Starting a Business All-In-One For Dummies

Chapter 4

Finding Your Target Market

In This Chapter

• Picking the right industry
• Getting the niche right
• Gauging the most attractive customers
• Choosing the best spot on the industry value chain

The most important step toward creating a great business is creating a product or service that customers want and will buy. This is called a powerful offering. The first step in creating a powerful offering is selecting the right market. Picking the combination of industry attractiveness, niche attractiveness, and customer attractiveness creates the best market for your product.

By combining industry attractiveness, niche attractiveness, and customer attractiveness, you can understand the overall market potential. This chapter refers to this combination as the market attractiveness from this point forward. Market attractiveness is one of the most important aspects of your business. It's difficult to imagine a strong business that sells to lousy customers in a bad industry and small niche market.

Gauging the Target Market

You should find a profitable and sufficiently large market segment. However, in order to have a successful and durable business, you need to find a large market that's unserved or underserved. Finding this underserved market is paramount.

Anyone can find huge markets to attack. Hey, let's sell coffee! The market is large and growing, right? However, several large and successful ...