Table of content
So you have an idea that can meet the demands of a certain market. But how do you know if that market will be responsive to your offering? Markets are made up of people, and the more you can understand about the people who make up your target market, the better you are able to create a business that meets their demands.
The ideal customer persona
Businesses don’t serve everyone, because different people have different preferences. For example, if you have an educational app, your two main ideal customers will be students and teachers. These two groups are very different from each other, but as it pertains to your app, they are much more different than other client groups. Your job at this stage is to understand these two groups and their constituents in as much detail as possible. Where do they live? How old are they? What is their income group? How technologically savvy are they? Try to really flesh out your customer persona in order to understand how your ideal customer will interact with your app, from the moment he hears about it to the time he makes the decision to download it, learn to use it, and then use it at its full capacity. You can build as many customer personas as you want. Using our example above, a high school freshman will have different use cases for your app than a senior who is looking to enroll in a good university.
Ideal customer interviews
If you want to take your marketing research a step further, you can set up ideal customer interviews. You can either do the interviews yourself or hire a company that specializes in conducting this type of research. If you are going with the first option, you will have to contact people from your target demographic and have a conversation with them over the phone, over a cup of coffee, or in your office in a more formal setting. Try to find more about their problems and how you can solve them. Make sure that you formulate questions in a way that allows you to collect quantitative or measurable data. Try to keep it light-hearted, and if you have a minimum viable product ready, you can let the customers test it out and then give you their appraisal. However, you should not rely exclusively on this test, because the customers may be paid to be there. This means that they are more likely to give you a more positive review than they would otherwise. The important thing during these interviews is to focus on the customers’ problems with other solutions in the market.