Find the Early Customers with the Most Urgent Need: From Earlyvangelists to the Mainstream

#TheFourStepsToTheEpiphany #FocusOnEarlyvangelists #CrossTheChasmFromEarlyToMainstreamMarkets The previous post introduced the four steps of customer development. Next comes using its core ideas to find earlyvangelists and make the transition from these customers to mainstream customers. The book argues that startups often fail not because they do too little market research, but because they do too much. Customer development values gathering information about customer needs, but this is targeted fishing, not casting a wide net. What should you target? Earlyvangelists. This is the author's term for customers willing to try early products, eager to buy, and enthusiastic about promoting them. Earlyvangelists are a startup's closest allies and a key to entrepreneurial success. The book explains that a startup's product can rarely address the mainstream market immediately. Early products are usually incomplete and meet only certain distinctive needs. Customer discovery should therefore focus on a small number of customers: those with the most pressing problems and the most urgent need for the product—earlyvangelists. The author divides customers into five groups according to how urgently they need a solution: The first group has not realized that a problem exists. The second recognizes the problem but does not consider it serious. The third wants to solve it and actively seeks solutions. The fourth and fifth groups deserve particular attention. The fourth is so eager that customers are already devising their own solutions. The fifth has the strongest desire to buy and already intends to purchase a product. Clearly, urgency rises from the first group to the fifth. Earlyvangelists should be found among the fourth and fifth groups; they will become the product's first customers. For example, one company made an automatic vacuum cleaner. Initially, it expected to find earlyvangelists among homemakers, who dealt with vacuuming all day and most wanted relief from it. Actual customer discovery revealed that unmarried single men were the ones fascinated by the product. The robot vacuum met not only their desire to avoid cleaning but also their interest in high technology changing their lives. Many even treated their robot vacuums as pets. The company had found its earlyvangelists: single men. Once earlyvangelists are identified, the company can proceed to customer validation and customer creation. It develops sales strategies based on the product and customer needs, launches and promotes the product, and steadily expands its customer base. Earlyvangelists are crucial, but they alone are insufficient. There are too few to support large-scale profitability. At a certain stage, the company must expand beyond them into the mainstream market and cross a chasm. What is the chasm? First consider “chasm theory.” Customers adopt new technology at different speeds. A chart of this distribution resembles a hat. At the front are early customers, or earlyvangelists—usually technology enthusiasts and people keen to try new products. They are curious and willing to experiment, but account for a small proportion. The main body of the hat represents mainstream customers, chiefly pragmatists and conservatives. They take longer to accept new things and technologies, and their buying behavior is harder to change. At the tail is a small group of skeptics, who are the least willing to accept new products. A deep chasm separates the early market from the mainstream. Startups can enlarge their markets only by crossing it. How can they do that? The author says the strategy depends on whether the company is entering an existing or a new market. In an existing market, products and customers are already there, so the chasm between earlyvangelists and mainstream customers is often narrower and easier to cross. The priority is to establish the right positioning and stand out from other products. When competitors are not clearly differentiated, the priority is not more company exposure or brand promotion, but enabling customers to identify the product's distinctive features and distinguish it from competitors. With the right positioning and differentiation, moving from earlyvangelists to mainstream customers is not difficult. For example, Wanglaoji herbal tea is a beverage for an existing market. Initially it was widely consumed in Guangdong and sold well locally, but struggled for years to expand beyond the province. How could it grow nationwide? Wanglaoji needed to identify a distinctive feature and establish its own positioning among many beverages. After extensive research and analysis, it found that reducing “internal heat” was customers' greatest need. It introduced the slogan “Worried about internal heat? Drink Wanglaoji.” Sales took off and quickly exceeded 10 billion. Entering a completely new market is quite different. Customers have not yet been cultivated, and an enormous chasm separates earlyvangelists from the mainstream, making it much harder to cross. A company may therefore struggle through its first few years in a new market before experiencing strong growth. Since mainstream customers are unfamiliar with the product and their buying behavior needs guidance, there are two strategies for crossing the chasm: a “niche market” strategy and a “tipping point” strategy. The niche strategy builds on earlyvangelists to create a complete product and solution before gradually expanding to mainstream customers. The tipping-point strategy, also called viral propagation, emphasizes the decisive influence of a few key people on mainstream customers' thinking and behavior. Influence enough key people, let them affect consumers' decisions and behavior, and a bandwagon effect can drive geometric growth in sales. Facebook's rise is a typical example of the tipping-point strategy. It entered a new market: people were not yet accustomed to social networking, and mainstream demand had to be cultivated. Facebook began on Harvard's campus, where students formed its earlyvangelist community. Because Harvard was a leading university, its students' behavior was quickly copied across other Ivy League schools, and the Facebook craze spread to many campuses. The new trend of college students using social networks then influenced people beyond universities, producing viral growth. Through a few key groups, Facebook ignited the entire market. The book's second point is that the core of customer development is finding earlyvangelists and moving from them to mainstream customers. Earlyvangelists are early supporters of a startup's product. Reaching the mainstream requires crossing the chasm in technology adoption. #得到聽書 (Dedao's book-listening service)