E156: Why Your B2B SaaS Should Go Deeper Into Your Target Market

When B2B SaaS products start to get traction sometimes they get lost by going wider across markets instead of deeper into the market where they already have traction.  Let’s talk about why this is a mistake what going deeper into your target market actually means.

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Episode Transcript
 Hey folks, Sean here, and in this episode I want to talk to you about where to grow from and how to do it after you’ve gotten some initial traction with your target market for your B2B SaaS. So if you’ve been through the process of con converting prospects to paying customers and they’re getting value out of using your product, you’re probably gonna want to know, okay, now what?

How do I continue to grow from there? How do I continue to be successful and then scale this product? The key here, my opinion is to go deeper into your target market, not wider. I see this mistake from time to time, and I’m gonna explain to you what I mean. So let’s say, let’s use my podcasting product for an example.

Now I’m building a tool to automate essentially the process of creating great titles and summaries and key points and quotes and all that kind of stuff from an individual podcast episode. Now there are plenty of people that can use that functionality and different types of personas are signing up for my product.

And by that I mean it’s podcasts in general. Individuals who may be recording podcasts like myself and podcasting agencies as in businesses that do podcast production for anybody who wants one in particular for businesses now. The idea that I’m pursuing for my product is to build it around podcasting agencies as opposed to individuals.

So there are two options in terms of where I can go. I can go deeper into one of those two areas, or I can go wider and I can try to apply to both. Now, the objective here, in my opinion, is to go deeper as opposed to wider first. So that’s a a key sequential step, as in that should happen first. And this comes from lessons learned from great books like Crossing the Chasm, which talk about what it’s gonna take you to get from those early adopters to essentially like the early, and then ultimately late majority, which is a much larger percentage of the target market.

In the early days with your product, you’re not gonna have reached the kind of market penetration you’re ultimately looking for. To establish what some might consider to be product market fit for your B2B SaaS. And until you do, you should continue to go deeper until you have essentially made the kind of progress and you’ve made the kind of market penetration that you’re looking for with who your target market is in the beginning.

Until you reach that, don’t go wider because you’re gonna spread yourself too thin and your product isn’t really gonna be a great fit for any of the potential target markets that you’re pursuing. I just gave you two examples for the product I’m building. If I build around both of them, that ultimately is gonna mean that I’m only really gonna fit one or the other, but not either very well, and that’s what I’m looking for.

That’s what I’m trying to achieve in the early days. So instead of doing either or, Pick one, pick one, and then continue to go deeper. And what I mean by that is continue to build around that specific target market’s needs. And as you continue to do that, then your fit in that market is only going to continue to increase.

You will gonna continue to become more defensible. You’re gonna continue to become more unique. Cuz more than likely, as you are getting more specialized, other people are not. So you’re gonna want to continue to do that until you reach the kind of traction with that market that you’re looking for. And then we’ll talk about it in another episode.

But after you’ve had that level of success, assuming that’s worked out, Then, and only once you reach essentially like a saturation level, which is a certain percentage of traction within that target market, then should you consider going wider because you’re looking to grow beyond that target market, but not before that.

So the key here is really to focus on how do you continue to success of your B2B SaaS product. And my strong recommendation, especially in the early days, is to go deeper into your target market and not wider across others.