There’s a lot of talk about how to do Product-Market Fit but it’s not about defining the audience. It’s about defining the psychology of ‘why people buy’ first. Before you do anything else start here.
Here’s an example: What are the finite set of challenges that can be defined as functional and psychological for your customer?
Example Customer:
“I need insurance”. Next Step: “I need lots of insurance because unbeknownst to me I am extremely risk-averse”. The customer does not know they are risk-averse but deep down that is the psychology within. If your customer is not thinking they’re risk-averse, then how are you supposed to know it? There are ways.
Often what is not said is what is the trigger to discovering ‘why people buy’. You have to find a way to hear things that are not said. The way to do that is to estimate the person’s traits and create a total addressable audience that focuses on those traits. And you’re going to do this product by product, and possibly clusters of different people for the same product. That’s how you maximize market share. That’s also how you create a sequential intelligence growth plan. Focus on where you have the most intelligence first and build out from there as you gain intelligence and sales.
When you frame the product in terms of the psychological reasons why they should buy you are matching the mission and vision of the company to the mission and vision of the person.
What I do is create the map of psychological traits for ‘why’ people make decisions about your product and then create a lookalike audience that looks just like your best customers. If you don’t have any customers then you’re creating the list from ground up.
What’s the fastest way to market with the least amount of pain.