Is it feasible to segment a market when starting a new business?

The IBB approach to marketing success for entrepreneurs-

Well, it happened again. I was approached recently by an entrepreneur who had tried to segment the market top-down to prepare a Marketing Plan and found it delivered groups of customers who were defined too generally and were too numerous.

The numbers were way beyond his resources to reach, and supply and the requirements were so general so as to make the product-service fit to the customer impossible to implement. The drilling down process was killing him and he was suffering a classic case of paralysis by analysis.

I suggested to him that a better approach was the entrepreneurial approach because this is what many entrepreneurs do naturally; identify, build, and broaden (IBB). It is a bottom-up process unlike segmentation which is top-down.

The approach involves identifying the perfect customer, easy to change, accessible, and fundable with an economic number of similar cohorts. (For many entrepreneurs, this is themselves!)

Then, the target is the perfect customer and you build and broaden on this base. Your plan needs to specify how you are going to do this. The build and broaden process involves 5 activities I will be sharing in my next article.

By Joel Haire, +6408148470.

Edited by ‘Dele Dele-Olukoju, Marketing Communication strategist and publisher of the online Marketing Communication Digest. He writes from Lagos, Nigeria. @deleolukoju +234 807 481 2389.