Is my market just too small and too protected?
First post here on WF.
I just finished development of a product for a very small niche market - law students who will be joining law firms as "summer associates" (i.e. summer clerks) - sort of like a legal internship. The product is an online course about how to be successful - it includes audio and text.
That's my background - I know the market - and I'm fairly confident that the product would get a decent reception from the market IF I CAN GET IT IN FRONT OF THEM.
But there are not more than a 3,000 - 10,000 people in the US that fit that description. That's my entire potential market.
So first problem - the market is small.
The second problem is that I cannot figure out a good way to target just my people. I can't think of a way to get much more narrow that "law student" in general.
And at that level of specificity, there is a TON of competition. No one that I know of competes with me exactly. But law students in general are a hot market to sell to - young, up-and-coming professionals soon to have too much disposable income.
So I'm swimming in a sea of others clamoring for the attention of law school students (in general - not my subset). I compete for a very small set of highly coveted eyeballs, not on my product per se.
I guess it's sort of like marketing to the wealty - even if your product is unique, if it's a lower cost product (mine's $55 right now) how do you effectively get attention in a market where people are willing and able to out-spend you?
I've not done a lot of marketing yet, but the first things I've done have come up very short - not a single sale so far and very little traffic - mostly because I can't even get it in front of my market.
I think my product is very attractive ONCE I GET THE TARGET MARKET TO VIEW IT. But I'm wondering if my market is essentially unreachable for the amount of money I can spend.
Finally, the market is very "identity based" - that is that market would be receptive (I believe) but they do not currently and actively search for my type of product - one of those, "didn't know they needed it till they saw it" kind of things. So SEO is a no-go because it's not a "search term" friendly product.
I've tried facebook, I've tried working through career counselors at Universities. I'm currently trying to do some guest blog posts (but even those opportunities are hard to find).
In short, though I believe in my product, I can't figure out how to get it in front of my market's eyes.
1. Any ideas? Am I missing something?
2. Is it ever the case that an otherwise good/viable product is unworkable simply because it can't effectively be marketed at the product's reasonable price point?
I'm wondering whether I just need to cut bait on this project and move to the next.
Jon
"Success comes when people act together; failure tends to happen alone." -- Deepak Chopra