What Is the Fit Between the Product and the Market?
Fit between the product and the market is a vital notion in the startup ecosystem. It conditions how founders think about and build their companies. When we say that a startup has “fit” between its product and its market, we mean that the company has found a way to serve the market that generates value for both sides—something customers want and something the company can sustain.
Lean Start-up Method: A Fresh Business Perspective
The thought leaders Steve Blank and Eric Ries have put forth the lean start-up method as a new business perspective—one that is particularly relevant to the context of young, nascent businesses. This new perspective builds on a premise that is not unfamiliar in contemporary discussions of business practice: To succeed, a young business must first validate its fundamental operating hypotheses. Feedback from potential customers is essential to this validation process. So, too, is direct engagement with customers by the company’s leadership. In the practice of the lean start-up method, the minimum viable product (MVP) plays a key role as both a tool of persuasion and a benchmark for customer feedback.
Why Customer Feedback is Critical in Attaining Product-Market Fit
Unquestionably, receiving input directly from the users of your fledgling product is of fundamental importance to early-stage start-ups. This new company must plan on making a number of changes to its product based on what these early users tell it during the period when it’s trying to find its product-market fit. Those changes could range from slight to dramatic, and in some cases, the start-up might need to make a pivot and go in a new direction with its product.
Product Market Fit: Analysing the Essentials
Determining whether a product has found its market often involves the use of customer surveys that attempt to gauge the importance of the product to the lives of its users. However, it may be more effective to approach the assessment of PMF, as it is colloquially known, as a narrative.
Indeed, it turns out that asking customers simply how they perceive the fit of a product in the market only returns so many useful insights. Much more informative for PMF analysis is the telling of key customer stories.
What Referral Marketing Can Do to Help You Reach a Wider Market
Referral marketing can play a vital role in achieving product market fit. In the early stages, businesses often focus on selling to a niche market. But over time, finding a product that can resonate in a wider market becomes very important. One crucial way to identify these broader market opportunities is to engage directly with your customers and prospects.
This helps you understand their product opinions and usage. Hearing their stories of how they came to use your product, especially if it wasn’t in your original script, can help you imagine a much larger addressable market than you might have first considered.
An Essential Component to Finding Product-Market Fit: Building Meaningful Relationships with Customers
If you want to build a meaningful relationship with a customer who you’ve never met before, you have to start with content. We must almost go back to the days of “content marketing,” but what we are doing now is so much more meaningful.
The Importance of Product Market Fit for a Start-up’s Success
Obtaining product market fit is of the utmost importance for a start-up. If it does not find PFM, a start-up may waste considerable resources developing a product that does not solve large enough problems for a significant number of people. Moreover, the start-up may attempt to scale that product, which could potentially deplete its financial resources, particularly if it heavily invests in ineffective marketing strategies. Understanding and, better yet, achieving PMF may enable a start-up to grow sustainably.
