Why Your Marketing Should Target the Smallest Audience Possible
June 23, 2017
As a business startup, it’s easy to think of a bigger audience as being better. After all, the more people you reach, the more chances you have to get sales.
However, the math doesn’t actually work here. In fact, you’re likely to have more sales success if you target the smallest audience possible.
Delight the Few
It’s an axiom in marketing that businesses which try to please everybody end up delighting nobody. A service or product line with benefits that are too broad won’t create the level of enthusiasm needed to create any momentum. You dilute the very benefit you’re trying to sell. Instead of creating something innovative, exciting, and magical, you create something average.
When you target a small audience with a specific need, you have the chance to create some magic. When you do that, you don’t just have customers, you have fans.
The Customer is the Advertiser
Fans do something incredible for digital marketing. They advertise your product for you.
When your product or service truly delights your initial, highly targeted audience, they will insist that their family and friends try it. Then those people become fans, and your growth becomes exponential.
A lot of the most effective advertising today is not bought, it’s earned.
Digital Word of Mouth
In today’s digitally connected world, having a customer fan base is an important marketing channel.
What was “word of mouth” is now greatly amplified. People share their enthusiasm for your product on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. They write reviews which are as persuasive as any advertisement you can create yourself.
Your small audience is a seed that can grow into a mighty tree.
Minimum Viable Audience
Minimum viable audience is a term coined by Brian Clark of Copyblogger. He uses it to discuss how you can use content marketing before you actually launch a product to develop a defined, engaged audience.
Minimum and viable are key terms here. You want to try to target the smallest niche audience you can, but it has to be large enough that the seed you plant can grow to provide viable revenue.
One of the best places today to test audience sizes is Facebook Ads. When you set up an ad based on detailed targeting, you can access Facebook’s data on audience sizes.
Say, for example, you want to sell a new type of Feta Cheese. Your idea is to start by targeting chefs and restaurant owners in Greek restaurants.
As you set up your ad, you can get audiences sizes for these different areas. For example:
This shows me over 3 million people have listed their job title as chef. But if I want to narrow things down, I could try targeting restaurant owners:
This would narrow my audience to only 4500 people.
You can play with this feature to narrow down your audience, yet have enough reach to gain momentum.
Rise Above the Noise
Choosing the type of audience you want to target is a strategic-level decision.
You can choose to try to target a larger audience directly, but you’ll have to overcome substantial challenges. The first is the way a large audience forces you into average. It’s difficult to create something unique and exciting when you’re trying to appeal to broad interests.
But even more challenging is simply trying to be heard. There was a time when marketing was the domain of larger brands. It was expensive, carefully crafted, and executed by a limited number of creators.
Today marketing is everywhere. We’re surrounded by a screaming hoard in a noisy race where the biggest goal is just being heard. Trying to get a large audience to listen is increasingly impossible.
When you target the smallest possible audience, you’re narrowing it down to a core group that has the best chance of becoming fans. Then, instead of one loud voice screaming above the crowd, you’re a chorus of voices speaking to people who have an interest in listening.
Smart marketing today takes advantage of how customers are themselves a type of marketing collateral.
Find a core who will love your product, then get them to spread the word. Sharing the love is more effective than out-shouting the crowd.