This content was created by GHION.AI . This content was uploaded by GHION.AI . This is a YouTube video titled "Tina Wells: Know Your Total Market and Target Market" (posted 2014-11-14). It features a single speaker—Tina Wells—giving practical advice to entrepreneurs on validating ideas: defining total vs. target market, finding early testers/customers, proving concepts by making initial sales, recognizing competition (including customers doing nothing), iterating based on feedback, and using technology to gather customer input and avoid analysis paralysis.
Chapters
I always say knowledge is power. So the minute you have an idea, we all have the ability to be researchers and you really need to independently— not all of your friends and family, they love you, they'll tell you. I was fortunate that my friends and family didn't really understand what I was doing, so they couldn't have told me they thought it was great anyway because they didn't get it. But what I didn't realize at the time was early on those 40 companies that thought that my insights were interesting kind of proved that I had a client base before I even I didn't even know what that meant. And so you really have to spend the time saying, what's my total market and what's my target market? And you always have to be able to answer that question. Not, I really think this is great because— it doesn't matter. We're not that great. And there are people— I think what's interesting today is I really do believe that there are entrepreneurs who are creating solutions that will change the world and are changing lives every day and making our lives whether it's more beautiful or easier or more creative. But at some point they had to qualify that. And so I would say— and quantify it. What are your total and target markets? And my favorite thing is when people say there's no competition. There is always competition. As a marketer, I will tell you consumers can choose to do nothing, you always have competition. And so take a minute and be independent and say, how do you qualify the idea? Who is your test market? We all can find 100 people to say, is this something you're interested in? And then is there a way to prove the concept? Can you start to sell something at least to one client? And how do you get through that sale process? And then always be kind of refining. Don't be so set on this is the way it has to go. And always be in that research phase. But I always hear, especially with technology, I think it's a little bit of a different story, right? Because there's the— like analysis paralysis. When do you launch a product? When do you let people test it? What's great about technology is consumers always, from the minute it's launched, get to tell you what they like and what they don't like. And so get yourself immersed in the ability to hear what your customers want from day one, I think, would be the most important.
