Who Buys First: Using Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations to Find Early Customers

The first buyers are a small slice of the market

Diffusion of innovations theory explains why people adopt a new product or idea at different times. The sociologist Everett Rogers organized it in his 1962 book Diffusion of Innovations, drawing partly on studies of how hybrid seed corn spread among farmers in Iowa.

For a small business, the lesson is that your first buyers and your later buyers are different people. Instead of telling the same story to everyone, start by finding the people who move first.

Five adopter groups

Rogers split people by when they adopt. The percentages come from fitting a normal curve and are rough guides.

1. Innovators (about 2.5%): people who enjoy trying new things for their own sake
2. Early adopters (about 13.5%): people who judge value for themselves and often influence others
3. Early majority (about 34%): careful people who still adopt before the average
4. Late majority (about 34%): people who wait until many others already use it
5. Laggards (about 16%): people who adopt last, if at all

These are theoretical groupings. A real product will not necessarily follow those proportions.

Five traits that affect adoption

Rogers also said the product itself has traits that shape how fast it spreads.

• Relative advantage: is it clearly better than what people do now?
• Compatibility: does it fit their current work and habits?
• Complexity: is it hard to understand or use?
• Trialability: can they try it in a small way first?
• Observability: can they see results other people got?

For a solo business, complexity and trialability are the easiest to work on. Examples include a small first-time fee, a one-page guide to getting started, and showing results in a visible form.

How to find early buyers

First, look for people already trying to solve the problem themselves. Someone running a homemade spreadsheet or a manual routine feels the pain and has a reason to try something new.

Next, find where those people gather: industry meetups, online question sites, peer communities. Talk to them directly. Ask what bothers them about their current method and what conditions would make them willing to try yours.

Have the first few people use the product, then, with permission, turn their results into something others can see. That raises observability and makes the decision easier for the next group.

Limits

The theory was assembled by looking back at things that spread, so critics say it explains products that failed less well. Its categories also treat people as fixed types, while the same person can be early in one area and late in another.

It does not settle how a product moves from one group to the next. For the difficulty of getting from the first group to the next, Geoffrey Moore's chasm model is a useful companion.

Change how you talk to each group

For early adopters, lead with novelty and a way of solving the problem that did not exist before. For more cautious groups, lead with results from people in the same position, how little effort setup takes, and who to contact if something goes wrong.

Do not reuse the first group's comments unchanged in material for the next group. The first group tolerates flaws and the next does not. Reflect the fixes you made after early feedback when you explain the product to the next group.

When it does not spread

When the response is weak, go through the five traits and ask which one is missing. If trying it takes effort, that is trialability. If people cannot tell how to use it, that is complexity. Check your side before assuming the problem is with the customers.

Reading the percentages

Figures such as 2.5% and 13.5% classify people after the market has finished spreading. You can only tell later whether your first ten customers were "innovators." Use the percentages not as targets but to get a sense that the groups differ in size and character.

What to do next

1. Find three people already working around the problem your product solves.
2. Ask each what frustrates them now and what would make them try a new method.
3. Pick the weakest of the five traits and decide on one small fix.
4. Have your first few users try it and, with their permission, summarize results on one page.
5. Show that page to the next people in the same community and note their reactions.

If contracts or personal data are involved, consult a professional as well.