How important is Total Addressable Market for Bootstrap Startups!

We live in a connected world wherein we leave behind digital trails of our conscious and sub-conscious mind as well as innermost desires as we surf across the internet. Cloud Computing and AI now allow Marketers to delve deep into our psyche. They can have startling insights of human behaviour through caches of Social Media Data we give them on platter to analyze. With AI software our facial expressions too can be analyzed to find patterns of deep emotions and to establish what a person is feeling. These patterns change with demographic attributes. So, in the days of Big Data MR, how would you, as a bootstrap startup, go about marketing your product!

The need you seek to meet may be known or unknown and linear or non-linear. It ‘can be’ as well as ‘cannot be’ predicted by proportionality with the present or the past. Along with planning your moves and expenses prudently based on your meagre financial resources, identifying the right need and the right target audience are critical.?

Success would require innovative and differentiated ideation on your part. Prior to marketing your product, ensure through design thinking processes leading to prototyping, testing and validation that your Minimum Viable Product meets the known or unknown and linear or non-linear needs of your potential customers.

You cannot hit the market with a product that does not pass the Desirability-Feasibility-Viability test. For product development strategy check my article Startups, do you look at the big picture while developing your new product?

Remember customer acceptance of a product is not a matter of mere cost-price arithmetic. It is a resultant of perceptions as well. Creating favourable perceptions or overcoming unfavourable perceptions is the key.???

To reach out you can take three-pronged approach:

Prong-1

• Prepare a1-2 page content, may be in PDF format, around the needs of your potential customers and the likely experiences they can have having your product. There are several free and easy-to-use software like Canva with which you can develop an impressive content. The content should show real value for your customers in being associated with your product. The document should be so on-point that after being aware of the experience of having your product they would not be able to think of engaging without it.?
• Consider the minimum viable audience out of your target audience. It may even comprise 3 potential customers who are in real need of such a product and are among them whom you have continued to engage with since your product development process.
• Request them for in-person appointment. When you meet a person with an appointment you have his/her major attention for that time slot without distraction. Treating your potential customer with respect, empathy and patience is the best way to earn attention.
• Once you earn consent for meeting, you have his/her enrolment and the opportunity to educate about the experience they can have. Take your time and tell a compelling story around his/her known or unknown need. Explain to him/her, with the content and a physical sample, how your product is different and how it is remarkable. Don't just talk at them; communicate the information that they want.
• In a world where your customers can connect with anyone they want why would they connect with someone who is uninteresting or not helping them solve challenges of their lives? If you and your product can touch your customers and their lives they would also touch back your product. So, how you treat your customers who trust you and how you take them further in what they are comfortable in would encourage them to find worth in discussing your product with others who also would have similar needs.?
• Develop direct connection with your product’s potential end-user. Earn and ensure to keep his/her trust.

(Picture via?Marcus Koehnlein and post of? Desiree Driesenaar )

• Look at the above diagram. This would give you an idea on how you can weave the web of trust and connection by increasing your engagement with potential customers. The number of interactions (lines) in the small groups hints at infinite opportunities. So, focus on growing by trust and business would follow suit.
• Find 10 potential customers - those who need what you are offering or want it. If those 10 end-users do not love your product, you should start over again and develop a new product.
• If you can overwhelm the early adopters’ wants, dreams, desires and thoughts about fulfilling the UN SDGs with your offering, care, attention and focus each of them will help you find 10 more people (or a hundred or a thousand or, perhaps, just three). Go on repeating delighting them.
• You would soon realize that you are not marketing to people rather you are marketing your product with the people. Because the customers who trust you and believe in your product would help you reach out to other potential customers by discussing about its contribution and the experience of having it throughout the product’s lifecycle till its disposal.?

Prong-2

Pick a social media platform to build your asset. You may consider #LinkedIn - the largest network of professionals. Share compelling stories about your journey, your product and how it helps your customers to have a better version of them. Sharing such stories and making posts in regular intervals would not cost you anything. It would rather help you in spreading your idea, being noticed and being discussed.

Prong-3

Periodically write blogs that are useful not only to your potential customers but also to users of analogous products. You can consider writing on LinkedIn Pulse and/or Medium. Even if you have small number of relevant subscribers or followers you gain. ?

On LinkedIn, you would find and be able to connect with your stakeholders, including Angel Investors and VCs. However, try to continue bootstrapping and not taking any external financial support till you have an impactful product and a considerable part of your Total Addressable Market. This experience of stringent cash flow management would help you while scaling up.

You may find it interesting to know what Robert Metcalfe's Law” states! It says that?a network's value is proportional to the square of the number of nodes (n2) in the network. The end nodes can be communicating devices or simply users (here, of your product). For example, if a network has 10 nodes, its inherent value is 100 (102 = 100) and if it has 14 users the value is 196 (142 = 196). So, by adding just 4 more relevant users the inherent value increases 96%. You would observe that in a particular network or web of trust the maximum value occurs where the maximum interaction (intersection of lines of communication) happens. Ensure your presence there.

So, by delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them, you can engage them. They would talk about your product and its story that resonated with them. Thus your idea would spread and your business would grow. Albeit not as fast as you would want, but faster than you could ever imagine.

While it’s good that everything is just one-click away it’s bad too that everything is just one-click away! You cannot take the risk of losing reputation of your startup. So, continue to show up regularly to end-users of your product with value propositions that they cannot stop conversing about it.

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Share your views on the above so that we all can learn from each other too. If you find the article useful feel free to share it with others who you think would benefit from it.

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Debasish Bhattacharyya is an Entrepreneurship Educator.

Follow him at: www.dhirubhai.net/in/debasish-bhattacharyya-mentor-enabler-strategy-innovation

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