Who will pay for my product?
A meaningful specific can't please everyone. Identifying the one to whom we could be of value is the key.
Hello,
Thank you for the amazing response to my last post. I got some valuable feedback in my inbox and I am pasting one from an entrepreneur with whom it’s been a pleasure to work with and whose work I admire. They are a small team of passionate people trying to build something very interesting in women's health and wellness space.
It’s always good to receive encouraging comments like these from our target audience for our content. It feels nice to know that we could be of help to someone.
And that’s the theme of this post - we as a brand could be of help to <…>.
Now, this blank is important to identify, as the truth is - we can’t be of help, or value to everyone.
To add to it, this <…> should be able to afford us.
Even though we have the best of offering, created in the best way possible there are still high chances that only a select few will find us relevant.
Instead of writing more on this, I leave you with these lines written by one of my favorite thought leaders Seth Godin, he sums it up perfectly in just a few lines.
Now how to identify “this” segment to whom we could be of “value”? It sounds simple but in reality, it’s not that easy. The good news is there are many tools and platforms these days that help us create personas and provide data for targeting. The difficult part is, we can only use these tools or data effectively when we are clear about “whom” to target. This requires work - research, analysis, and evaluation.
Here is a list of ten questions that can help us define our target audience. While in this post, I am mentioning only ten but in reality when I conduct workshops, this list can have 25-30 questions, or even more. The numbers do not matter, what matters is how granular we can go.
We already did the exercise of defining our product offering in our last post, now let’s start with -
Who will buy this product? Listing down all demographic details helps.
What are their prime sources for entertainment and information?
What kind of online channels do they hang out more at?
What needs, challenges or frustrations do they have?
Do I have any solution to address their needs or challenges? Can my product make their life easier in any way?
Are there any similar products that they are using? Are they delighted/satisfied/dissatisfied with those products?
What other products and brands do they use in general?
Is there any brand that they love?
What’s their broader buying behavior? For e.g., while buying food, do they buy “organic” mostly? While buying cosmetics, do they prefer “natural” or “cruelty-free”
What drives them to purchase? Quality, discounts, free gifts, added benefits, or anything else?
The more granular we go in our approach, the better the understanding. For e.g., let’s take the startup in women's wellness space that I mentioned above - one of their products is the cloth pad. Now, when it comes to feminine hygiene products like these, any female in-between age bracket of 12 to 52 years could be potentially their target audience. But the message that will attract a 15-year-old is going to be very different from what will attract a 50-year-old. Similarly, how the brand could be of “help” to a teenager is going to be very different from that to a tricenarian.
Defining your segment helps and while going deep into it might be time-consuming at an initial stage but in the long run, it’s an investment absolutely worth your time and effort. In fact, it’s a must in the digital age of endless noise and infinite clutter.
On that note, after the "what" and "why", I leave you to dwell deep into the "who" part of your product marketing plan.
Cheers,
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*This post is the third post in a 10-posts series that I have created for Small Businesses, Passion Economy Professionals, and Solopreneurs to help them in their Product Marketing Journey. If you liked it and would like to read more, you may read the fourth post here.
And If this post was worth your time, may I request you to help me spread the word by sharing this post? It would mean a lot to me.
Know more about ‘Connecting The Dots’ here. Looking forward to connecting the dots together :).