How Big is your Market?

Do you know the opportunity at hand?

I’ll actually start this post with an unpaid plugged. If you have not already I would recommend adding these two books by Christopher Lochhead and team to your reading list. Play Bigger and Niche Down. Again, these are unpaid adds, but I am a fan boy and they will deliver a deeper discussion on category design and owning your market.

As you are building your product or service, do you know the potential market that is out there? Are you focused on a specific region, age group, hobby group? Once you know that it makes it much easier to show up where these folks are. That is half the battle when it comes to building a client base, you have to make sure you are where they are, so you can build the report and trust with them.

Knowing the size of the market also helps you understand the opportunity you have before you. If you are opening a restaurant in a town of 2,500 people that will look very different than in a city of 2.5 million people.

Is this opportunity enough to support you?

Will this always be a side gig?

Can you make the opportunity bigger?

Some games are zero sum. If I’m selling houses I can only sell the houses people want to sell and once all of those are gone I am out of houses to sell. So I want to be the best realtor in the area, so everyone that wants to buy or sell a house reaches out to me first. But there are also opportunities that are not zero sum. People need groceries all the time, or clothing, so they will be looking for different options on a regular bases. Part of understanding your market opportunity is knowing if you can make the market bigger?

Can you create more demand for your product or service and help people?

Can you make the market infinite, instead of zero sum?

This will increase the opportunity for you and add more value to the customers. You’ll learn more about this in Play Bigger, but you also want to capture 70% of the market. That will be easier if you are creating a new market. If you are entering an existing market, you have to understand how you can be better than the current providers. People generally avoid change. Therefore, you need to understand what the pain points are with the existing offerings and eliminate them.

If this is a new product or service, do you need to educate your customers. Do they know they have this problem? The more education you have to do, the more you need to be in front of the customers. Clear simple messaging will help you grow faster. Another option that helps is getting clients to share testimonials or write a review. This may be hard to ask, because some folks will give you constructive feedback, but that is helpful too. So when you get a new customer make sure you follow-up with them. Ask them how their experience was and how it can be better. This will help you market to new customers as well as build trust with your current customers.

So know your current market.

Meet your customers where they are.

Find ways to make the pie bigger!