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How to Define Your Niche Market

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Yes! YES!

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Let’s take a minute to go back over the foundation — two key understandings frame and support a well-defined niche market.

A business that cannot answer those two questions specifically and explicity will define a loose, untargeted niche market. The end result will be an unclear offer — probably too broad — to customers they don’t know.

If you can’t describe what you do and who your customer is in one simple sentence each, keep working on those questions above.

When you know them like you know yourself . . .

A niche market is the group that your prototype ideal customer represents. That’s why it’s critical that we define the prototype customer as well as we possibly can. Because now we’re going to extrapolate up.

You might think it’s a waste of time to prototype the ideal customer in the first place. STOP RIGHT THERE.

What gets lost by skipping that step is the information we acquire by deeply thinking about how one human in our customer group will respond. The loss is detail most folks won’t take time to think through in one step.

Yu can get details without the context of an individual human reference, but skip that step, you are stealing deep knowledge from yourself. If I tell you, if you read it, even when a real customer relates the buying experience, it is not the same as thinking through one customer’s identity yourself.

It’s you, you’re investing in.

It’s survival. If we don’t know our customers as well as ourselves, sooner or later, we will fail. I don’t need a coach to tell me how to do that. Neither do you.

How to Define Your Niche Market

Look at that ideal prototype customer. Find the group that he or she represents. Use the ideal customer to find that group’s needs, wants, and values. You know how to do that as sure as you know what things are everybody things and what things are your best friend’s idiosyncracies.

  • What is your ideal customer’s age group? Define an age range narrow enough to keep within a set of tastes and values. Spanning a 10-year age difference might work for undertakers, but probably will not for the needs of college students or new home buyers.
  • How is your ideal customer exactly like every member of the group? What needs does the group have in common? What do they all desire? How can you use your previous success — what you’ve already provided — to serve the larger group?
  • What is the group’s biggest worry? Is it the same as the ideal customer’s? What other issues does the group have?
  • What are the major ways that the group interacts? How do they communicate with each other? What secrets do they keep
  • What are the major ways that the group solves problems and finds answers?
  • How does this group define a good day? How do they define a bad one? What other groups do they get along with? What groups do they work with that they don’t understand?
  • What problem can you take off their desk? How can you save them time, money, or pain?

Picture the group in a meeting room. Have you accounted for everyone there? What part of the group will love your product or service as much as you do?

That’s your niche. That’s the customer you want to serve.

Next: The Four-Part Definition of a Business

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Is your business stuck? Check out the Start-up Strategy Package. Work with Liz!!

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

A Model to Describe One Ideal Customer

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Get Specific

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Our ideal customers — those folks who love that businesslike thing we love doing, that we do to serve them — they are the foundation of our business. Pick one of them.

One? But the marketing guy said . . .

Yep. One — only one. Get specific. Get up close. Make it a real person. Crawl inside his or her head.

From one real human being with whom you have had a success, we can extrapolate many facets of what will and will not work for a business. Think of the one you choose as your prototype ideal customer. Use this model to get closer to whom that customer is.

A Model to Describe One Ideal Customer

Use these questions to make sure you are specific because we’re building a model.

  • What job or group does this person represent? (designers, new mothers, undertakers, college students, used car buyers)
  • What is this one person’s biggest worry, threat, thing that wakes him or her up at 2 in the morning?
  • How does this one person see him- or herself? What is the value that this one person thinks that he or she brings to the world?
  • What problem did you solve for this person? How long did it take? How would you value what you provided? How would he or she value it?

Answer these questions. Then write, record, or tell a friend a description of your prototype ideal customer. You’re ready to explore what he or she needs, desires, and wants.

We learn as writers that individual readers share common interests. We learn as marketers to meet each individual where he or she stands. I learned as a publisher that a well-defined prototype is exact and as explicit as possible. A strong prototype is like a single stone in the water — we can extrapolate it in rings to larger and larger views.

Who is your prototype customer? C’mon describe one for me.

Next: How to define your niche market, moving from one to a group.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Is your business stuck? Check out the Start-up Strategy Package. Work with Liz!!

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

The Ideal Customer Test

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Pick One

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Who is your customer? Before you answer, if you are going to say “small business owners,” STOP. You can’t build a business foundation trying to read 25 million minds at once. Small business owners is not a niche it’s a population.

In my presentation at SOBCon07, I had a single slide that said

Choose your customers.

I didn’t spend nearly enough time talking about those three words.

The key to a successful business is truly connecting with the ideal customers for the service or product we offer. The process starts by doing what we love, because doing what we love makes good business sense. The next step is to find the folks who love what we do.

