key things whenever you don’t get a response even after sending a sequence of mails, it would boil down to the following :

  1. We have not identified the pain point of the customer and therefore the messages are not resonating
  2. We have not identified the right person
  3. Our mails are not reaching the right person

For each of these one of the key thing is to segment the market so well to begin with, such that you can identify all the possible pain points and then test them.

Similarly if you have segmented the market well and niched it by usage as well, then you should generally be able to hone in on the function which is impacted by your services, quite well. However sometimes in B2B scenarios the challenge is also there because roles may be ill defined or there might be shadow responsibilities. So while there might be a CISO in a company and they may be the public face, the decisions are taken by the CIO or CFO. If you have selected aa small segment then these kind of patterns start coming up and you try to verify the data in advance or send to all the possible functions.

The third is on the deliverability issue if you have the mail id of the right person. I have mentioned this in my posts earlier also. The spam filters block anything which even smells like a spam message or will stamp it with a “marketing mail” stamp. So your message needs to reflect the pain in the least amount of words so that the spam filters think of it as a genuine conversation.

Lastly while email is the lowest cost mechanism to connect, it also has the least efficiency. Due to Covid a lot of the methods to send direct mail like letters and post cards has become tougher to deliver with so many people operating from home. On Linkedin, people may accept your connection request, but if they find that you are trying to sell them anything then they withdraw. So we are stuck with only using email.

If you’ll have come across any better delivery medium for your message, please share.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!