How To Go To Market When Your Market Is Tiny

Over the summer, as I attended several deep tech events with some fascinating technology, something kept nagging at me: How are these companies going to commercialize their technology when their only customer is the Department of Defense?

While most companies creating climate tech, water tech, deep tech, or hard tech have more than one customer, the universe is still finite. The number of municipal utilities looking to solve water treatment problems is limited. So too is the number of airplane manufacturers looking for carbon substitutes for wings. Building an AI solution to help geothermal drillers improve their hit rate? Name me 10 companies in the sector you can sell to not named Ormat.

Conventional marketing for software, heating and plumbing, or consumer products has room for inefficiency because their markets number in the hundreds of thousands or millions of potential customers. A mediocre marketing campaign targeted to 100,000 prospects can still be successful by closing even a small percentage of the opportunities. 

But what happens when your 100,000-person audience shrinks to 100? Yes, a finite audience allows you to be more targeted with your marketing, but the smaller your market, the more precise your marketing must become.

If Coca-Cola wastes an impression on someone who doesn't want a Coke today, who cares? If there are only 37 companies in North America capable of buying your industrial technology and you've confused six of them about what you do, that's a material percentage of your market.

Assuming you’ve met the baseline, your technology has good results in the lab, and you’ve proven your concept in field tests, you have the table stakes necessary to take your solution to market. Now you need to define your market, match your market’s pain point with their ability to integrate your solution, clarify your message and positioning so that your solution is the default for your market, build trust, and be present when they are ready to buy. 

One of the most common mistakes I see from early-stage companies is presenting a wide range of applications for their technology in a variety of industries. I get the instinct: We need a bigger market for our solution because the existing market is too small. 

Unfortunately, the law of numbers gets crossed with buyer psychology; the first rule of which is that the customer needs to see themselves in your solution and feel that you understand their pain. When you diversify your solution to fit multiple markets, you dilute your ability to connect with your customers. You’re drowning out your own message.

It might sound risky to put all your eggs in one basket, but you’re far more likely to connect with your core audience than if you send them on an Easter egg hunt, looking for themselves in your myriad of solutions.

Once your messaging is clearly focused on your customer, then it’s time to discuss marketing tactics for a complex technology targeted to a small audience.

As clear as you need to be about your messaging, you need to be equally precise about your audience. Every startup investor deck shows a TAM with a number that’s typically followed by nine zeros to the left of the decimal point. Except that’s not really your GTM number. It’s more like this:

How many companies can use your technology ÷ How many are replacing their capital equipment in the next three years ÷ How many have the capital budget ÷ How many will buy from a startup with a small to non-existent track record

Overcoming that complex equation requires a focused GTM strategy that combines both digital and analog marketing.

Attending Conferences

A founder can easily rack up $40,000-$50,000 in conference expenses in a year between registrations, travel, hotels, meals, trade show booths, and SWAG. The illusion comes when the founder confuses the 40 business cards and promises to follow up on LinkedIn with actual traction.

I’ll be the first to argue that even in a digital world, relationships are analog, especially when you’re selling into highly regulated government or industrial markets. Relationships are what often makes or breaks a sale because you’re asking someone inside an institution to be your advocate (Read: risk their reputation for you).

But meeting someone at a trade show is akin to your first day of school. You sit down and talk to the person sitting next to you in class, but they aren’t going to claim you’re their BFF. 

What can make a meaningful first impression, however, is the conference transferring its authority to you by giving you a spot on the stage. Speakers and panelists generate instant credibility because an industry trade association has said you/your company/your technology needs to be heard.

Rather than spend thousands on sponsorships or lanyards that will be seen and worn by a thousand people who have no interest in your technology, spend time writing abstracts (and if necessary spend a little money) to get on the agenda. Instead of you chasing your audience, some of them will approach you.

And on the topic of choosing conferences, before you fork over $2,000 for that registration, get a list of the registrants. If you can’t find 20-30 companies in your market represented there, save your money.

