What Is The REAL Size Of The Market For Your Product?
A Quick 2 Minute Exercise To Help You Start To Figure It Out Your True Potential Market Size For Your Product Or Service…
With my clients, one of the first things I have them do for homework is to give me a number as to what they think the size of their potential market truly is and to never, ever, believe the “ Experts” because I figured out something a long time ago that is best summed up with this quote.
“Most Expert’s Aren’t” — Andrew Anderson
One of the first things you need to do in your business is to figure out just how big your market is and then figure out whom is your best fit to buy your product. In a nutshell, how many people out there really have the money to buy your STUFF.
The next step is that I have them build several customer avatars describing who their top customers might be. We go into as much detail as possible describing exactly who they are, where they live, how much they weigh, their sex, etc. and the more detailed the better to target your message. You need to profile on steroids!
Before this begins though, you need to figure out just how big your market segment is, which hardly anyone ever knows.
The first thing that I have them do to help them get over the bad habit of not doing their own homework is to do this simple, yet eye-opening exercise.
This 2 minute exercise is figuring out the “real” from their standpoint, unemployment number which is the start of figuring out how big your market segment truly is for your product for people that actually have the money to buy said product or service. Because you do not want to waste marketing dollars and effort on pitching people that are broke and can’t buy what you selling no matter how much they like it.
There are only 2 components to this process that we care about to get started.
1. How many people are of working age?
2. How many of those people are actually working and have money to spare?
You can do this all in Google in about 2minutes or less, but I will save you the trouble as I have done it for you with the links so you can check the data yourself.
How Many People In The US Are There Roughly Old Enough To Buy My Stuff?
We will use the numbers between 18 and 64. Obviously you might have a tad younger or older audience. but this covers the audience for the vast majority of products and services being sold.
204,026,415 Is The Total Eligible Workforce In US so says the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (this numbers excludes active duty military.
How Many People May Not Have A Lot Of Extra Cash Laying Around?
7,904,000 is the Official Unemployment Number. Source Is Here.
Not bad, but here comes reality.
94,103,000 Is The Total Number Of People Unable To Find Work After Unemployment Benefits Run Out. After that, you are no longer considered officially unemployed believe it or not. Source Bureau of Labor Statistics
102,007,000 the total number of people really out of work when you add the official number to the ones they don’t count officially anymore.
The real unemployment number for our purposes is 49.996% using just the numbers we have so far. Is it OK if we round that up to 50%?
If we add the 8,909,430 people on disability to that number (Source US Social Security) we get a real unemployed number of 110,916,430 divided by 204,026,415 and that gives us a real (for our purposes) unemployment percentage of a staggering 54.36%.
So, perhaps like you, my clients get a bit of an eye opener to say the least when they start to figure out the total real market size in the US as far as employed adults that will mostly likely have extra money to purchase whatever it is they are selling. That still leaves roughly 100,000,000 people that should have some extra cash to buy from you.
Now there are those that will get their panties in a bunch about the exact figure, but no matter how you cut it, the official number of somewhere around 5% unemployment is from another Universe and these numbers that you can go check out are far closer. They are the real ones as far as you and I are concerned that we should be using daily. Because not thinking accurately will put you out of business. No matter how you slice it, there are a whole lot of folks that ain’t working!
Do you now see why hundreds of Walmart (click here to see the story) and Target Stores are closing this year? Perhaps this is why your own sales have been a bit sluggish as well? Now you don’t have to feel so bad. It is not your fault.
Here is the deal.
To remain ignorant in this day and age, you have to work at it daily. -Andrew Anderson
Do your own homework on everything that impacts your business because the vast majority of all types of information out there is just plain incorrect. This includes pretty much every statistic concerning business and especially most How-To information and stats about marketing.
So knowing this, you now have a more realistic way to consider your true market size at least in the US. By the way, the official unemployment numbers in every other country are this far off too. The most profitable Entrepreneurs I know of have a realistic view of the world and plan their marketing accordingly. While they all without fail have a positive mind set, none of them wear Rose Colored Glasses. Now you can use this information to really target your marketing efforts and perhaps help your bottom line.
To be real, is to be profitable!
Cheers,
Andrew Anderson
www.ContinualCustomer.com