(2022-08-16) Lauchengco Market Fit

Martina Lauchengco (SVPG): Market Fit: *The Market Side of Product/Market Fit. This is excerpted from LOVED: How to Rethink Marketing for Tech Products. ...so many companies find their growth stalling... often because not enough attention was paid to market fit.

When I say market fit, I mean discovering ‘market pull.’ What makes a customer need or want your product enough that they take immediate action to learn more, try, or buy? And what makes this pattern repeatable?

product discovery work around value is intended to find this answer. Although it is the most difficult and important risk to probe, it tends to be underdeveloped.

Determining market fit is about taking inputs from discovery work and applying them to what people are likely to truly do in real-life conditions.

probing more deeply on market conditions that motivate action or create urgency (compelling)

Good product marketers can apply more market nuance to doing and applying discovery work and understanding how it applies to all things go-to-market.

They catch things like segmenting customers for who might be better evangelists and not just looking at initial users of a product. Or how actions might be more influenced by word-of-mouth.

nothing beats live customer conversations for understanding market context.

• What have I said/shown you that is most compelling (a-ha moment)?
• If probing relative urgency: if you had 10 points in your budget to allocate to solve your most urgent problems, how many points would each get?

Any product discovery technique that engages directly with customers can be adapted to inform this work–from prototypes to usability tests to A/B tests to the Sean Ellis (very disappointed) test