If the conference is target-rich, I’d still advise against a tradeshow booth. Why? A booth is fundamentally an attention-and-foot-traffic tactic. If your universe consists of 40 or 80 plausible customers, paying for floor space, graphics, shipping, travel, staffing, and sponsorship packages to wait for some of those people to walk past you makes little sense.

Rule of thumb for GTM strategy: The smaller your market, the less you should pay for access to anonymous people.

Market Intelligence vs. Lead Generation

Lead generation is one of those phrases in almost every job description seeking a Chief Marketing Officer. “Must have demonstrated experience creating a lead gen funnel that shows consistent growth…”

That makes sense if you sell software to every multifamily property manager in the country. There are always more prospects to pour into the top of the funnel.

But if there are only 63 companies that could realistically buy from you, why are you “generating leads?” You already know who the leads are.

Your job is to know those 63 companies extraordinarily well: their existing solutions, capital cycles, technical constraints, leadership, expansion plans, procurement processes, current vendors, regulatory pressures, and signals that something is changing.

That doesn't mean you stop marketing. You still need content that demonstrates expertise, regular communications that keep your company visible, sales materials that make your technology understandable, and opportunities to get in front of your audience.

What you don't need is a marketing machine designed around constantly finding new people to stuff into the top of a funnel.

In a tiny market, there aren't always more people.

Worse, treating a finite market like an infinite one can do real damage. Unsolicited LinkedIn messages promising efficiency savings, automated email sequences, and relentless follow-ups may generate a few responses when you're targeting 100,000 people. When you're trying to land a beachhead customer within an organization that's already culturally resistant to change, it's like yelling at the maître d' at a fine-dining establishment. People will notice, but not in the way you want.

What you really need is market intelligence.

Ten years ago, if you had a couple hundred potential customers, I might have suggested setting up Google Alerts for every company and industry term that mattered. Today, a decent CRM combined with AI can do much of that work for you.

The objective isn't to trigger three automated emails because somebody clicked a link. It's to know that a prospect has hired a new facilities manager, received funding for a capital project, announced an expansion, changed suppliers, or is staring at a new regulatory requirement.

A CRM isn't primarily a lead-management tool in this situation. It's institutional memory. With a tiny market, forgetting what happened with one of your 63 potential customers 18 months ago matters.

Your Best Customer May Not Be a Prospect Yet

There's another problem with having a tiny market: Even after you've whittled your TAM down to the companies that can actually use and afford your technology, most of them probably aren't buying today.

Industrial equipment isn’t replaced because your sales team needs to make its quarterly numbers. Municipal budgets don't suddenly appear because you've completed a successful pilot. A manufacturer isn't going to rip out a functioning system because your technology performs 20% better.

A company can be exactly the right customer and still be the wrong prospect today, which is why sales cycles in climate, water, chemicals, materials, robotics, and space are so painfully long. That’s why you need a fundamentally different approach for marketing.

If you have 100,000 prospects, you can keep looking for someone ready to buy. If you have 63, you can't burn through the list and start over with a fresh batch next quarter.

You have to stay relevant until something changes, which is why content marketing is foundational to your success. We always recommend a marketing calendar to our clients, but not because you need three LinkedIn posts and an email every month, but because useful content gives you a reason to remain in your customer's orbit when you have nothing to sell them today.

People buy from people and companies they trust. They buy your solution because they believe in you and your team, and it's why relationships matter. But your message needs to remain consistent every time they encounter you.

Your prospective customer may see you speak in March, read something you wrote in June, see a LinkedIn case study in August, and get an email from you quarterly. One day, their world changes: A budget gets approved; equipment reaches the end of its useful life; a regulation changes; a supplier fails; or a new executive arrives with a mandate to cut costs.

Now they're in the market, and you are top of mind.

And if you've spent the previous year demonstrating that you understand their problem rather than reminding them every three weeks that you'd like to sell them something, you don't have to introduce yourself.

That's the difference between going to market when your market contains 100,000 potential customers and when it contains 100.

If your market is a swimming pool rather than an ocean, stop behaving as if it were your job to find more water. Think of yourself as the pool’s lifeguard: You know all the swimmers, and your job is to pay attention, establish trust, and recognize when somebody needs help.