I think maybe having one ideal customer might be a useful a place to start.
But probably it isn't a good idea to invest a lot of time in tailoring experiences/services/products to that ideal customer until you have actual customers.
Because without a lot of relevant experience, the ideal customers in your imagination don't correspond to actual ideal customers in the real world:
+ People do what they do for a lot of reasons. Some walk tightropes, others wear belts and suspenders.
+ People view money in a lot of different ways. $1000 is unrealistic for many people and pocket change for others. $10/year is great for people who don't care if you stay in business and a red flag for people who do care.
+ In general we tend to imagine people are similar to us (mostly because it is easier that way). But selling to people who are not like you is what selling to strangers consists of.
I worked for a company that fell into the trap of over fitting their product for their first customer.
The customer seemed ideal in every way; they really needed the product, they were willing to be beta users while the product was going from prototype to real deal, and they were paying for the privilege.
Unfortunately, this customer had a ton of other internal issues. Rather than being forced to fix their internal issues in response to using the new product, they insisted the product conform to their broken processes.
In the end, the product wasn't a great fit for other customers without a ton of additional work. Now that I type this out, I realize two other companies I've worked at fell into the same or similar trap.
I agree. For example, I can think of creative people that have been successful that just produced what they loved, without a customer in mind. If they had started off by thinking “how can I optimize for theoretical customer X?”, they never would’ve been as successful.
Don’t make a product for others. Make one for yourself that you can dogfood. If you can’t do that, you’re on shaky ground.
Your first customer is always you. If you don't have a problem to solve that you know something about, you aren't going to make a useful product. A useful product can be a successful product.
Interesting points! Starting from a narrow perspective gives you feedback that is valuable, not noise that you can ignore. Most founders set their sights on an audience that is overfit (too narrow) or underfit (they have no experience). Striking a balance is key.
Consulting is one thing, but in the startup ecosystem I'm in I have (during the last 15 years) never ever seen a startup having a too narrow target segment (and I know several investors with the same mindset).
> When someone asks me what makes good marketing, and I’m in the mood to boil it down, I usually say something like “Good marketing is authentic.” What I mean by that is that good marketing is genuine, it derives its essential principles from a core that is pure and has a real purpose. This might sound counterintuitive if you’re someone who generally believes that marketing is phony and can’t be trusted. Well, as marketers, we can tell you – sometimes it is phony. But also, like anything else, most marketing isn’t great, and can be improved. How to improve it? That’s right, make it more genuine.
For me it helps to simply search for willingness to pay. The push-pull between your conceived offering and the customer’s perceived value, tend to turn these persona assumptions into something testable. Then, once true WtP is established, you can model a persona, but in my experience, too much wishful thinking goes into world modeling unless you go outside right away.
I actually think this could be the completely wrong approach.
By focusing on only one persona, you might focus on one that for reasons NOT covered in this questionnaire does not work out.
Practical example from us at AirGradient. Initially, we had a strong focus on selling air quality monitoring to schools.
Our strategy would have ticked all boxes in this article but selling to schools turned out to be extremely difficult. In our case, the problem was that decision makers are often not the people benefiting from the solution. Another reason for that persona being very difficult was that air quality is not a core competency of a school.
So I actually think that you should have a relatively broad approach because often the customer that you will be successful with you actually might not know when you start.
I feel finding 1 persona makes sense since otherwise you will have a messy time trying to build too many things.
However, I also think selecting that single persona too early will hamper you more than messy building will.
So its a balance. You have to do a wider search in the beginning, which will involve a few too many demo builds but once you find that single persona that feels like it can lead to big growth you stick to it.
[random remarks from the internet]
I think maybe having one ideal customer might be a useful a place to start. But probably it isn't a good idea to invest a lot of time in tailoring experiences/services/products to that ideal customer until you have actual customers.
Because without a lot of relevant experience, the ideal customers in your imagination don't correspond to actual ideal customers in the real world:
+ People do what they do for a lot of reasons. Some walk tightropes, others wear belts and suspenders.
+ People view money in a lot of different ways. $1000 is unrealistic for many people and pocket change for others. $10/year is great for people who don't care if you stay in business and a red flag for people who do care.
+ In general we tend to imagine people are similar to us (mostly because it is easier that way). But selling to people who are not like you is what selling to strangers consists of.
I worked for a company that fell into the trap of over fitting their product for their first customer.
The customer seemed ideal in every way; they really needed the product, they were willing to be beta users while the product was going from prototype to real deal, and they were paying for the privilege.
Unfortunately, this customer had a ton of other internal issues. Rather than being forced to fix their internal issues in response to using the new product, they insisted the product conform to their broken processes.
In the end, the product wasn't a great fit for other customers without a ton of additional work. Now that I type this out, I realize two other companies I've worked at fell into the same or similar trap.
I agree. For example, I can think of creative people that have been successful that just produced what they loved, without a customer in mind. If they had started off by thinking “how can I optimize for theoretical customer X?”, they never would’ve been as successful.
Don’t make a product for others. Make one for yourself that you can dogfood. If you can’t do that, you’re on shaky ground.
Your first customer is always you. If you don't have a problem to solve that you know something about, you aren't going to make a useful product. A useful product can be a successful product.
Absolutely, must be problem centric and problem obsessed.
The value of the problem being solved is what attracts and retains users.
Interesting points! Starting from a narrow perspective gives you feedback that is valuable, not noise that you can ignore. Most founders set their sights on an audience that is overfit (too narrow) or underfit (they have no experience). Striking a balance is key.
Consulting is one thing, but in the startup ecosystem I'm in I have (during the last 15 years) never ever seen a startup having a too narrow target segment (and I know several investors with the same mindset).
> Distribution Strategy - Assuming this is the right persona, how are you going to reach them, and can you communicate with them authentically?
The author's use of "communicate with them authentically" where I'd expect "persuade them", seems to be building on:
https://www.reifyworks.com/writing/2020-11-04-what-is-a-valu...
Where they write:
> When someone asks me what makes good marketing, and I’m in the mood to boil it down, I usually say something like “Good marketing is authentic.” What I mean by that is that good marketing is genuine, it derives its essential principles from a core that is pure and has a real purpose. This might sound counterintuitive if you’re someone who generally believes that marketing is phony and can’t be trusted. Well, as marketers, we can tell you – sometimes it is phony. But also, like anything else, most marketing isn’t great, and can be improved. How to improve it? That’s right, make it more genuine.
For me it helps to simply search for willingness to pay. The push-pull between your conceived offering and the customer’s perceived value, tend to turn these persona assumptions into something testable. Then, once true WtP is established, you can model a persona, but in my experience, too much wishful thinking goes into world modeling unless you go outside right away.
I actually think this could be the completely wrong approach.
By focusing on only one persona, you might focus on one that for reasons NOT covered in this questionnaire does not work out.
Practical example from us at AirGradient. Initially, we had a strong focus on selling air quality monitoring to schools.
Our strategy would have ticked all boxes in this article but selling to schools turned out to be extremely difficult. In our case, the problem was that decision makers are often not the people benefiting from the solution. Another reason for that persona being very difficult was that air quality is not a core competency of a school.
So I actually think that you should have a relatively broad approach because often the customer that you will be successful with you actually might not know when you start.
I feel finding 1 persona makes sense since otherwise you will have a messy time trying to build too many things.
However, I also think selecting that single persona too early will hamper you more than messy building will.
So its a balance. You have to do a wider search in the beginning, which will involve a few too many demo builds but once you find that single persona that feels like it can lead to big growth you stick to it.