How to find the audience
that your product
really needs
Almost every business has two audiences: the one that is cheaper to reach with ads, and the one that needs the product. They rarely coincide, and the budget goes to the first — because it is visible in the ad account, while the second is not visible anywhere.
Almost every business I review has two audiences. The first is the one that is cheapest to reach with ads. The second is the one that really needs the product. They rarely coincide, and almost the entire budget goes to the first, because it is visible in the ad account interface, while the second is not visible anywhere.
The audience that needs the product is found not through targeting, but through the situation in which a person starts looking for a solution. Gender, age and interests describe who they are. The situation describes why they will buy right now — and only that can be sold.
Why a “target audience persona” is usually useless
“Woman, 30–45, middle income, values quality and saves time” — this text can be attached to a hundred different products, and it will fit them all. No decision follows from it: not the price, not the channel, not the argument, not which segment to drop.
A persona describes a person’s traits. A purchase, however, is triggered by an event. Between “she is 34 and values quality” and “her old one broke, and she needs a replacement by Friday” there is a gulf, and the whole sale lies in the second phrase.
This doesn’t mean demographics are not needed: they are needed to set up ad delivery. But setting up delivery is the last step, not the first, and doing it before the situation is understood means buying the attention of people who have no reason to buy.
Three questions that replace the persona
1. What happened in the person’s life right before the purchase?
Not “why they might want it in principle”, but what happened a week before. Moved, grew, something broke, quit, had a baby, came back from vacation, got a complaint from a client, calculated the profit and was horrified.
There are usually few events — three to five for the whole business. And each has its own frequency: some happen to thousands of people monthly, others to dozens once a year. This is the first thing that determines the real size of the market — far more accurately than industry reports.
2. What did they do instead of your product?
Any problem already has a solution, otherwise the person wouldn’t be living with it. They put up with it, did it themselves, paid more, used something not as intended, asked a friend. This is your real competitor — not a company from the same industry, but a habit.
The answer to this question gives a more accurate value proposition than any brainstorm, because it shows exactly what you will be compared to on price.
3. Who pays and who uses it?
In B2B these are almost always different people, and in B2C more often than is commonly thought. The message for the one who pays and for the one who uses are different messages, and trying to combine them in one text kills both.
Where to get answers if there is no research budget
Full-scale research costs money and time. But eighty percent of the answer lies in data the company already has and that nobody has looked at.
| Source | What you get | How long it takes |
|---|---|---|
| Correspondence with clients | The problem described in their own words. These are ready-made headlines — no need to invent anything. | Half a day to export and review |
| Reviews, yours and competitors’ | What gets praised and what gets complaints. Complaints about competitors are the most underrated source of positioning. | 2–3 hours |
| Reasons for lost deals | Why those who got as far as a conversation didn’t buy. This is where the real objection lies, not the one you assume. | 1 day, if sales recorded anything |
| Customer database | Who buys again and for what amounts. The top 10–20% by revenue is your audience, not the one in the brief. | 1 day including export |
| 5–7 interviews | The event before the purchase and what they did instead. More than seven adds almost nothing new. | 1–2 weeks |
Export your database and sort clients by total lifetime spend. Take the top twenty percent and find what they have in common: industry, size, occasion, the channel they came through, time of year.
In the vast majority of reviews this segment looks nothing like the audience described in the company’s marketing materials. And almost always nothing is spent on advertising to it, because the ads are set up for the persona, not for the facts.
Signs that the audience is chosen wrong
- The “too expensive” objection comes at the start of the conversation. This means you are talking to people who have no reason to buy. With a person in an acute situation, price is discussed at the end and differently.
- A long deal cycle for a simple product. A person spends a month thinking over a decision that should take a day — because the problem is not urgent for them.
- Clients don’t come back. The event was a one-off, but you built the model on repeat purchases.
- All channels deliver equally poor conversion. The problem is in the shared part — in the offer or in the choice of whom it is addressed to.
- Sales explain lost deals with “wrong season” and “it’s a crisis now”. Universal explanations appear where there is no real reason.
Saying no is a mandatory part of the work
Choosing an audience means giving up the others. Without this part no choice happens: a list of five segments where none is named the main one works exactly the same as having no list.
Saying no gives three things at once. The message becomes specific because it is addressed to one. The price stops being a compromise — it can be set by value for the chosen segment, not by the average. And the product can be refined for the real task instead of maintaining features for those who don’t buy anyway.
Almost always, saying no leads to a higher average order value rather than lower revenue: a narrow offer for those who definitely need it sells at a higher price than a broad one for everyone.
What to do this week
- Export your database and find the top 20% by revenue. One day of work, the highest return on the whole list.
- Call five of them. One question: what was going on for you when you started looking for this kind of solution. Write it down verbatim.
- Read the reviews of two competitors. Write down the complaints. Each complaint is a potential advantage for you, formulated by a customer for free.
- Describe the situation, not the persona. One sentence: “A person comes to us when they ___, and before that they ___”.
- Name one segment you no longer work with. Out loud, in front of the team. Without this point, the first four won’t turn into decisions.
Product-market fit is not an event that happens once. It is a state in which you know exactly who faces the situation, what they did instead of you, and how much they are willing to pay to stop doing it. Everything else in marketing follows from that.
Where to start
Consultation — 90 minutes, €270. As a result, we will identify your growth points, you will get answers to questions about your business, and we will define possible ways to solve your business tasks and the scope of work needed to achieve results — within our collaboration or with other teams.