How can you effectively target specific user segments for growth?

Building a long term sustainable competitive advantage requires a startup to continuously invest in branding and positioning. However, in the beginning a startup needs focus in terms of finding its product market fit. Segmentation helps a startup to remain focussed on building a great product that appeals to a segment with homogenous needs. Once the startup is able to win this segment, it can then diversify its focus to other segments. The key is to find the minimum viable requirements (MVR) that can help develop a minimum viable product (MVP) which can help validate product market fit quickly.

Go talk to people. Literally. Ask them what are their problems in life, in their career. Ask them about their professional challenges, what makes them happy and what doesn't. Ask people how do they currently solve problems like the one you are trying to build a solution for And listen. Listen carefully. If you ask the right questions, you'll get gold for answers. With that in hand, try segmenting by those who answered similarly, segment them into demographics, preferences, views. It's a lot of work but it does pay off.

A lot of people get confused by this: MVP. That stands for Minimum Viable Product, which in practical terms it translates to "the minimum product/service you can assemble but big enough to solve a particular problem." I've seen a lot of people trying to build huge "MVPs", or trying to solve more than one problem, or thinking an MVP is a beta. MVP is the smallest version of a product. I.E., you want to build an MVP for an accounting software that uses AI for recommendations: - use Google Sheets (free) to mimic your basic features - manually ask ChatGPT (free) for recommendations based on the spreadsheet data and pretend it is already embedded in your future software. Test with real clients. They don't need to know (yet) how it's built.

I want to share an addition to the criteria listed above. When evaluating growth impact, think beyond the easily quantifiable metrics of “market size, profitability, growth rate, acquisition cost, retention rate, or referral rate.” We should also consider batching effect opportunities that may be available (this is a both/and situation). Perhaps success within a particular user segment will allow for ease of exponential adoption across multiple other user segments. An example that comes to mind in the medical device space is that adoption and awareness at academic institutions (a smaller segment than private hospitals) leads to scaled adoption when those residents & fellows move across the nation upon completion of their training.

Reach out to the prospects through various channels, such as email, phone calls, or networking events, to introduce the platform and initiate a conversation. Craft a compelling and personalized outreach message to initiate contact.

Often, a segmentation strategy for startups during the early stages of finding product market fit would require them to pivot. Planning for the pivots will be very critical. Having a plan in place for the market entry or expansion strategy helps a startup stay prepared to face the pivots. For example, a startup in India planning to explore new markets can establish partnerships in adjacent markets with the same product. The startup should plan for some level of localization for the adjacent markets. Gaining insights from executing in the market becomes critical. The startup will need a baseline to compare product use, pricing and monetization, sales performance, etc. This will help to quickly validate and adapt the strategy.