Segmenting is key, but segmenting is so hard
Especially for bootstrapped businesses, segmenting the market is key:
There are countless CRMs, dozens of email marketing and newsletter services, endless webinar, online course, and community building sites. And they're all successful and viable businesses, often despite having a severely limited set of features compared to the can-do-everything market leader.
The key to their existence and survival is segmentation. They target a very specific group of customers that they can relate to, and for which they solve the problem better, or talk about the problem's solution in a better and more relatable way.
That can take different forms: A different work flow, setting up specific fields and features by default that require more work in other solutions, or integrations with other tools commonly used in the target segment.
My Problem
I'm currently trying to segment the market for my own toy project and could use your help. Originally, I built this for myself, so I didn't conduct thorough market validation beforehand. Can you propose some segments or target groups, based on this description?
Talksphere is a language learning service/marketplace. It connects you with a Spanish teacher (it proposes several candidates to you based on some criteria). But instead of taking a class, or a lesson at a fixed our, you're put into a chat for a more casual, asynchronous chat. The core idea is to have a real human to practice sentence formation and conversation flow with, without having to limit it to classes/lessons. Instead, there's a consistently reliable conversation partner on Talksphere.
Do any groups come to mind, based on that description?
I'm not sure I agree. Segmenting can be valuable, but it really depends on the context. Read the book "How Brands Grow" by Byron Sharp where he has meta studies across different markets and industries that segmentation is overrated. Instead, being "distinct" can be a much better approach.
I'll definitively take a look at the book. I think coming from a point of modeling the riskiest business assumptions and customer persona, I can't see a way around of somehow segmenting the market first. I think it changes as the business grows and becomes more established and you start having a brand. But I'll double check what the book says, I appreciate the input!
I would consider looking for language exchange groups online. I know there are people whose native languages are different and they'll meet for an hour (for example) and speak in one language for half of the time, and the other for the other half, precisely for the reason you mentioned: to have a more casual chat with a human. Perhaps explore some of these groups and see what kinds of profiles are on there. You're right though, I think your audience could potentially be pretty huge.
Hey, thanks for your answer. I think you're right, I've been on platforms/in groups for language exchange myself before. I was mostly there because I was too broke to pay for anything else. I should definitively check back into these communities and ask around there!
I like to do segmentation based on customer need / problem vs. demographics.
I also do think that it might be worth trying to talk to existing and past users of language learning apps to understand what made them stick around or leave.
Like is there a group of people for which in-person or remote classes just don't work.
Is there a group of people for which the type of learning provided by language learning apps doesn't work?
This might look like that:
People with basic Spanish knowledge who want to deepen their Spanish language skills through conversation but do not have the ability to commit to an hour-long class each week.
Places to explore to find additional insights might be spanish subreddit, language learning app forums/communities, etc.
If you already have a pretty crisp idea you can also test different messages (segmentation) and how they resonate through a landing page tests.
The one thing that I think is rough about your idea is it's reliant on not only building a good product BUT building a good community. Community building is insanely difficult too. Once you've got your product set, you will probably not have the bandwidth to focus on marketing and on growing the community, and people may not like the product if the community isn't great.
So try to reduce that risk I'd say. Is there a way to make the product enjoyed by < 50 people and not have them reliant on others?
You're right, I am essentially building a marketplace between the teachers and the students. I think it's a bit less than a full community, but definitively more than just another SaaS. Additionally, I am just building additional infrastructure (the chat) that the teacher and the students use on top of it. In practice, I could just put them into contact and have them use WhatsApp or any other messenger instead.
I put 5 different teachers on the marketplace to start. I hope it's enough for students to choose from. But you're right, without enough participants from either group, this is not working. But I don't think it needs "scale" to work. Or do you fundamentally disagree?