If you’ve succeeded with early adopters, I would argue that you will not succeed with mainstream consumers.

So many start-up consumer electronics companies are hurting themselves by marketing to early adopters first:

• Very few companies succeed in crossing the chasm between early adopters and mainstream consumers.
• That’s because the skills and techniques you master to convince early adopters will not work with mainstream consumers.
• Early adopters read techie blogs and message boards.
• Mainstream consumers get tech news from their newspapers and their local TV news.
• Early adopters speak a different language than mainstream consumers. The language that excited early adopters scares the daylights out of mainstream consumers.
• Mainstream media is key to success with the mainstream but has little to do with early adopters.

See what I’m saying? I could go on with this list for 10 more bullet points.

Once you master the tiny early adopter market, they’ll move on to the next shiny toy, and you’ll be stuck with skills that are useless for the market you really want to conquer.

Which means that not only are early adopters NOT a pathway to mainstream consumers, they block your path to your real market.

And that is why you should do nothing to actively target early adopters. They’ll find you if they want to. Focus all of your energies on moms and dads, the working professionals who will really determine the success of your product.

Start with the mainstream.