Skip to content 
The smallest viable market is the focus that, ironically and delightfully, leads to your growth.
Seth Godin
How do you start a business, launch a product, or provide a service today, when you literally can see thousands of competitors.
You start small. Counterintuitive. But it works.
Seth Godin in his book, This is Marketing (check it on Amazon here), did a tremendous job of explaining the smallest viable market.
WHAT IS THE SMALLEST VIABLE MARKET?
There is a huge chance that you would have heard the term niche-down.
A niche is a small section of a population for which you can create a service or a product.
However, if you niche-down a lot you will see only a few users. That’s where the term “viable” comes in!
Imagine you are in a three-storeyed club. You don’t want to be on the jam-packed floor and you don’t want to be on the floor that has like 2 people. You will find the spot that is most viable for you to enjoy — with enough people and enough breathing room.
ADEQUATELY SERVING THE SMALLEST VIABLE MARKET
The smallest group that could possibly sustain you in your work….stake out the smallest market you can imagine. The smallest market that can sustain you, the smallest market you can adequately serve. This goes against everything you learned in capitalist school, but in fact, it’s the simplest way to matter.
Seth Godin
Focus on the smallest viable market: “How few people could find this indispensable and still make it worth doing?” Match the worldview of the people being served.
The smallest viable market needs to be adequately served with a quality product/service so they stay for more. If you’re giving the market an average service, they will go to bigger competitors with the average products.
However, if you satisfy the needs of the smallest viable market with your quality product and engage with them – they will always turn to you! You will become the go-to business for them and you will be able to compete with larger businesses.
Here is an example, you can buy everything on Amazon but if you need good quality designs only from independent artists, you will go to Etsy. Etsy also allows the artists and users to communicate through messages which means more engagement.
WHY DOES THE SMALLEST VIABLE MARKET WORK?
Drop a teaspoon of red color into a bucket of water, and all the water in the bucket will become bright red. But if you drop it in a lake, no one will notice.
Of course, everyone wants to reach the maximum audience in whatever they do. They want to be seen by masses, get a larger return on their investment, have those eyeballs.
But what happens? They try to please everyone. Make a dumb-down version of their product. It becomes average.
The issue is there are a lot of average products in the world. Your product becomes another drop in the lake. And you won’t reach anyone.
The smallest viable market, also called the smallest viable audience, works because you’re picking a small enough user-base, engaging with them. And most importantly, delivering the best quality product in that market.
When Tesla started, they wanted to deliver an electric car which is also fast and looks elegant. They were not going for an average electric car. Neither were they trying to make just a fast elegant car. They wanted an electric car which is fast and elegant. Tesla didn’t focus on the masses. They focused on a particular set of customers and became the best in it.
When you find the smallest viable market, engage with the user-base, and provide good quality products two things happen –
- you discover it’s a lot larger group than you expected
- they tell the others
This leads to more growth!
The best part about the smallest viable market is that you can use this concept to not only find a market for your product — it works with services, podcasts, blog articles, businesses, mobile apps (basically a product as well), books, and so many other things. It works on big projects and small hustles.
Additionally, once you have established yourself in the smallest viable market, you can move to the broader market. The audience from the small market will give you momentum. Amazon moved outwards after just selling books to other things.
A caveat to providing quality products is that you can provide an average product only if you have found such a unique niche-market that has no competition. If the users in that market don’t have any other product to go for, they will come to you. This is rare.
HOW DO YOU FIND THE SMALLEST VIABLE MARKET?
Okay – mass is average, the small market is good. How to find an audience for your product?
TARGETING THE VIABLE MARKET
Imagine an upside-down pyramid. To understand the pyramid you always start from the base of the pyramid which is the top here.
You keep filtering your idea (niching down) using the pyramid until you reach the “Goldilocks zone”. The just-right section. This is your viable market.
Let’s understand with an example. You love food. You want to create a big blog about food. Who doesn’t? However, there are tens of thousands of blogs on food. It’s too hot.
You niche down further. A food blog for Indian recipes. There are still a thousand blogs.
Niche down the pyramid further. Indian food for people with allergies?
Let’s go a step further. Only south-Indian food recipes for people with allergies. Too cold.
Indian food for people with allergies is the “goldilocks zone”.
USE GOOGLE
How do you find if there is a viable audience in that market? Google.
When you put in a search in Google for something, it prompts other similar searches.
See what the search results prompts for. If it prompts for the idea you were going for, other people have been searching for it too!
USE KEYWORD RESEARCH TOOLS
There are a lot of keyword research tools such as UberSuggest, ahrefs, Moz, and so on. Just put your keywords in and find results.
ASK PEOPLE
I find this is the best way to find a niche. If you have an idea, just search on Reddit, Quora, and Twitter to see if there are questions around it.
