Clearly define who your product is for, what need it will satisfy, and why it’s different.
Segmenting
Segmenting boils down to grouping your customers into manageable chunks based on similar characteristics. You don’t want to waste time with generalized messaging when you could directly target a smaller number of people and get more subscribers.
Example: Let’s say we wanted to start a subscription box that delivers eyeglass frames.
Who could feasibly use our product? People who have bad eyesight. Next, we would separate the people that primarily wear glasses and those that wear contacts. Of the glasses wearers, how can we break it up? Can we group people based on age? Based on income? With these broad questions in mind, we can group our potential market into chunks with similar characteristics.
Targeting
Targeting is all about determining the right “chunk” to focus on. This will help you decide which audience will be most responsive to your efforts and how can you hone in on who your target market really is.
Back to our glasses box. After breaking up the market into chunks, we have to consider, out of the people that wear glasses, who would want a new pair of frames delivered regularly? This box would be for people that think of glasses as a fashion accessory rather than a necessity. Finally, what group of people can afford our product? Without specific numbers figured out (we’ll cover pricing later), we can estimate that this wouldn’t necessarily be an essential box, so it would be geared towards those with some disposable income.
Now we’ve narrowed down our target market from “glasses wearers” to “fashion-forward professionals between the ages of 21-34 with bad eyesight who primarily wear glasses over contacts.” This is a much more manageable group of people to target and research. It is at this point that we want to do market research on our customer and the competitive landscape.
Click here to jump to consumer data and competitive analysis.
Positioning
Now that we have our target market and customer profile, how can we make sure our ideal shopper actually converts? How will we package our product? How frequently will we send our product? Will we have premium or value pricing? Ultimately, positioning comes down to how we want our customers to view our product.
With our glasses box, we’re appealing to fashion-forward young professionals. That means the product should have elements of elegance, prestige, trendiness, etc. We don’t want this to be a top-dollar product that is out of reach for most young people, but we don’t want this to come off as a bargain product either. Let’s assume from our prelaunch customer surveys that we found even the trendiest people don’t want new glasses each month. So, knowing that, we’ll settle for a model that ships every 3 or 4 months. Product positioning is made up of the elements of Product, Place, Promotion, and Price (4 P’s), which we’ll dive into later.
Remember, your positioning strategy should dictate your 4 P’s, NOT the other way around.
The last step is to write a positioning statement that clearly defines who your product is for, what need(s) it will satisfy, and why it’s different. For our glasses box, it would look something like this:
For young, professional, fashion-forward individuals who prefer glasses, our subscription box delivers a new, trendy pair of glasses on a recurring basis. Unlike other retailers, our subscription-based model allows customers to accessorize with their glasses. It also makes your buying experience faster, easier, and more affordable, rather than an expensive and long one-time purchase.
