The secret to identifying new market segments

Alex Mastin is the founder & CEO of Home Grounds, a community that aims to help all of us brew better coffee. (Yesss!) Instead of trying to find a new audience of coffee lovers, Alex went deeper into those he was already targeting. By being specific about a single niche inside the already existing coffee community, those with a unique problem to solve, Alex was able to tailor communications to their unique needs. “We found a whole bunch of people who had the same initial problem as we had. If your product isn't a solution for your users, you need to dig deeper into your niche.” Getting narrow is a great way to uncover untapped market segments and learn more about those with a unique passion or need for your product. It can even move you beyond marketing and into product innovation.

Please meet Spyic's founder & Marketing Director, Katherine Brown. Spyic specializes in parental control and remote monitoring, and Katherine drops this nugget of wisdom for us: Put your customers first. But not in the traditional way that we all know and expect in marketing. Katherine takes “customer first” to a new level. She says you should “be prepared to use any means possible to make life better for them. Be prepared to transform your customer's life. If you have a product that has the potential to change a life, you will find it hard to find someone else that can establish the same value proposition as you.” Once you are actively making their lives better, you can look to those that have similar problems, or similar ways in which you can transform their daily routine.

We like the boldness that she takes in providing value to her customers and how this can spread to new markets.

Jessica Chase is the Sales & Marketing Manager at Premier Title Loans, with the goal of making the process of applying for an auto title loan as easy as possible. Jessica’s approach to this problem blew us away: “Every product, business, or brand has competitors in the market. Following your competitors and their customer bases thoroughly can help you identify the market gaps you’re missing. With the help of the right tools for competitor analysis you can compare your customers with your competitor’s.”

Our very own VP of Marketing, Arlynn, was approaching this in a slightly different way. “Nathan, is right that growing market share involves finding new audiences. But that is often easier to say than actually do. At Immersion, we are kinda lucky, because we can ‘eat our own dog food’ by using Immersion to measure the content that others are producing in the market and identify demographics and market segments that just happen to respond to related content. It gives me a map of who will love things that others have overlooked.”