Want to sentence your startup to an almost certain death? Mass market.
Want to win big and have your company be around for years to come? Get niche.
If your target is “parents,” you need to dig further—a lot further.
First-time dads who make $60,000 or more, live in urban areas, and whose child is less than two years old? Now we’re getting somewhere.
Your goal as an entrepreneur should be to find product market fit. The best way to do that is by narrowing your target audience.
Then you can focus on creating a product that meets the target’s needs perfectly. This enables you to build a better product, charge more for it, and market it more effectively.
Benefits of Getting Niche
- Better features – Once you have a niche market, you can better create and prioritize features that match their needs.
- Better messaging – Knowing your audience really well allows you to better target your messaging.
- Authority – Having a smaller, more focused, market allows you to become the best in that niche.
- Less competition – Having a niche market allows you to focus your marketing efforts and get a higher ROI.
Facebook didn’t start off with a mass market. It began exclusively for current Harvard students.
It later expanded to a few more colleges. After 18 months, it allowed high school students to join.
Two and a half years after launch, Facebook finally opened to everyone. And Facebook is an extremely rare example of scaling that quickly.
Serve your niche market really well, and worry about growing your market later.
Mass marketing is a losing battle. If you want to win the long game, you need to start niche.
By getting niche, you’ll create better features, write better messaging, have better authority, and get better results from your marketing.