"Land & Expand" - A forgotten framework to success
Why starting in niches will always remain a path to consider
Read Time: 4.20 Minutes
If you read all kinds of sources around starting a new project or business, there is one quote coming up very often.
"Start in a niche first!" Or "Niche down first when you start."
But why are so many successful founders and executives giving that advice in the first place?
If you are a big corporation with a big budget, why not aim for the big market first?
Because of adaptation and momentum.
Starting in a broad market brings usually a broad unspecific group of customers and ICPs with it. Means, you have to message your value to many different groups.
This creates a lot of work and a lot of different positioning for your product. This makes it hard to recognise the right learnings in general by selling your product initially.
Your customer base is so diverse, that they are hard to compare. And therefore it's hard to decide where to iterate your product so that it gets more appealing to more customers.
Also you get a diverse range of customers. One on a specific need there and the other with a different incentive to buy.
This makes it hard to create momentum and build a storyworthy message to spread out in the world.
If your Apple Mac is broken, would you let it repair by a specialist for Mac's or by a general repair shop for phones and every brand you can think of?
Of course we know the answer.
So a jack of all trades (or all customers) is mostly an inefficient one as well.
Why building in a niche
Building in a niche makes a lot of things easier, which help you to go into broader markets easier at a later stage.
First of all, with more customers of the same type, you understand better what makes your product valuable and what stuff is left to fulfil all the needs of the buyer.
It's also easier to concentrate all your marketing into one specific but focused messaging than try to speak to everyone.
Also you can "master" and take a niche market way faster than going for broad straight away.
Even in terms of media everything will be easier for you the following niche advice. Some business outlet loves to tell a story about a new successful product in a niche market, but would never publish over a mediocre product in a broad hard to describe market.
In addition, if you are successful in a niche already, you can use social proof by entering a new niche. Just think of the following sales pitch:
"Hey X, I think our product could help you to solve your specific problem. We proved already in this market that we are capable of helping our customers. Here are their endorsements."
If you hear something like this, you will listen. Instead of some general sales message we all discard straight from our emails.
Don't fear the niche and use "Land & Expand"
But why so often people are not niching down then? I think it's because of fear. Fear of not getting into a big enough customer group. Fear because we are often fixed to terms like the TAM of any given market.
But you shouldn't be afraid of a niche, there is a great answer.
Land and expand.
Means landing in a specific niche. Master and get the niche. Then expand in the next niche, often the neighboring one.
This is a great strategy, because you can work yourself up over different niches and finally build your broad market yourself.
And in addition you can make your product through every niche better, can test new features or sales messages, and build strong momentum through social proof.
No fear needed. Even if you fuck up a niche, you not fucked up a big broad market. So you spread the risks with this tactic at the same page.
So don't worry about being too niche. Land and expand your way to glory.
-End-
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