How do we do that?

Look to your past successes. Who has come to you in the past for what you love doing and then loved what you provided?

Make a list of the people who have already loved what businesslike thing you love doing for them. Now you have some idea of who your ideal customer might be. Use this model to see who on that list passes the Ideal Customer Test.

Ideal Customer Test

  • The ideal customer is part of a group. You don’t really want customers who are loners. Let someone else sell to the hermits and the recluses.
  • The ideal customer’s group is relational. They don’t have to sing kum-ba-yah by the campfire. Lawyers are relational. They talk to each other and ask what works. Even corporate clients check out the competition and do horse trading.
  • The ideal customer wants to be better . . . to keep up with the folks at the front of the group.
  • The ideal customer has money and the potential to make more.
  • YOUR ideal customer looks a lot like YOU.

It’s true none of us are a field test or focus group, BUT, pay attention to that last point. If you are looking for the folks who love what you do . . .

Your ideal customer is likely to think, act, and respond like you, because it’s human nature to think people who think like we do are brilliantly smart.

That’s how our customers look like us.
That’s why they love what we do.

Skeptical — huh?
Try it this way It’s unlikely that an information geek is going to feel comfortable working with me. I’m just not linear. I’d send him to my friend. Greg Balanko-Dickson the Remote Control CEO. He’s a self-proclaimed information geek. The chart at the top of his blog shows the difference immediately. Greg does what he loves and the information geek would love what he does.

Do what you love in service to those who love what you do. —Steve Farber

Who loves what you do?

Next: Questions to Describe Your Ideal Customer

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Is your business stuck? Check out the Start-up Strategy Package. Work with Liz!!

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

Hope Seth Doesn’t Mind if I Go Even Further

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If You Can’t Keep a Secret . . .

Finding Ideas Outside of the Box
I hadn’t really thought about the Harry Potter leaked ending, except to shake my head at the industry that used to be my home. To spend $20M on a secret that couldn’t be kept seemed such a waste . . . How I remember the thoght process that gets companies to do that sort of thing.

Then this morning Ann Michael and I were discussing Seth’s insight on publishing and the Internet. He pointed out what I would have never thought.

Five hundred year old technology (books) is just too slow for the Net. The act of printing, storing and shipping millions of books takes too long for a secret to ever be in a book again.

He suggests that, well, read Seth’s post for his brilliant solution. He advocates using the Internet to control the secret. I sure hope Seth doesn’t mind if I use my publishing experience to take his idea just a little further.

Fact: As Seth said, the secret was in always in jeopardy — from the moment the manuscript was written. The company should have seen that $20million, $40million to protect the secret was playing to a weakness.

One thing I’ve learned from Seth is that every weakness can be a strength. Here’s what I would have proposed, had someone asked my opinion. . . . Don’t worry, they didn’t.

How to Release the Harry Potter Secret OR How Choosing for the Customer Is Choosing for the Company

The problem wasn’t having the secret where people could get to it. The problem was the company thought of the secret as a problem rather than an opportunity,

Strategy always begins with the customer. In this case, the customers are kids (of every age) who grew up with the series. $20million of security was choosing for the company not the customers.

If I think about the kids, here’s where I end up.

Ready?

  • I would ask J.K.Rowling to reveal the ending to me as soon as she was able. I would spend a fraction of that $20million building a cool online video game with seven levels to match the seven questions of the Harry Potter Campaign. I’d spend the security there. Fewer people involved, much more control.
  • I’d release the game that reveals the end of the story, three weeks before any pre-launch copy.
  • To register to play the game, I would ask that each player sign in with a name, and a parental permission with verifiable email address (if the player is under 13).
  • The game would be as difficult as any game on the market. It would also have cheat codes and book with hints as salable products. It would take hours– whatever is the industry average — to complete successfuly.
  • When a player made it through the last level, he or she would reach a Howart’s Honor Code screen. The screen would announce the success and point out how difficult it was to achieve it. The Honor Code would leave the question to winner to hold or pass on the answer as they honor their own work. They earned it. People value what they earn.

It’s as Seth said, no one can keep it a secret — but we can control how it gets out. The company could have made finding the answer part of the Hogwart’s World. It could have been an experience. It could have been fun. Besides, I’m not sure that if I worked 10-20 hours to find out an answer that I’d give it away, . . . well, maybe secretly.

Who knows? I might play the game again and again — even after I read the book.

If I knew what I was talking about I’d still be working in that industry . . . right? I’m probably just confused. That comes from thinking like a kid.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Blogging in a Foreign Language?

