For this product to be viable, I will need to understand who this product is for. At this point, I have a few assumptions.
Customer Segments
Subject Matter Expert Planner
Leslie is a 25 – 45 year old female with a successful career that offers her the flexibility to travel. When planning, she scours the internet reading Trip Advisor reviews, skims travel blogs, follows local Instagram restaurants and reads books to find the best things to do and places to visit. She has a trusted group of like-minded travel friends whom she trusts for recommendations, should she be traveling to a location they’ve already visited. They, in turn, ask her for recommendations when planning their own trips. Leslie prides herself on being organized and planning an itinerary that is in line with her goals and interests.
Jobs To Be Done:
- Find restaurants, bars, excursions and sites of value
- Organize these spots in a way that are easily accessible and clear on where they are located
- Plan an itinerary using location-based information
- Share visited locations with friends
Travel Influencers
Markus (23 – 40 year old male; better known as ‘_where_is_markus_’ on Instagram) spends his time traveling the world, while growing photo envy and FOMO in his followers. Each image is artfully crafted to amaze you and subliminally sell you something. After all, this is how he makes his living. Although he scrutinizes what he endorses, Markus is fully aware that the recommendations he makes drives business to those establishments. As a result, he wants to share his lists in ways that inform and are helpful to audiences and don’t scream “this is an advertisement”.
Jobs To Be Done
- Manage and share location-based travel recommendations
- Monetize on new forms of revenue
Recommendation Focused Traveler
Erik is a successful 25 – 45 year old male. He loves to travel but doesn’t like the tedious work of planning his trips. On the other hand, he refuses to sign up for group tours because they are usually expensive and don’t give him the freedom to go off-itinerary if the opportunity should arise.
Jobs To Be Done
- Quickly acquire a list of recommendations based on location, interest and expense
- Ability to access this information for relevant options while abroad
My Early Adopters
I believe my early adopters will grow out of the Subject Matter Expert planner segment. They would get the most value out of a limited MVP. Influencers would benefit from functionality around sharing and categorizing while Recommendation Focused Travelers need engaged audience data. Although important, these features would be prioritized to roll out in future cycles of the application and a bit of time will be needed to grow a user base to supply the recommendation data.
My early adopters would exhibit the following characteristics:
- organized
- research minded
- desire to share knowledge
- experienced with location based tools (such as Google Maps)
Next Steps
The summary above holds only my assumptions. My next step is to actually talk to these users to see if they would be interested in a product like Share My Spots and what type of features and data would be valuable to them.
PS – I’ll be using LeanStack’s free Lean Canvas builder to outline Share My Spot’s business plan. Linked is my progress so far.