Bright, Green, Slim-fit Pants
A strawman.
I have a great idea. I’m going to make bright, green, slim-fit pants and sell them. I’ve done market research, too, and have figured out that if I can get the people who shop at The Gap and Banana Republic to buy my pants, I’ll create a bright, green pants cultural revolution and huge business.
So how do I get the people who shop at The Gap and Banana Republic to buy my bright, green, slim-fit pants?
Option 1: Start marketing directly to them. My aim with this approach is first to make them interested in bright, green, slim-fit pants and second, to buy a pair once interest (demand) is established.
Option 2: Find an adjacent market where I don’t have to engender interest, and market to them instead. My goal here would be to work out the kinks in my product, generate early sales, and get feedback from real people.
After deliberation I go with option 2. While early on this option exposes me to a much smaller market, it allows me to get things right before I go for the “big kahuna”. And who knows, option 2 might even be a gateway to the Banana Republic and Gap market I covet.
So I do some research, and I find a market comprising people who wear bright, purple, slim-fit pants. I also find an adjacent market of people who wear bright, green, slim-fit shorts. And I identify a third group of people who don’t particularly care what they wear on their lower body, but they consistently wear shirts with epaulettes.
I go all in targeting these people with my new marketing campaign and find that, indeed, demand exists and some of them buy my bright, green, slim-fit pants. Trying to understand this group of early adopters more I do some analysis. One consistent trend emerges: my early adopters are “fashion forward”.
After a few months, I start seeing sales happen from a few less fashion-forward people. Has a new market found my bright, green, slim-fit pants? It would seem my early, fashion-forward buyers started talking with their less-fashion-forward friends about their awesome pants. This, plus observation of my bright, green, slim-fit pants being worn at trendy parties, has generated demand from a new group of people.
Further analysis shows the not-so-early-early-adopters represent a bigger market opportunity. So I focus my marketing efforts on them and go all in on this newer, larger market.
After success with this new tactic, I start getting a trickle of sales from a third group of people. It would seem that the not-so-early-early-adopters have mainstream friends who shop at The Gap and Banana Republic. And these mainstream friends have taken notice of the not-so-early-early-adopters wearing bright, green, slim-fit pants in public.
Boom! This is the market I had originally envisioned selling my product to. This is how I create a bright, green, slim-fit pants cultural revolution.
