Where to attack the market

The not-so-simple product strategy question

Hi all —

Talking with a few founders, I’ve realized that very few think about where to attack their markets:

Should you build an integrated or standalone product? If integrated, which players in your industry’s stack should you integrate with?

Should someone have to switch from their existing product to use yours?

Should you highlight your entire product or simply market one part of it?

If you’re having trouble selling - this could be one of the big reasons.

Because attacking the market in the wrong place makes it harder for customers to buy.

They have to justify your product’s value AND switching from their existing system. Or trusting something mission-critical to a startup. Or, they have to learn a lot about your product and your competition - so they can justify to themselves and others that they are making the right decision.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how to make our product insanely easy to buy.

Which is a product strategy question before it’s an operational question: Designing a product offering that’s easy to buy has more leverage than optimizing a sales process for a product that’s attacking the market in the wrong place.

Here are a few questions I ask myself:

• Who in the ecosystem MUST change? (Find your beachhead customer)

• What systems do they use, and how can we offer something that doesn’t require them to replace their systems? (Reduce the size of the decision)

• What is THE thing they’ll buy? (Simplify your product pitch)

• When they buy, how do you lock them in? (Make sure your entry point isn’t super risky, OR figure out how to get them to level up to your retention features)

And iterate and iterate over time to make it easier and easier to buy.

Are you attacking your market in the right place?