How do the best companies pick winning markets?

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we cover a common question, how do the best companies pick winning markets.

We use Strava, the social network for athletes, and ask how they would pick who to build their go-to-market around.

We cover how they might access a market's profitability, what market they should build product features for, and how they should think about building a plan for audience growth.

Happy Growing!

What you'll learn in this episode

One of the most critical parts of what makes a business successful is prioritizing the right audience. You need that prioritization to know who you're building features for, how you'll create an audience growth plan, and much more.

In this episode, we answer all those questions, using Strava, the social network for athletes, as an example.

1. What audience would marketing choose?

When choosing an audience, it's good to ask yourself where you have the most leverage. What audience will provide you with the opportunity to build a differentiated story from what competitors are already offering?

A lot of this is your brand. Most companies have the same products, so they tell the same story. They'll save you money; they'll make you more profitable.

Those stories either fall into a transformational or a better product bucket. Transformational stories are about category creation. The fascinating part of a transformational story is if you win and are successful, they'll eventually become best practice.

Marketing would also look to what audience will provide you with opportunities to build a customer acquisition plan where you have some leverage over competitors. Maybe you're better at search than competitors, so the audience searching for a lot of content on Google is the best choice. Maybe you can better spend more efficiently on paid advertising for a certain audience because you can monetize them more effectively (average order price, retention).

2. What audience would the product choose?

The product team will consider who the company wants to be and how it can differentiate itself. The product is what helps the company stand out from competitors.

Product features that are unique and differentiated can help the company stand out and gives them a unique perspective.

It's also not always a case of one customer segment or the other; you also invest in features that span across multiple customers, features that allow you to cross-sell into other customer segments.

We also get into the complexities of being a multi-product company and prioritizing what product you'll invest in for customer acquisition purposes.

We debate whether you should decide what your product front door is, what product best fits customer acquisition growth channels. We give examples of how multi-product might make those decisions. Tune in to find out more!

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