

Fit your product to the right market - tomh-
http://swombat.com/2011/3/14/fit-your-product-to-the-right-market

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ThomPete
My old marketing teacher always like to tell two stories to underline the
challenges of finding of product/target fit.

First story was about this company he worked for that made these highly
sophisticated air analysis instruments. The company had always imagined their
target market where engineers.

But when they did some analysis of their clients they where surprised to find
quite a lot of chimney cleaners buying it.

It was way beyond what they needed but they found it it made the chimney
cleaners feel more sophisticated.

The other story he told was about this industrial soap company he had worked
for. They had one series of soap that they where betting on. When sales failed
they had lots of soap on stock they couldn't get rid of. But one of the guys
in the lab had fooled around with this idea about putting this glimmer stuff
into the soap.

My teacher always having a good intuition for opportunities knew a guy in the
retail industry found out that young girls had been slowly but surely more
aware of buying their own cleaning products in earlier ages than usually.

So what they did was to lower the dryness of the product, make it pink and put
in the glimmer. And lo and behold they sold this stuff like candy.

Talk about a pivot.

My own experience in the advertising industry have had it's surprises too. The
biggest one was that in Denmark Audi's where not primarily sold to the cool
jetset that the advertising depicted but rather to successful plumbers,
blackschmiths, restaurant owners. etc.

And this brings up an interesting question.

Do people still buy based on what they aspire to be?

One thing is for sure though.

You have to "run the program" before you can see what will happen.

------
joelg87
"If you're planning to sell a paid SaaS product, this means finding early
users, from day one if possible, who will pay."

I nearly fell into the trap of not charging from day 1 with my latest startup.
I had set myself a deadline (to launch within November for the startup
sprint), and November 30th was fast approaching. When the day came, the
product was clearly not ready, but I had worked on it for 7 weeks which was 6
weeks longer than I wanted to work on something without getting feedback from
my market. So I launched, and at the last minute I threw in the Paypal HTML
code in the payments page. It paid off - I had a paying customer after 4 days.

I see lots of people creating products which are intended to be paid products
but have a very long (many months) free beta period. I understand it is to get
the product "right", but I think it is a very dangerous strategy, and in the
spirit of the lean startup, it could result in a huge amount of waste.

~~~
ian_h
100% agree, it was very tempting at the start to _not_ charge for EventHQ but
in the end I charged from day 1.

Downsides are that EHQ have grown more slowly than perhaps it might have done
if we had not charged. This might also be an upside as fast growth brings its
own issues, esp. if you don't have any revenue.

Upsides are that: (i) I had revenue (yay!) from day 1 and profits sometime
thereafter; (ii) my customers are committed to EventHQ and have been very
quick to feedback on areas where I can improve. This has sometimes been
painful but has definitely helped guide/prioritise development.

Non-paying customers can provide feedback as well, but I tend to find
customer's who are willing to pay are more thoughtful and willing with their
feedback.

------
aniobi
Great article on the subject (also covered in The Four steps to the Epiphany
by Steve Gary Blank). Concerning the pricing, he explains how to calculate the
“bounding box” estimate.

Ask to your early adopters:

1) Assume it was free, how many would you use? (how much does it cost to
deploy your product, even if it's free; is there a real neeed; etc...)

2) Assume it costs $1,000,000 how many would you use? (to get this kind of
answer: WTF????!!!! The most we pay for this type of product is
$50,000...you're done!)

------
6ren
> and perhaps pivot into a different product, one that people are actually
> willing to pay for.

Or of course pivot into a different market.

I think the hardest lesson to learn is that different people can value the
same thing differently. The value of a product isn't just a product, but with
respect to a user. It's not just the observed, but also the observer. You
cannot evaluate it as a tuple of its qualities (particular features, price
etc). You have to weigh each quality by the user's valuation it. And different
users value them differently. It's seeming to me more and more that this
summarises the entire startup problem.

As a developer, you have a clear idea of what features you want to add, how
difficult they will be, how general they will be, and how cool they will be.
You're not even evaluating it _as a user_ , but as a creator. It's the
difference between a novel that was interesting to write, and one that's
interesting to read.

But even if you do manage to shift your perspective to being a user, you'll
still only have _one_ user's perspective. In fact, there isn't "a user", but a
whole world of different situations, tasks, skills, equipment, knowledge and
values - each of which counts as "a user", who will evaluate the qualities of
the product different. e.g. for some users, a higher price makes it more
valuable.

This is an incredibly obvious point, but it's one that I have to be constantly
reminded of. Perhaps because the more deeply immersed I am in my work, the
less evidence I have of other viewpoints (I can't _see_ them, _at best_
they're imaginary) so it's easy to not think about them. Or maybe I'm just
excessively egocentric and solipsistic.

 _Different strokes for different folks. What might be right for you might not
be right for someone else._

One solution is to imagine your ideal user (who'd love what you want to make
anyway - whether they exist or not), and keep evaluating your product in terms
of that person - including marketing. Users who are _similar_ to that person
will tend to fit themselves into the image. Guy Kawasaki (early Apple guy)
talks about this. And that's what's happening in ThomPete's intriguing two
examples.

------
lothar
Not to be a jerk swombat, but who are you? What are your credentials?

I want to read advice from people with real world success. You may very well
be successful already, so state it. I'll buy into what you're saying a lot
more.

P.S. This is not a personal attack. If it comes off that way, it's my fault
and failing.

~~~
swombat
Information about me is pretty easy to come by if you try. I'm hardly a
secretive person.

<http://www.google.com/search?q=daniel+tenner>

<http://www.google.com/search?q=swombat>

You can even see videos of me giving a talk based on my experiences as a
startup founder.

Whether I have "real-world success", I'll leave you to do decide. I haven't
achieved all that I want to achieve, by a long shot, so I wouldn't call myself
a success just yet. I quit the corporate world 4 years ago to run my own
business(es), and it's not looking like I'll ever need to go back. Is that
some measure of success? I'm not rich yet, if that's what you mean by success.
But I'm happy with my life, and I wake up every day looking forward to doing
stuff I love doing. That's a different kind of wealth.

But, you make a good point. I'll think about how I can add some kind of
"about" bio-type thing somewhere on the page, without cluttering it.

~~~
lothar
I consider you a success, now that I've seen some of the projects you've
worked on. I did look for that information in the about section, but should've
looked under "current projects".

Instead I asked you directly.

I apologize. I look forward to learning from you.

