How to define your audience so traffic actually converts

Most founders ask me the same question when they’re getting started with marketing:
“Should I invest in SEO or run LinkedIn ads?”

It’s a fair question — but it’s the wrong one. Because until you understand your audience, your funnel economics, and the constraints you're working within, you’re just throwing darts in the dark.

What you actually need is a traffic strategy: a way to think clearly about what will work for your offer, at this stage, with the time and budget you have. Not a stack of tactics. A sequence. A framework.

This guide gives you that. It's how I build traffic systems for clients — and how I built the one for Solid Growth. It’s written for B2B service companies, but the principles apply anywhere: focus, sequencing, and controlled scale.

There are three decisions that make everything else easier. Get these right, and your first campaigns will tell you what works (and what doesn’t) fast. Get them wrong, and you’ll burn through time and budget before you’ve learned anything useful.

Here’s what we’ll cover

1. Work out your traffic math
Start by working backwards from your goal. How much traffic do you need to hit your targets? What’s your max CPL? What assumptions are baked into your funnel — and how do you pressure test them before spending money?

2. Define your audience persona
Who exactly are you targeting — and how specific do you need to be to make it convert? We’ll break down how precision buys you margin, why B2B targeting often fails, and how to balance scale with performance.

3. Choose your acquisition channel
Every channel can work — but not all of them will work for you, now. We’ll help you prioritise based on speed, cost, and signal quality, and explain how to test your way in without spreading yourself too thin.

If you're building your first campaign — or rebuilding after too many false starts — this is the strategy I’d use to keep things simple, focused, and fast. Let’s get into it.