Tips for Selling Your Product / Idea: Target, Pain & Solution with the Start-Up Model
You are a person with lots of ideas? You are into the digital world? In this article you are going to learn some tools and services that will help to bring your idea / product into the market in an efficient and data-driven way. From the initial idea until the market fit, there are some key steps that you need to master. I will give you some free services to improve the quality of your workflow and your product. I will give you some tools to track all the data, all the steps. Automation is key in the digital world nowadays.
Let’s get started it!
First of all, a very short summary of what you’ll learn:
1) Product pitch: explain your idea. Do not beat about the bush.
2) Find your market fit: Give value to the customers.
3) Build & Scale: Make it work and reach thousands of people.
At the end of this article, I will give you some services / tips that you could use for the following particular subjects:
Free tools on how to:
- create your web-page
- insert services in your web
- automate administrative actions
- measure key data: traffic, campaigns etc.
Product pitch
So you have an idea and you need to explain it to potential customers, friends, investors, or you need to convince someone to work with you? You definitely need to base your idea / product in three key stones: TARGET, PAIN and SOLUTION
TARGET
Who are my customers?
It’s wrong to think, my customers are everyone. That way you are not going to succeed. Why? If you don’t specify exactly which GROUP of people you are willing to target, you will disperse yourself and you will not find the right audience. Specify exactly to whom is your product. Then it would be easier to find the willing-to-pay clients, to convince them, to do marketing for them.
An example: I have a dog, but sometimes I don’t have the time to bring him out. I know that there are a lot of people out there willing to walk out with a dog, but they don’t want to do it the whole year. My idea is to do a market place to bring these people together. Who are my target? People with a dog, who are busy and don’t have the time. I would focus on people who acquired a dog, I would even find and do some partnerships with the animal shops. Again, target your specific audience.
PAIN
What do they suffer from?
If you want to succeed with your idea, you have to solve a pain from someone. I use the word PAIN and not problem or challenge, because it is more powerful, it has a greater impact. In our example, people can not go into holidays because of the dog. That’s a pain, they are suffering. They need your help.
SOLUTION
How do I answer their need.
Once you have your specific clients, once you’ve found their pain, you need to bring them the solution, the value. In our case, we would create a platform with these people where they can connect. One user group would be willing to give their dogs for a certain period of time, the other user group would be willing to take these dogs.
Focus on one pain, on one solution. Don’t try to offer multiple solutions, that way you confuse your potential customers. You are company or product X and you solve this issue X, period. Nothing else. That’s a common mistake at the beginning, to try to cover a lot of pains. You end up trying to be good at several things and at the end, you give bad quality and other more specialized companies beat you. Solve one pain.
Now let’s put these concepts into practice! Let’s analyze two well known companies: Airbnb vs. Booking.
I show you first their webpages, so that you have a picture of how do they look like and then we will try to figure out the key 3 concepts for a good product pitch: target, pain and solution.
What are their product Pitches? (Target, Pain, Solution).
Target
Let’s begin with Airbnb. Who would be the target? If we look at their webpage, we see beautiful pictures, beautiful locations, pictures are very big, they show us insides of houses. They bring us into the local houses. They use the word EXPERIENCE. For sure, they are targeting people who likes to travel. But that would be anyone. Too broad. Can we be more precise? Is Airbnb the most cheapest accommodation searcher? No it’s not. They offer a local experience, they try to target travels who don’t just want to visit a place and get the cheapest accommodation, just visit the city and just move on. They want to target people who want to experience the city, to feel like a local. No better way to do that while living like one of them.
As for Booking.com, the web page looks completely different. We don’t see these beautiful pictures, we see more information, more data, more numbers, more filters. It’s uglier. Who are the target? Well, also people who travel right? But are these people focusing on the cheapest solution? Yes they do! that’s why they don’t mind searching and searching and filtering and comparing and reading reviews. They are travelers who care about the pocket. That’s their main target.
The market is huge but not endless. Every company tries to win the market share where they are good at. Airbnb and Booking try to get different kind of people, in the big group of travelers.
Pain
What about the pains that these companies are trying to solve? We kind of defined it speaking about the target. Airbnb wants to fight this feeling of coldness. They want to avoid, that people go to a place and they don’t experience anything. Just like a routine. I visit the most touristic places, I make some pictures and I am done. Some travelers have the feeling that they spent the money there but it was not worthy. They are trying to solve this pain. They are trying to make the stay more meaningful.
What about the pain that Booking.com is trying to solve? Traveling can get very expensive. People can not afford it. They save and save but they can not spend all the savings in an expensive hotel. The search process is painful, there are thousands of options in the internet. To find this information is very time-consuming. It’s painful. You end up your working day and you need to spend a lot of time in organizing your holidays. This pain must be solved.
Solution
What is the solution from these companies? On one hand, Airbnb offers a market place, where locals can get money in exchange of giving accommodation. Travelers who want to have a local experience can pay for that. On the other hand, Booking is offering a huge pool of data, that you can filter, analyze it in a quick way. They give you a platform where you can find the best match for you. Whether the cheapest one, the one with the best reviews, ore the one with best location. You filter, you decide.
Let’s give a last example of a company called Le Wagon (where I learnt all my coding skills). Le Wagon is a coding boot camp, where you learn how to code, you learn how to design a product in just two months. You can visit their website here: www.lewagon.com/berlin.
Their slogan is:
Learn to code. Change your life.
They bring technical skills to creative people. What would be the TARGET? It’s pretty clear right? People with lots of ideas, with an entrepreneur mentality who want to learn a new skill or want to create / make something. What is the PAIN that Le Wagon is trying to solve? These people lack technical skills. The resources out there are too specific. Learn JavaScript, learn HTML. But no one is offering the big picture. How to sell your product, how to code it by yourself. The learning curve is too steep and demanding. SOLUTION? They offer a coding boot camp, where you get all you need in order to build your product or your start up. From coding skills to soft skills.
Now that we have a master in sales with our product pitch, let’s move to the market!
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