“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.” – Peter Drucker
Imagine you are 10-years-old and you got the idea of starting a bagel delivery route. You have the insight that you can make a bulk purchasing agreement with the bagel bakery in town – if you sell at least 60 dozen bagels, they'll give you 10 cents off each dozen and you will make $72 – not a bad haul for a few hours of work.
But there are two problems: How are you going to find your customers? How will you know what they want? If you can't identify them, then you're going to be sitting in your house with sixty dozen bagels going stale while you're waiting to deliver them. Worse, your product strategy will be based on a guess.
“Who’s it for?” And “What’s it for?”
“Who’s it for?” and “What’s it for?” are the questions that help you gain that understanding of the customer.
Who’s it for? Who are the people you want to serve?
What’s it for? What needs are you addressing for the people you are serving? What causes them pain? What delights them? What are they trying to get done? What are they working towards?
Answer these questions well and your success will only be limited by your execution. Answer these questions poorly, or avoid them all together, and everything else will be difficult.
Unfortunately, most people can’t tell you directly what they want or need. You need to infer and intuit from the things they say, their actions, and the trails that they leave behind.
Be Specific
The best way to ensure you creating something that other people will want – and pay for – is to pick a distinct initial set of customers to serve and learn from them.
Start out with a real set of people that you can identify and name, and with whom you can interact. Talk to them, watch them, learn from them: What do they need and want? What is their pain? What are they trying to get done?
Only when you understand the people you are serving can build a product or service that exactly meets their needs.
1,000/100 True Fans
The model we all grew up with was that bigger is better. Aim for the middle, homogenize your product, use brand marketing on cereal boxes and Saturday morning commercials, and think of everyone as a potential customer.
This approach is too expensive for those bootstrapping their business – and out of step in todays world.
In 2008, Kevin Kelly, proposed that a creator only needs 1,000 true fans who will pay him or her $100 each year for their work. “A true fan”, Kelly says, “is defined as a fan that will buy anything you produce.
There are two criteria to making this work: The first is you have to produce enough each year that you can earn on average $100 from each fan. The second is that you have to have a direct relationship with your fans.
Don’t get stuck on the numbers. Just know the number of fans you need is derived from the amount the fans will pay you each year and the amount you need to earn. Kelly explains,
The number 1,000 is not absolute. Its significance is in its rough order of magnitude — three orders less than a million. The actual number has to be adjusted for each person. If you are able to only earn $50 per year per true fan, then you need 2,000. (Likewise if you can sell $200 per year, you need only 500 true fans.) Or you may need only $75K per year to live on, so you adjust downward. Or if you are a duet, or have a partner, then you need to multiply by 2 to get 2,000 fans.
Early this year, Li Jin a partner at Andreessen Horowitz updated the idea and noted that all you really need now is 100 true fans.
Today, that idea is as salient as ever—but I propose taking it a step further. As the Passion Economy grows, more people are monetizing what they love. The global adoption of social platforms like Facebook and YouTube, the mainstreaming of the influencer model, and the rise of new creator tools has shifted the threshold for success. I believe that creators need to amass only 100 True Fans—not 1,000—paying them $1,000 a year, not $100. Today, creators can effectively make more money off fewer fans.
Sound unlikely? We’re already seeing this shift, according to creator platforms. On Patreon, the average initial pledge amount has increased 22 percent over the past two years. Since 2017, the share of new patrons paying more than $100 per month—or $1,200 per year—has grown 21 percent. On the online course platform Podia, the number of creators earning more than $1,000 in a month is growing 20 percent each month, while the average number of customers per creator is growing at a rate of 10 percent.
The Faberge Organic Shampoo commercial of the 80s parodied in Wayne’s World 2, describes perfectly the approach that works now (unless you have very, very deep pockets for research and development and brand marketing): Perfectly address the needs of your true fans, and they will tell others.
Rather than aiming for the middle, it makes much more sense now to aim for the edges. The people who love what you do and need what you offer. Niche down far enough that your ideas resonate with a particular set of people.
The rewards today go to those who choose.