If there are a lot of questions and the community is active, you have found yourself a niche.
Once you have found your smallest viable market, start designing your quality product that people will want and respect. How is your product different from other products out there? How can you set yourself apart from other businesses in the niche?
WHO ARE YOU SEEKING TO CHANGE?
Why do we create products? The common reason we build products is that we are trying to solve a problem. If you’re creating something that doesn’t solve a problem – why are you even creating?
I started posting on Instagram to make critical thinking and decision-making easier to follow. I was writing my blog articles but I got the feedback that they were too long. People needed something micro. Quick to digest. Hence, I started creating easy-to-follow carousels on Instagram. This is the problem I am solving – people who want to learn but don’t like reading or don’t have the time-capacity.
As soon as you start working on making something that brings about a change, you will realize that you don’t have a chance of changing everything.
Everything that you build will not be for everyone. If you’re building for everyone, understand everyone is a lot of people.
Bad Bollywood music is a huge problem but would you be able to change it? Unless you’re T-Series, it is going to be difficult. And if you’re T-Series, you are the problem.
So who do you try to change? An audience that is large enough for you to bring about the change that you want to make and small enough that you can create a ripple. The goldilocks zone.
When you seek to engage with everyone, you rarely delight anyone. And if you’re not the irreplaceable, essential, one-of-a-kind changemaker, you never get a chance to engage with the market.
Seth Godin
But the first question always is – who is it for?
If you’re not sure about this, you need to go back to the drawing board and figure it out.
Who are you building the product for? Whose problem are you trying to solve? What is your viable market?
FOCUS ON PEOPLE
Choose the people you serve, choose your future.
Seth Godin
You have decided on the market and you have decided on the problem. Now focus on the people. Yes, you choose the people.
Kevin Kelly, the founding editor of Wired Magazine, has an interesting concept of 1000 true fans. I follow this to heart.
“A thousand customers is a whole lot more feasible to aim for than a million fans. Millions of paying fans is not a realistic goal to shoot for, especially when you are starting out. But a “thousand fans” is doable. You might even be able to remember a thousand names. If you added one new true fan per day, it’d only take a few years to gain a thousand.”
When you start – target for 1000 people. 1000 fans that will love what you do, are interested in your product, and then engage with them. They are called “true fans”. They are part of your initial community and will invest in everything you put out. Time. Money. Effort.
You should be targeting these 1000 fans instead of a million people. A small business only needs 1000 fans to sustain. You talk to these 1000 people, engage with them, implement their feedback. Make it a community.
But these 1000 fans need to be organic. They should be ready to engage back. Provide feedback. Paid followers don’t do that.
You decide the type of audience for your product. Are they really passionate about it? If so, they will stick with your quality product.
Earn, and keep, the attention and trust of those you serve. Offer ways to go deeper. Instead of looking for members for your work, look for ways to do work for your members. At every step along the way, create and relieve tension as people progress in their journeys toward their goals. Show up, often. Do it with humility, and focus on the parts that work.
Seth Godin
GO SMALL OR GO HOME
Trying to create a ripple by throwing a stone in the ocean is dumb. Color the bucket of water before trying to color the lake. Niche-down to the goldilocks zone. Understand the problem you’re trying to solve. Ask who is it for? If you’re trying to change everyone, that’s a lot. Do it by targeting a viable audience passionate about the problem requiring a solution. Be the answer. Not just any answer! The quality answer that the market needs. Focus on 1000 people who will be passionate about your product. Engage with them. Remember you can always move upwards on the inverted pyramid. But you start from, what is called, the smallest viable market.
RESOURCES TO LEARN MORE
Seth Godin – Book This is Marketing (check it on Amazon by clicking the link) – I absolutely love this book. I would highly recommend reading it (read my book recommendations here)!
Seth Godin – Blog – Seth shares micro-blogs daily through his site. You should definitely sign up for this newsletter. He talks about the smallest viable market in these articles – In search of the minimum viable audience and the minimum viable audience.
IF YOU LIKED THIS ARTICLE, ALSO CHECK OUT –
- PRINCIPLES THAT HAVE CHANGED MY LIFE
- COLONIAL BORDERS – HOW ARE THEY CAUSING POLITICAL ISSUES?
- WHY SHOULD YOU NEVER SPLIT THE DIFFERENCE?
- MASTERING TIME MANAGEMENT – 7 ACTIONABLE STRATEGIES TO BETTER MANAGE YOUR TIME
- LESSONS FROM RICHARD FEYNMAN
Note: Some items listed above are Amazon affiliate links. This means I receive a very small commission if you make a purchase after clicking through any of the images (links) above, at no additional cost to you (i.e. the prices don’t change).
