Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM)
The realistic slice of your total addressable market that you can actually capture with your current resources, team, and go-to-market strategy. It's the honest answer to 'how much revenue can we really win in the next 3-5 years?'
Full Explanation
Most companies start with a massive Total Addressable Market (TAM)—the theoretical size of their entire industry. But that number is useless for planning. SOM is the disciplined middle ground between dreaming and doing.
Think of it like email marketing. Your TAM might be 'every person with an email address on Earth.' Your Serviceable Available Market (SAM) is 'every business that uses email marketing tools.' Your SOM is 'the percentage of that market we can realistically reach and convert given our sales team size, marketing budget, brand awareness, and competitive position.' If you have 50 salespeople and your average deal takes 6 months to close, you can only service so many accounts per year—that's your SOM.
In AI marketing tools, SOM becomes critical because the market is fragmented. A CDP vendor might have a TAM of $50 billion (all customer data platforms globally), a SAM of $8 billion (mid-market and enterprise only), but an SOM of $200 million (what they can realistically capture in their first five years with their current go-to-market, given competition from Segment, Tealium, and Salesforce).
When evaluating AI vendors or building your own AI marketing strategy, SOM forces you to ask: 'Can this vendor actually serve my segment, or are they chasing a market they can't realistically win?' It also shapes your pricing, channel strategy, and hiring. A vendor with an unrealistic SOM will either burn cash chasing unwinnable deals or pivot suddenly, leaving customers stranded.
For your own AI initiatives, SOM determines your budget allocation. If your SOM for AI-driven personalization is $2M in incremental revenue over three years, you shouldn't spend $5M building it in-house.
Why It Matters
SOM directly impacts vendor reliability and your ROI on AI investments. A vendor with an inflated SOM relative to their actual execution capability will either fail, pivot, or raise prices aggressively to survive—all bad outcomes for you. When evaluating AI marketing platforms, ask vendors for their SOM and how they calculated it. Vague answers ('we're going after the entire market') signal risk.
For your own AI projects, SOM prevents waste. Many marketing teams over-invest in AI initiatives that sound transformative but can only realistically impact a small portion of revenue. By calculating SOM first—'how many customers can we actually personalize for with this AI tool given our data quality and team size?'—you avoid building Cadillacs when you need Corollas. This discipline also helps you negotiate better with vendors. If your SOM for a particular use case is $500K in value, you shouldn't pay a vendor $1M annually for a tool that only addresses that use case.
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Related Terms
Product-Market Fit
The point where your product solves a real problem for a large enough group of customers who actively want it and will pay for it. For AI tools, it means the solution actually delivers measurable value that justifies adoption and cost.
Total Addressable Market (TAM)
The total revenue opportunity available if a product or service captured 100% of a specific market. For marketers, it's the ceiling on how big your potential customer base could be. Understanding TAM helps you set realistic growth targets and justify marketing budgets.
Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM)
The portion of the total market that your company can realistically reach and serve with your current products, distribution channels, and capabilities. It's smaller than the total market but larger than your current customer base—essentially, your realistic growth ceiling.
Go-to-Market Strategy (GTM)
Your plan for how you'll launch, position, and sell a product or service to customers. It covers who you're targeting, how you'll reach them, what message you'll use, and how you'll price it. For AI tools, a strong GTM determines whether your investment actually drives adoption and revenue.
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