Starting a company is an invigorating feeling that motivates many entrepreneurs to do great things. The early times are vital when starting a company as it is the structuring stage for all further company development. Because of its vitality it is imperative that you don’t find your company on false expectations. Market research is an important part when doing business – not one that can be merely ran off assumption.

Some companies are exempt from extensive market research as their immediate market may already be more abundant than they can handle. For example, if a new housing development was newly completed then a new local landscaping company would have no problem finding enough customers to keep them busy. However, if an individual wanted to start a landscaping company in a small town that already has 10 landscaping companies averaging over 15 years of experience in the area, then market research could have helped in relocating or pivoting and approaching a different business angle. The second example is where many startups find disappointment as their perceived audience tends to be much larger than what they come to find available.

An American-based shaving kit startup company may find that their potential audience includes every male over 16 in the US. That number is a huge demographic that every investor wants to hear, however it is far from the actual audience by demand. Not every male can grow facial hair, older gentlemen typically prefer electric razors, some men don’t grow beards until later in life while others may lose their beards, others don’t even shave at all, and every shaving individual in that demographic already has a solution to shaving their beard. Meanwhile, some women may start using it and prefer it over other products. Needless to say, general searches and overarching traits are not enough when doing proper market research. Coming up with wrong answers brings false expectations and misguided ambitions for both the business owners and the investors. How do you actually come up with these right answers? Lots of refining.

One way that many companies are able to narrow down their most accurate depiction of their demographic is by personifying that mass into a singular fictitious person in the form of an avatar. These avatars have real struggles, appropriate ambitions, and often times random, but realistic work/homelives. By identifying this individual, you can then further analyze what it is they do and how they think, later narrowing the demand of a business into a concisely communicated idea that can accurately represent the demand of its product/services. Doing this as soon as possible in a company while maintaining the practice can be very beneficial for long-term relevance and growth with your immediate customers as you expand towards the previously ambitious generalizations.