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Beyond Metaphors and Analogies

What’s Your Metaphor?

You might remember back to the Metaphor Project. About that same time Jan Circular Communication, one of the winners of Lorelles’s Book, and I began a dialogue about writing the fact that English is not his first language. I wondered whether he would be interested in writing a blog post about the experience. He agreed with enthusiasm. His blog post came in days.

In a lovely circle of communication, I’m pleased to say that as I put jan’s post up now while he’s running a virtual interview with Lorelle and me on his is blog.

Why On Earth Would You be Blogging in a Foreign Language?

Guest Writer: Jan

As everyone else does, I want somewhere to belong, but my community should not be defined by where I am or by which language is my mother tongue. Since community is about commonality we have to have something in common, but it should be what interests us not geography or language. Communities are (in my opinion) built through communication where language shouldn’t play the main part.

If the community is inviting and including, language will play practically no part as long as we make ourselves understood. However it is a fact that you get what you give, so working on your communication skills, including your language skills, will not only benefit others, but also yourself.

With my native language I only would reach a fraction of the world population. My native language is only spoken in one country and practically unknown outside its borders. Even adding in languages with similarities, my own language it is simply not the best basis for gaining a readership and building community, since the number of blogs would be a whole lot less. It wouldstill be possible to build
a position within that language, but I would be left with the feeling that there was an immense audience out there that could have been mine.

Although you could claim that getting started blogging in itself is like learning a new language, there’s no reason to limit your learning to this aspect. I’m optimistic enough to believe I can learn in at least three areas through my blog: the format, the content and the language.

I started blogging because I wanted to relearn things I learned during my education, but rarely use. I practically lost English because I didn’t use it. I decided to include it in my learning endeavor. So the language and content will mostly be relearning while the blogging will be actual learning.

What I have found so far is reaching out in a foreign language enriches my experiences. I guess you could say that the conversations from which you learn the least are those with yourself — almost as bad are those with people like yourself. Only if you go beyond that will you really add to your learn exponentially more. Besides communicating with people from other countries, not to mention continents, is fascinating.

If you want to interact with your local community you simply go out the door and participate in the activities, but if you want to interact with other cultures around the world blogging is surely the next best thing to actually going there. Besides does one not exclude the other. A number of bloggers travel to come together just as a number of people blog when traveling.

Thankfully is writing in English more a challenge than a struggle for me. Had it been a struggle it would be about trying to string sentences together, finding the right words and making myself understood. The
challenge, on the other hand, consists of bringing in more elements, being more precise and generally taking advantage of the opportunities that English offers to those who seek them. If it was a struggle I would probably have thought twice about it, but since I like challenges I didn’t need to think long before deciding.

If you are unsure whether your language foundation will hold up, I would recommend that you begin reading and commenting on blogs in the language you are considering. This will give you practice and introduce you to what could be possibly be your future blogging community.

Remember that the basic language skills isn’t the goal, but just another stepping stone. Hence I certainly have to keep working on my writing skills as will you. Even if you try adding to your vocabulary, using metaphors, analogies etc. and being as precisely as possible. We probably never learn to write like someone writing in their native language. The fact that we will never reach perfection should never be a reason for giving up though. After all, how many things is it really possible to be perfect at? What counts is the effort you put into it and believe me people recognize effort when they see it. Since you probably will not see your own mistakes there really isn’t any reason to get obsessed with them.

To sum up I think there are compelling reasons to blog in a foreign language. You will learn that language better; you will expand your horizon; and you will get to know people who you would otherwise never know. In order for it to work does it require a little more than the basic language skills, a willingness to continuously work on making it better and first of all a strong desire to reach out.

Jan

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Jan Suggested

In the process of putting this together, Jan asked at the beginning if I would edit and send back the article before I posted it. That’s exactly what happened. With his return email, he suggested I might add some end notes about the edits that I made. So here they are.
The edits I made were for clarity or differences in verb construction.

  • Those for language usage. These are mostly to verb forms. The verb construct that is most often a problem is that in which you use “would I” (a form for only questions in English) instead of “I would”. Most English sentences are subject then verb.
  • Deletion of phrases. These are edits for readability, fluency. and a more powerful message. The phrase “not to speak about” became the more common usage “not to mention.”
  • I also broke paragraphs to adjust what is more “print text writing” to “online writing.” Shorter paragraphs on more-focused main ideas work better on the web.

Thanks, Jan, for a great look into a special kind of blogging!

–ME “Liz” Strauss