Go Big by Going Small: Finding your Smallest Viable Audience

Modern marketing has the tools and techniques available to reach hundreds of thousands of people at the push of a button. But is that really the best way forward?

Seth Godin says NO! He argues that you should be going very small. In his session for Spotler, titled “This Is Marketing”, he explains why and how you should be seeking out your Smallest Viable Audience.

The Power of small audiences

Rogers' product adoption lifecycle is important! It's important because it's so misunderstood. What it shows us is that just under 15% of the population is interested in things that are new, things that are geeky. The vast majority of people, 68%, are in the middle, they want things that work. And then there's 15 or so per cent of the population that still has a 12 flashing on their VCR. And they don't do anything until they have no choice. And when we bring things to the world, the masses are going to ignore us every single time. Because that's why they're the masses. They like ignoring things, they are busy doing something else. It's the geeks and the nerds, the ones who are choosing to pay attention. That's where we must begin.

That means that we need to begin with the smallest viable audience. And this unsettles a lot of people in the marketing world. But the SVA is not settling for less. The SVA, the smallest viable audience, is the platform for more. By being specific about exactly who we seek to serve, what they believe they want, who they want to become, then we have a chance to make change happen. What we seek to do is create the conditions for change to happen, to establish a place and a time and the tactics and the events so that the word spreads not because we are spreading the word, not because we're busy yelling and hyping and spamming and scamming but because we have put something into the world where other people choose to spread the idea, because it's good for them.

Purple Cow started small too

So a bunch of years ago, I wrote this book, Purple Cow, you may have heard about it. When I came out with it, I had been kicked out of the book industry. My book before that had failed pretty dismally and so I wrote the book Purple Cow without a book publisher. And after I wrote it, the question was, "What should I do with it?" And the answer was to publish it myself. Only 10,000 copies were printed. And I wrote a column in Fast Company, a place where a very small group of people were happy to hear from me with permission. And I said, "I got this book. If you want a free copy, send me five bucks for postage and handling", which is what it cost me to print and ship. And I shipped it in this milk carton. This was the envelope. Now, this isn't a gimmick. And it's important to understand that, that when people got the milk carton, they put it on their desk. Why? Was it because they were trying to promote their friend, Seth Godin? No, they didn't even know me. They did it because their life would be better if their peers asked them about the Purple Cow. Their life would be better if people started talking about making something that was remarkable, it would make their work-life better. And so the idea spread, and millions of copies later, that idea is in the world, not because I hustled or hyped or scammed or gimmicked my way to it. But because a small group of people who were already on a journey, decided it was worth talking about.

The other side of your SVA

The flip side of this, which is so freeing, is to be able to say to somebody, "it's not for you." That if somebody looks at our $19,000 Birkin bag and says, "That's ridiculous!", the answer is, "You're right, it is. It's not for you." If somebody says, "Why on earth would I wear shoes like that?" The answer is "You shouldn't. It's not for you." This ability to honour other people's intent takes us away from the mindset of the mass merchant.

Mass marketing, which was around for most of our entire careers, is based on a confluence of two critical events, one, retail shelf space, and two, television. Because there's an infinite amount of retail shelf space, it is inherently scarce. Television was the cheapest way ever invented, to reach enormous numbers of people. The goal of mass was to reach as many people as you can, as cheap as you can, to get as much shelf space as you could, because the retailer needs to sell to everyone. And in the last 20 years, this has changed forever. First of all, online, there is no shortage of shelf space, there's infinite shelf space. And number two, the key driver now is not to reach everyone, because in fact, while the internet touches everyone, there is no internet website that reaches more people than a typical TV show. And that's not a lot of people. The goal is not to reach everyone, the goal is to reach someone. And what is scarce now is not shelf space. What is scarce is attention and trust. And if you start burning attention, you're not going to get trust. And if you burn attention and trust, you don't get the benefit of the doubt. If you don't get the benefit of the doubt, you don't get a trial. If you don't get a trial, you don't get discussion, and the word doesn't spread.

Who’s in your SVA?

Do you already have a clear idea of your SVA?

The best place to start is activity on your website. Who is visiting your key product pages, and visiting them regularly? What sources are they coming from? If you can identify the group of people who are highly engaged with your content on a specific topic, you can start tailoring your messages to their exact niche.