(2011-01-10) Cohen Targeting Perfect Customer

Jason Cohen says (Selling to Carol): Why targeting an ICP brings 10x more customers than you expected) you should Focus your product messaging on your "perfect customer" (Ideal Customer, User Scenarios). You have to communicate in a picture and a few words. The good news is you have to please only Carol, and you know Carol. You even know she’ll honestly be thrilled to find you. If your ad can’t grab Carol’s attention — your perfect customer — why do you think it will grab anyone else’s attention? If you still say it’s impossible to communicate your message in 5-10 seconds, no one in the world will get your message.

And emphasize her biggest pain-point. Start by targeting your potential power-users who are already neck-deep in your problem domain and ask: How are they doing this today? Build your product specifically for them, even if that means confusing and abusing everyone else... I’d like to make the argument that this should be your marketing and sales strategy, regardless of whether you also accept it as your product strategy.

Longer Carol excerpt: Selling to Carol: Why targeting an ICP brings 10x more customers than you expected. Targeting your “Ideal Customer Profile” (ICP) is the best way to differentiate and win sales, but does it limit your target market?

Most companies approach this the wrong way, which is to speak to “everyone.”

The first step in disabusing yourself of this fluffy language, is to see that by not speaking to a specific type of customer, you’re saying nothing to everyone and thus everyone will bounce off the home page, and think nothing more of it. If your ideal customer doesn’t know you’re selling to them, who will?

The next step in disabusing yourself of this idea of “speaking to everyone” is to acknowledge that it is impossible to speak to everybody at once.

Once you agree with these two points - you must be evocative and specific, and you can’t speak to everyone - you must conclude that you have to speak to just one type of customer.

Describe a perfect customer.Give her a name: Carol.

Whatever problems your product solves, Carol has all those problems. She has all the problems, she knows she has the problems, she already has the budget to spend on those problems, and she’s already looking for how to spend it, just like it says in your market analysis. Write those problems down from her point of view, the way she would describe them if complaining to a friend over lunch.

Now the question is: What would a web page / Google ad / print ad / trade-show booth / postcard be like such that Carol would immediately understand that you are her savior? Remember, you get only 3 seconds to grab her attention and another 5-10 to convince her that your product is the second coming

You only get a few seconds, so a paragraph won’t do. You have to communicate in a picture and a few words. The good news is you have to please only Carol

If you still say it’s impossible to communicate your message in 5-10 seconds, no one in the world will get your message.

Now let’s tackle the fear: That targeting Carol means you’re excluding the rest of the market

This doesn’t happen in practice. Here’s what actually happens: You have a target market - the bullseye - and the center of that bullseye is Carol:

But Carol isn’t the only person who will be attracted to this set of trade-offs. There are people who also generally like the things on the left, and are indifferent to the things on the right.

That’s the next ring in the bullseye - people who value your positives and aren’t dissuaded by the weaknesses. There are 10x more of those people than there are of Carol; let’s call that person Diana:

Clearly some of those people will still consider the Subaru to be the best-possible set of trade-offs, and there are 10x more of those kinds of people than there are of Diana. Call them Eddie:

This is why targeting Carol means your target market is actually at least 10x larger (because of Diana) and actually 20x-100x larger than you thought (because of Eddie).

Targeting Carol makes your message is clear, compelling, evocative, maybe even emotional. But trade-offs are how people buy, and exactly because you were so clear about them, you’re paving the road for them to make that choice.

Continuing the Subaru example4, the advertisements above are about being low-cost but practical. These are attributes that many people want in a car. But in the 1990s, sales were in decline, so they researched which consumer segments were most likely to buy a Subaru. They found five categories: Teachers, healthcare professionals, IT professionals, “outdoorsy types,” and lesbians. Lesbians were the strongest category - four times more likely to buy.

Targeting lesbians was a risky move in the 90s.

Subaru invested where others feared to tread.

The campaigns were a hit, but not only with lesbians. Subaru grew faster in the subsequent ten years than any other car company5, and while the gay and lesbian demographic always appeared in the top five in terms of cars sold, the vast majority of people who bought a Subaru were straight

When you target Carol, your positioning is strongest, and you win where you deserve to win. But far more people will buy because they have similar purchasing preferences.