When should you seek help identifying a new market for your product or service?
A lot of my work focuses on helping emerging technology teams find product/market fit. But a recent conversation emphasized that this can be important for teams innovating with established technologies as well.
I talked with a team that had found product/market fit for a web-based service, only to realize their target market was too small. They needed to pivot or expand their market to make their business sustainable.
But identifying a new market with their team’s existing skillset was difficult, because:
The user was too undefined for traditional user research approaches; and
Traditional market research would have been too slow and too expensive for this scrappy innovation team.
Their situation was not unusual. In fact, there are three common situations where the need to find a new market arises.
📉 Situation 1: The sales slump
Many teams realize they never really had product/market fit when they start to see sales stall out. These teams may need help finding an alternate market who can benefit from the capabilities that are already baked into their existing product, service, or IP.
🫥 Situation 2: Existing market is too small
Other teams, like the one I mentioned earlier, may be successful in finding initial product/market fit, but need a larger pool of users. This can occur early on, when they’re looking to create their first sustainable business model, or later, when they’ve fully saturated their existing market. Getting help identifying users with similar needs in different verticals can help them expand and continue to grow.
🤖 Situation 3: Emerging technology with no established market
When you’re designing for emerging technologies (like AI or spatial computing), there is no established market. It can be easy to overlook your most valuable customers because they don’t look like traditional tech audiences. I help teams in this situation overcome their tech-reinforced biases and seek out markets that will gain transformational benefits from new technologies.
Using lean methods to identify the right target customer
What teams in all three of these situations don’t realize is that there are lean, user-centered methods to identify new audiences with needs that match your product or service’s capabilities. I work with teams to help them apply these methods and evaluate new markets they may never have otherwise considered, and to do this in a systematic, evidence-based way.
If you’re struggling with finding your target customer, you don’t have to go it alone. I’m currently booking projects for late 2024 and early 2025. If you’re considering a customer or market pivot, I’d love to chat about the possibility of working together.