How to pick your audience (my controversial take)

There’s one thing people tell me is missing from my strategy advice:

Target audience.

I give all this talk about competitors, value, storytelling, etc., and yet I almost never talk about the one topic that makes it hang all together. Who are you actually doing this for? Who should you choose to serve?

Well, today I’m going to address that – but let me start by telling you why I never give advice about choosing your target audience.

It’s because I don’t believe you should.

What I believe instead is that the target audience should choose you – and that this step should come near the end of your strategic process, not at the start.

This of course stands in start contrast to the typical advice you’re given, which is generally something like this:

1. Choose your audience.
2. Identify their problems.
3. Solve their problems.

There are two reasons I don’t like this.

The first is because a huge number of businesses don’t have a “clean” audience, whereby the business is perfectly fitted to a homogenous group you can comfortably put your finger on. Who is the target audience of Apple? Or IKEA? Or Walmart? It’s almost a stupid question, because the answer is so multi-faceted. Of course some brands are hyper-targeted (e.g. a B2B software solution for a specific type of company), but if you’ve got one of them then you probably know your audience from the get-go, and so aren’t worried about “finding” it! If you’re unsure however, then I don’t think it makes sense to arbitrarily “choose” one at the outset of your thinking, and in doing so blinker yourself to other opportunities.

The second is because I generally see this approach as finding a needle in a haystack. If you “search for problems to solve”, you are unlikely to find them, because that’s what everyone is doing, and thus the obvious problems are already dealt with. Probably many times over. This thinking is just way too linear for my liking, and is very unlikely to generate innovative high-leverage ideas.

Therefore, I favour the reverse approach:

1. Find difference with competitors
2. Identify the value of that difference
3. Connect that value to the audience(s) who would benefit from it most

It’s really not all that complicated if you think about it. I mean look, probably none of us know the specific segments Apple (say), are targeting. But if I asked you to speculate I bet you could have a pretty good guess. And that’s because you know what makes them different, what their value offering is, and therefore connecting it to audiences is a bit of a formality.

This is what I mean by the audience choosing you. You create “the thing” and then that attracts who it attracts – and you couldn’t give a damn who that is, so long as there are enough of them!

Now, all of this said, you still may end up with a bit of analysis paralysis with this approach, so let me give you some specifics to make it a bit easier.

First, generate potential audiences:

1. The best way to do this is with your own experience. Where have you seen traction before? Your strategy should be an evolution of what is already working with your business, so you should have noticed that you get more attention / results with one form of customer than another. Nine times out of then, they should be your focus, as you already have some heat in that area.
2. Next – and if you are undergoing a more radical change – you should just do that dreaded thing nobody ever advises: use your common sense! Horrifying I know. You know your difference, you have an idea of the value that might generate, so who do you think it would help the most? And of course who would it not benefit as well. Like with the Apple analogy I gave above, this should be pretty clear if you are truly creating value.
3. Finally, just lean on AI. This is the sort of thing it’s good at. Just punch in what your business is, what makes it different (the innovation), what value this might provide, and then ask it to list the top 3 audiences it thinks would benefit from this the most. Easy.

Then, pick the best one:

1. Even if all the audiences you’ve identified sound good, you probably have limited resources, so you should probably boil it down to one or two. The first way of doing that is to simply ask which you agree with the most. Which pass the sniff test, and you’d feel comfortable targeting?
2. Next consider which has the most acute need. The logic here is very simple, but loads of businesses miss it: the more someone needs something, the easier it is to sell it to them. Don’t just default to the big attractive but unmotivated audience.
3. Finally you must also think about who would be easiest for you to market to. Who do you have experience with? A network with? Who are the easiest to reach? This might not be the same thing as the best audience from a customer perspective – at least initially.

So there you have it. That’s how I would do it. It’s what I think is most realistic, effective, and easiest.

At the end of the day, your resources, strengths, history, and competitive context are what they are. These are what bind you. So the idea that you “pick” your audience is kinda a fantasy anyway.

Just be who you are. And the right people will find you.