SMB 2010 Market Trends – New Segmentation model “SMB Owner Personality Model”

Picture Credit : Pedro Laboy

Understanding and figuring out the SMB market is usually hard. It remains a mystery for technology vendors to provide solutions that resonate with SMB owners. As per the SMB 2010 trends, this market remains a unique revenue opportunity for many technology vendors.

Now, if you want to capture this market, you need to develop a small business strategy. It usually starts by knowing the market segmentation. The current segmentation model that I have come across is usually done by “# of computers they own”, “Industry they belong”, “Type of solution/service they want”, “Pain Points” and few more. All these models are good to some extent but they don’t provide a clear way to segment this market.  We need segmentation that connects with people. Right!

Well, I recently came across the article from Forrester “Targeting Small Business Tech Buyers: The Power Of Owner Personalities” a people approach to segment the SMB market using “SB Owner Personality Model”.  I found it very interesting and compelling because it resolves the segmentation challenges we face in the current segmentation model.

The SB Owner Personality Model provides a simple way to understand the owner personality, their attitudes towards technology and how they use technology to support their business.  Below is a clear representation of the model: 

SMB Owner Personality - Segmentation Model

The article also described the SMB Owner personality and provided 7 Owner Personalities that we can apply to develop a SMB strategy. They are:

1. Second Careers:  They are hobbyists and utilize technology for direct business value. They experiment with technology and are in preparation to launch their real business. Demonstrating a “start small, get big” technology roadmap is key to their acquisition.
2. Digital Extractors: They are lifestyle businesses and seek technology innovation to keep up with their customer demand. They are relatively stable with established customer base.  Demonstrating an innovation is key to attract them.
3. Entrepre-nets: They are aggressive adopters of technology and are growth businesses that utilize technology for direct business value. Technology is critical to achieving their growth objectives. They know what they need and will proactively seek out information and solutions that demonstrates continued innovation, web2.0 frameworks and agility in technology.
4. Side-lites: They are running their business as a business. They utilize technology primarily to manage/minimize operational costs and increase employee productivity.
5. Minimalists: They are lifestyle businesses with few direct competitors. They utilize technology primarily to manage/minimize operational costs and increase employee productivity.
6. Grow-lites : They are penny pinchers and/or operating on a constrained budget. They are growth businesses because technology is underutilized. Providing solutions that reduce operation costs, increase employee productivity, grow their business and provide business insights will attract them towards your solution.
7. Technology Sidelined: They don’t consider technology to have an important role in their business. Going after this segment needs to heavily assess against People, Resources and Revenue.

When you combine this segmentation with how much money they plan to spend on technology hardware & software it will help you to develop the strategy and solutions to capture this market. 

To gather SMB owner personality data, you can leverage your current profiling or feedback mechanisms on websites, partners or helpdesks to gather insights about them.  For example: AT&T Small Business Insite and Verizon Small Business Center have applied this model as part of their online customer profiling.

Are you using any SMB segmentation strategies that are unique to capturing the SMB market. Please share your insights on how you are using your model to capture SMB market.

Related Articles:

• SMB Owners : Are you segmenting your customers?
• SMB Marketers Segment Emails by Preference, Behavior

Tagged as: AT&T, Profiling, SB Owner Personality Model, Segmentation, SMB 2010, SMB Listening, SMB segmentation, SMB Trends