Should I niche down the product, or just the customer?
The Question:
Should I niche my product (https://getassigned.com) to the specific customer type I have in mind, or keep the product generalized and sell to niche customers?
The Background
I'm building for a specific use case: Assigning medical leads to outside research companies as a medical recruiting agency.
Currently, I'm generalizing the nomenclature because based on interviews of people outside the medical field, the product benefits could apply to other use cases. Honestly, I'm not convinced there are enough medical recruiters out there to produce meaningful value. That leads me to build a very broad product aimed at being sold to a very specific customer type. However every so often, I get the nagging feeling that I should niche the product itself to appeal further to that specific customer type.
My gut tells me to keep the product general and only niche the customer because the features solve the problem regardless of language. However, It's still a question I think about a lot.
Product for reference (Always open to feedback if you want)
https://getassigned.com
👋 interesting product..
Just thinking out loud, and rambling, not giving advice.. 😊
The widely applicable value prop looks obvious.. but marketing such a generalised offer might be tough.
It’s curious that you’re interviewing and roadmapping based on feedback from users who are not your key customer segment. It’s not surprising they’re questioning the language used. Their feedback might not be the best to give weight to?
If you have a clear path to your key customer segment then talking to them would be sensible before de-niching the language any further.
Even with a generalised offer (features and language) you’ll probably need to highlight targeted, crystal clear use cases strongly and succinctly. Right now I think the use cases you’ve listed need to be showcased in a much more salient fashion.
I think your gut instinct is a reasonable approach.
One way forward might be variations of landing pages with clear and specific use cases for your target markets. But leaving the product itself and home page generalised. Perhaps some small language / label customisation per customer profile within the app might be appropriate..
Not sure anything I’ve written is helpful, but at least you got some input :)
Good luck 🍻
What a Comment! Can't thank you enough for details and thoughtful insights.
I'm right there with you with clear, 'vertical specific' marketing. I've actually created a landing page just for my first user base to point to from an email followup.
Assigned for Clinical Trial Management
My goal is to build out additional content around the topic, and use the above as an pillar page for that particular use case.
In parallel, I've got two medical companies signed up for the waitlist. So originally I was planning on not doing any marketing and just quietly onboard them, then reach out to others directly. But since asking a few tactical questions on Reddit, the community convinced me to start marketing more. I've received great feedback from other industries, but I'm trying not to get distracted.
One that popped up was content marketing. But that provides a new question of whether it's ok to niche down on two specific but unrelated types of customers?
Will be easier to make money if you niche it down to a certain customer group. This will allow to ship a product that serves them better and get decent money for it. Can help you out. DM me on Twitter.