Finding a beachhead for consumables

DiscussionsCategory: The 24 StepsFinding a beachhead for consumables
Jared Ayers asked 5 years ago

Do consumable goods that would reach an incredibly large and diverse market have a narrow beachhead?
Could a beachhead in this scenario refer to a physical area or location rather than a specific market or industry?
 

2 Answers
Mario answered 5 years ago

I recently worked with a startup developing new products for personal care. In their case, they did just that. They wanted to experiment at low volume with a product that can have a very wide appeal, so they decided to focus on a specific gender, in a specific age range, in one neighborhood of a single city. For them, the follow-on markets don’t require a significant product repackaging or redesign, but they are simply moving into adjacent markets on step at a time by expanding geographic and demographic targeting in their advertisements. The original decision of who to focus on was made quite simply by the founder asking, “Who could I sell this to today?” So she picked a neighborhood where she had lived, developed a persona for the type of customer she was sure she could convince to buy, and has simply been expanding her inventory of persona’s.

Bill Aulet answered 5 years ago

Jared, could you more specifically describe what you mean by “consumable goods”? In general, segmenting markets is done by multiple factors – industry, size of company, demographic/psychographic of users, type of champion/economic buyer, use case and geography. It is conceptually possible that geography does not matter but in reality I have not found a case where that is true.
You have to segment down to a beachhead market you feel comfortable is not just definable but also identifiable and offers you sufficient size to gain important momentum, skills and assets to enter the next market — and be a market with high odds of winning if possible.

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