Table of Contents

Target 
Market

Product

Position

Price

Promotion

Place

Packaging

Beta 
Testing

Customer
Relationships
 

Target market is the group of potential customers selected for marketing. If you are looking to segment the market, you need to determine the different target markets for each segment. 

What's On This Page

Targets for Software

Innovators and Early Adopters

Target Market Influencers

Targets for Software

• For new software products, you will have different groups of people. Each class has different risk tolerances.

 

Innovators	First 5% - 10% that adopt the product
Early Adopters	Next 10% - 15%
Early Majority	Next 30%
Late Majority	Next 30%
Laggards	Remaining 20%

• The innovators and early adopters are critical to launching a software product. If you could target your initial efforts at these groups, your limited resources will be well spent. They will become your champions within companies and within communities.

• But who are they? Not an easy question. From some studies, the characteristics of the innovators and early adopters are:

Venturesomeness: the willingness and desire to be daring in trying something new and different

Social integration: frequent and extensive contact with others in one’s area

Cosmopolitan: point of view extending beyond the immediate neighborhood or community

Social mobility: upward movement on the social scale

Privilegedness: attitude and possession of money (less risky to try something new)

• But be aware that it is not necessarily a smooth ride to go from one risk group to another. There is often times a time gap between moving from the innovators to the early adopters and then to the early majority and so on.

• In addition to targeting innovators and early adopters, finding the innovators and early adopters among the influencers of your market is important for a marketing plan with a limited budget. For example, if you are marketing software that deals with exercise, focus on aerobics instructions, personal trainers, etc.

• If you can recruit these influencers for a beta test, you will be able to gather valuable information on how they use the software and possibly get testimonials for direct mail, advertisements, and packaging.