Founder's Guide: Why should you only have one target demographic?
I recently had a conversation with my co-founder that went something like this:
Jake: SOOT is a tool that can be used by so many different target demographics. It's an incredible tool, and it's a unique insight that we have that we're solving problems for a bunch of different people at once. We should take advantage of that and reach out to as many target demographics as possible.
Me: Wait, that goes against a lot of prior wisdom. Most people suggest going after a single target demo. Why do you think that is?
Jake: To be honest, I think most of the time that's a bit of a lie. I think that most companies actually try targeting a bunch of target demos, and only in hindsight do they talk about the one that 'won'. And in the cases where there really was just one target demo, I think that's mostly a reflection of the product – there really are a lot of companies that only benefit from one target demo. If you build gizmos for MRI machines, guess what, your target demo is people who build MRI machines. And I actually found this reasonably compelling! And I think a lot of other founders find this compelling too. Which to me, means that the thinking behind all that 'prior wisdom' is really poorly communicated.
First time founders are always thinking about the product. And the reality is, the reason you pick a single target demographic has nothing to do with your product! You may have invented something that literally everyone needs, like the wheel, or electricity, or sliced bread, and you should still only go after one target demo. Why? Because of the operational capacity of your sales team.
For every demographic that I intend to target, I need to:
figure out my brand positioning
determine the marketing copy that will hit that target the best
come up with the right onboarding process
figure out where my target 'lives' and how I can get my message to them
and more.
In other words, I am doubling, tripling, or N-tupling the amount of work my sales team has to do – one for each target demo we intend to target. (There are some ways where it is also literally impossible to cater to multiple demographics – you generally only have one website, so you cannot actually create two separate sets of copy that live on the site. And if you don't pick / try to cut a middle of the road approach, you'll end up with a garbled mess that doesn't mean anything to anyone).
Most startup growth curves look like this:
All things being equal, you want stage 4 to happen as soon as possible. Because your growth starts exponential, your ability to hit stage 4 is really dependent on how long you are in your “early days” period. And, just to put it really bluntly: if you are N-tupling the amount of work you have to do on sales, you are dramatically increasing how long you'll be in the “early days” period. That means you are delaying your startup takeoff time, and all of the shit that comes downstream of that. Don't do that. Pick one target at a time and run with it.
(Note: there is a necessary period in every startup's journey where they are figuring out who exactly their target customer is. This is especially true if you've already built a thing without necessarily validating that the customer you thought would use it will in fact use it. During that period, you should cast your net very wide and talk to / sell to a huge range of potential target audiences. But you should always aim for repeatability and narrowing scope down to one group that gives you the most ROI)