NICHE DOWN FOR A PRODUCT LAUNCH OR CAST A WIDER NET?
This is a question that was asked by a business owner who has CRM solution. He wants to roll it out with a product launch but he’s not clear on his target audience. The feedback that he was being given was more of a teardown than a build-up. Here’s what you do next is helpful. Here’s where you’ve gone wrong without a helpful solution is just a time suck and disingenuous.
My question is, right now I am stuck between going niche and marketing the software towards one industry (for example personal trainers) or offering it to all small business owners as I know it can benefit them all?
My question is, do you think it is always more beneficial to niche down or to cast a wider net. It’s something I have been indecisive with for a while.
Thanks!
I’m going to approach this with a similar response but phrase it in a different way. When thinking through your process there are 3 pillars to consider the Problem, the Solution, & the Results.
It sounds like you’ve identified a problem but you haven’t narrowed it down to “The” problem. Take your question a level deeper to identify your target audience. Identify the specific problem and them for a group and that is your target audience.
Niching down is something that people tell you after you’ve already made business decisions. What niching down really means is pivoting. A rebrand of some sort to point at a specific audience and say “I’m your guy.”
You’ve got the all-in-one platform. What is “The” problem that you can fix for an audience. My suggestion would be to start building up some test cases.
If you’re going to ask someone to trust you with their whole communication and sales system. They’ll need to see that it not only didn’t crash down around them but it helped them with something.
If you can get some businesses on trial runs that are more manual or undecided. That will be a way to ask and get answers to all the things that you need to decide who you want to be your target audience.
You can move onto the 3rd pillar from there which is results. You will have the test cases on a smaller scale to show results. Not dumb luck but repeatable results that can scale up to larger clients.
Meanwhile, those test cases could have been on the 1st year is a free dry run. When whatever time you set to it elapses. You’ve got potential customers that will find it really inconvenient to switch over to someone else. When they can continue using a system that they understand and are used to.
The overlap where you see that you are making the biggest difference is your initial target audience. Take the learnings that you get from that and you’re doing less niching down and more hitting a hot pocket of use cases that you can pitch.
One thing that hasn’t changed about the approach to marketing and advertising is the audience will choose the brand. The smart brands listen and let them know that they heard them with that next wave of marketing.
