Tip #7: Ready for take-off!
🎯 Today's objective: Decide who you should focus on, find people to interview
Welcome to the 27 people who have joined us since Wednesday! If you’re reading this but haven’t subscribed, join 307 entrepreneurial-minded folks by subscribing here:
Please allow images to display
😃 A big THANK YOU and some questions to improve
We’ve started to circulate a survey to understand better your expectations and improve this newsletter. We want to understand which type of content and which formats you like the most. We’re already started adapting accordingly and decided, for instance, to include in this newsletter 6 main customer segment strategies with examples (see below).
Thank you to those who’ve already answered! If you haven’t yet, please follow this link: A 2 MIN SURVEY TO IMPROVE. This is really really helpful and valuable to us 🙏🙏 (and in short: simply useful for you 😉). Stay tuned. In the next Tip, we’ll send you the results!
Thank you so much in advance for your help 🥰🥰
Alriiiiiiight, is your customer interview script ready (Tip #6)?! Perfect. Let's find the best people to contact now.
🎯 Today's objective: Decide who you should focus on, find people to interview, and vamos!
❓ ”Who will benefit the most from my solution?"
Most of the time, this question is hard to answer. Very often, there’s not only one but many different types of customers that can benefit from your solution.
You already know that, but we call them: customer segments.
You’re not going to be able to meet every customer’s demands. Instead, you should focus on THE customer segment/niche that will create the most value for your business.
💡 Importantly, note that you might not get it right from the beginning. That's why you need to define different segments and then interview people from these different segments, to discover which one is the best for you.
🔑 Use the table below to define different customer segments
Try to see the world through the eyes of your users. See your users as the hub, and your solution rotating around them, not the opposite.
Open up your mind and let all the ideas you might get flow. Write down everything.
The last two lines enable you to rank the different segments. Focus on the 2 which you think are the best.
Click here to create a copy of the table.
📙 Example 1: Uber
For Uber, two customer segments could be:
"Executives and top managers, who travel a lot and often need a car to get around the new city", and
"Anyone aged 18+, who lives in the city or in its suburbs and needs short to mid-distance transportation".
The job they want to get done could be:
For the managers: "Being able to go anywhere anytime with ease, in a city you don't know; being provided with a reliable and great quality service; be able to make calls and write emails during the ride"
For the second segment: "Getting an affordable (almost always cheaper than a taxi) car from anywhere anytime, and being transported to the destination taking the fastest route"
What are their pain points behind that?
For the managers: No private car in a new city, cannot go around the city with the same ease. Cannot rely on the local public system in a situation when public transportation in the city is poor and/or there are no alternative means of transport available (i.e. bikes). Have to talk to taxi drivers.
For the second segment: No cabs are usually around when they are needed most and urgently (i.e. in rainy weather). No fast and reliable transport in times when a person cannot drive (i.e. after drinking, to go to the airport). Absence of a cheap alternative to public transport.
📙 Example 2: Airbnb
For Airbnb, the two customer segments which might create the most value are on one side young travellers, and on the other side hosts with extra space.
For young travellers, the job to be done could be to enjoy a local experience, away from party hostels. For Hosts with extra space, it is to earn extra money.
Finally, let's translate this job to be done into Pains/Needs. Why do young travellers want a local experience? It can be because they don't like mass tourism. For hosts, they want to make extra money without a significant initial investment. Using the empty space they already have in their house is an option.
Psssst: Please, no need to do that... ☠️
The document presenting your potential customer type doesn't have to look that nice. At least for now. No need to spend 2 hours looking for the perfect picture to describe your audience. Rather focus on the pain, needs, problems, and job to be done of each segment!
💯 We believe that examples are the best way to get inspired. Thus, we put together 6 customer segment strategies, with examples, just for you!
Click here to get the top 6 customer segment strategies explained and illustrated with examples.
😅 “Thanks bro, but how am I supposed to find these people?”
We’ve got you covered. Here are the 4 main ways to find people to interview in your different customer segments at zero cost.
1. Use your personal network
You have a lot of people around you: your friends, your parents, your siblings, the parents of your friends, your colleagues, your teachers, your grandparents, etc. Look for people and for recommendations within your close network.
2. Go where the people hang out
Let's say you want to sell T-shirts to millennials. Go to cafés, T-shirt shops... List all the places millennials go to. And go talk to them. Think about events as well, like Meetups!
📙 Examples:
Uber: if you were Uber at the beginning you could have gone to the airport and talk to people waiting for taxis. But, you also need drivers with cars. You need to find out as well if drivers would like to have an app to get a customer from A to B.
Homemade lemonade: Go to the supermarket and spend an hour in the beverage section.
And if my business is B2B? The same rule applies, go see people at their office, during lunch time for instance. Get an appointment with someone from the company.
And of course, think about online “places” and events too, especially now that we’re mostly at home. What forums does your customer segment use?
3. Use social networks
Go to your list of friends on Facebook, followers on Insta, and connections on LinkedIn. Review everyone, and list all the persons it might be good to get in contact with. Check out Facebook groups and Slack communities.
LinkedIn is a especially powerful tool for B2B or to contact people that are not in your direct circle of friends and family.
4. Ask for referrals
The people you interview can help you get more people to interview. Just ask them.
🏄 Was it useful? Help us improve!
With your feedback, we can improve The Tipsletter. Click on a link to vote:
And a special thanks to the person who left us this feedback: “👍 That helped me. Thanks. Because I feel I'm going in the right direction by belonging to a community of like-minded people. However, when do we get practical? When can we use mangoUP meetings to start with a very small business idea, like a dropship site, OR encourage us to build our own newsletter/people base (and have some degree of success) just so we go through the motions and understand exactly what we have to do and have a product we can show at the end? This could also be a model for you to make money eventually - with classes - or an accelerator. I would def love to have help building my website and having bi-weekly goals pushing me to act and accomplish”.
Please contact us so that we can talk more about that. We’ve actually already started doing this with a small group of people and want to push this idea of creating an acceleration program forward.
Of course, if you are interested as well, don’t hesitate to get in touch! 🚀🚀
If you haven’t already, you can still take this 2 min survey to tell us the type of content you would like to see more in this newsletter 😻:
✋ One last thing… We have a new partner!
Exciting news! We're partnering with Notion to offer you $1,000 off their Team Plan. Thousands of startups use this plan to run a wiki, manage projects, share documents, and more — all in one highly customizable workspace. This plan usually costs $10 per person per month, but with the credits, you can try it for free! Get in touch with us by replying to this email if you’re interested in this offer 😃.
📤 Help other entrepreneurs
See you soon guys 🤙
Nico, Marie, Raquel