Finding your target audience to have problem assumption conversations
Recently I have spoken a lot about engaging with your target audience to prove your assumption that the problem you are trying to solve does exist. I haven’t however given any advice on how to find and engage with your target market.
Below I have listed 5 approaches that could work for you:
The landing page: It has become common practice to build a very simple website with only a landing page that describes the problem you are trying to solve. It will also ask for an email address, which your prospect will need to submit to find out more. This technique helps in two ways. First, it quantifies how many people are looking for a solution to your problem. By giving you something, their email address, they are already showing intent. Second, these are great people to contact to discuss their needs. I would say the second point is more important than the first because these conversations are vital.
Running online ads: Once you have your landing page in place, you can follow up by running ads to attract potential consumers to the site. This has two main benefits. First, as you bring consumers to your site, you can then collect their email addresses (as above). Second, it helps you understand your conversation rate for those ads, and hence your cost to bring in potential customers (which is useful when it comes to your go-to-market strategy).
LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a great resource for finding people who fit your target market profile. Use your own community to see if you can get introductions. All it takes is one or two conversations. Hopefully, they will introduce you to others, and that will get the ball rolling. If you don’t have anyone in your community to make introductions, then start to make cold intros. This is a tough process, and 99 out of 100 people will ignore you, but you just need that one conversation. LinkedIn Groups is another great way to find people in your target audience. Join them, listen, participate, learn and build relationships.
Emailing: Another option is to email people out of the blue. This is hard, but you need to start those conversations somewhere. I once spent two weeks finding 200 email addresses for professionals within my target market. I emailed them with a short description of the problem I was trying to solve and a link to my landing page. I ended up with 12 interested people. If you are solving a genuine problem, people will want to hear from you.
Attend events: Find relevant events in your field and attend them. Initiate conversations, build relationships, get some business cards and follow up if you feel appropriate. The key here is to remember that this is about building good relationships so that you can follow up with your interview. It isn’t about pitching your idea.
These are just a few examples of how you can find and start conversations with your target market. If you can think of any other approaches, then please share.
Note: If you are building a consumer product, then you may be able to start by having conversations with friends or acquaintances. You just need to ensure they are in your target market. All it takes is one or two conversations, and then you can ask them to refer you to someone else.
