What the f**ck you are you selling?

There was once a girl called Mathilda.
She desperatly wanted to have her own venture.
She had an idea of a market stand – to sell goods.
Her father built her a nice looking market stand, so she could start selling her goods.
She was inviting every person she knew to the stand, people who passed by she asked to buy.
But she struggled .. she put so much effort into asking people to come over to her place.. but only a very few actually bought the goods.

She demanded her father to put some fancy lights on the stands roof, to paint it in different color, to print out some 2-4-1 vouchers … all to attract more potential customers.

It still didn’t change much. It was a huge effort, but just a little gain.

What’s the problem?
She had no clue what she was selling!
She focused first on customer acquisition than having a deep understanding of her product.

She looked down at her table and saw that she was selling: vibrators!

Suddenly she understood!
That’s why the group of 8-year olds she acquired didnt buy anything …. not to wonder why the hockey team that she asked to come over had laughed at her and didnt buy a dime.

But now that she is defining the product … she also realizes that there are customer segments.
Her target audience are women .. not only that, she went into detail and defined diffrent segments for that one product

• Single women age 16-66
• Women who travel alot
• Maybe also people who have stores for ladygoods
• …
• ..

Then she thought about how to reach them, how to have different marketing approaches for diffrent customers .. (remember: still the same product, but different customer segments) ..

• for single ladies she made flyers she could hand out at clubs …
• she offered free makeup advice at her booth..then advertise/sell her product
• for women who travel a lot she openend a blog with travel advice for ladies (and making advertisement for her product)
• ..
• ..

After all that, NOW – she could start thinking about customer bonuses, affiliates .. or even paint her market stand in diffrent fancy colors ..

In short, without knowing what you are selling you can’t succeed:

• Know what (the value of) your product is
• Find & define customer segments for your product
• Research how to reach those segements (normal and crazy ways)

..