Get to Know Your Target Market

This advice sounds obvious. But I can’t tell you how many founders run into trouble when they go to market because they skipped this step early on.

A founder, Anthony, came to me looking for help with customer acquisition. He'd spent $30,000 of his own savings building an app. He’d spent hundreds of hours getting every detail just right. Then he launched it. But instead of the hockystick user growth he was expecting, he saw a steady pattern of a few folks signing up, and then dropping off and not coming back.

I began to troubleshoot, starting with asking him what his user interviews had surfaced.

"User interviews?" he asked me.

"Yes, calls or meetings with your users. What are they saying about their experience using app?"

It came to light he hadn't done any user interviews. Nor did he want to. He was certain the app was perfect. He just needed the right marketing to make it really take off.

But my gut told me that was wrong. I pressed him on his design process, and it came to light that the entire design of the service offering had come solely from his own imagination. He hadn't made time at any point to talk to the people who would actually use this and hear what they had to say.

I told him something he didn't want to hear - to solve his user growth problem he had to go back to basics, get to know his target market, and understand why they were leaving the platform rather than sticking around. If he didn't do that, then even the best marketing campaign in the world it wouldn't translate into sustained success.

He wasn't convinced. Kept going the way he was going. A year and a half later the company went under.

This is why I want to focus you on how to really get to know your target market. How to do it effectively before you spend $30k of your life savings on something no one wants.

First - Start with Real People, Not Personas

Creating user personas is a common exercise. It is important, but when you're early stage it's all to easy to go wrong.

At this early stage, most persona development exercises end up with something like this:

“Sara is 29. She earns $75k a year, loves ramen, owns a small dog, and therefore wants to use a ramen and dog themed workout app.”

At first glance, it seems thoughtful and strategic. But when you take a moment to think about it, it's full of untested assumptions that can easily lead founders astray.

This persona isn’t a real person. It’s an assumption. When you build a product or service around assumptions, it becomes very easy to miss what actually matters.

That is why we use a much more reliable approach - start with real people.

Find Five People

Instead of imagining a customer, find five people who are real examples of ideal future customers. These might be:

• Friends or acquaintances

• People in your professional network

• Members of a community organization or special interest group

• Networking contacts

Don’t worry about whether this method scales. That comes later.

Forget Selling, Focus on Helping

As you build relationships with these folks, the critical goal isn't revenue - it’s information. You are on a mission to understand how the world looks through their eyes.

Find a way to add real value. This doesn't have to be something big and grand. It's enough to help someone in a small, concrete way.

This might look like:

• Improving the efficiency of a system or process they already use

• Helping them reach more customers, or qualify them faster

• Showing them how to use a new technology

• Finding a way to save them time or money

By doing something practical to make their life better, you begin building an understanding of what they really care about and the priorities and constraints they're operating under.

Look for Patterns

By the time you've helped three people you'll start to see patterns. Once you've done five you'll confirm the ones that matter most.

Ask yourself:

• What pain points do they mention repeatedly?

• What priorities are they most focussed on?

• What concerns are keeping them up at night?

• What surprised me about how they think or behave?

• Which of my assumptions turned out to be wrong?

Five is a tiny sample size, but it's big enough to ground you in compassion. That's how you develop the discipline to put what your customer needs above what you want as you build out your product or service.

A Final Thought

When building a company, your greatest advantage isn’t going to be technology or funding.

It’s understanding who you're here to serve.

The founders who succeed are rarely the ones with a single genius idea. They're the ones who spend time with real people, listen carefully, and learn how to deliver massive value. Everything else tends to follow.